War and Peace

War and Peace



by Leo Tolstoy/Tolstoi









CHAPTER I





"Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the

Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war,

if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by

that Antichrist--I really believe he is Antichrist--I will have

nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer

my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! But how do you do? I see

I have frightened you--sit down and tell me all the news."



It was in July, 1805, and the speaker was the well-known Anna

Pavlovna Scherer, maid of honor and favorite of the Empress Marya

Fedorovna. With these words she greeted Prince Vasili Kuragin, a man

of high rank and importance, who was the first to arrive at her

reception. Anna Pavlovna had had a cough for some days. She was, as

she said, suffering from la grippe; grippe being then a new word in

St. Petersburg, used only by the elite.



All her invitations without exception, written in French, and

delivered by a scarlet-liveried footman that morning, ran as follows:



"If you have nothing better to do, Count [or Prince], and if the

prospect of spending an evening with a poor invalid is not too

terrible, I shall be very charmed to see you tonight between 7 and 10-

Annette Scherer."



"Heavens! what a virulent attack!" replied the prince, not in the

least disconcerted by this reception. He had just entered, wearing

an embroidered court uniform, knee breeches, and shoes, and had

stars on his breast and a serene expression on his flat face. He spoke

in that refined French in which our grandfathers not only spoke but

thought, and with the gentle, patronizing intonation natural to a

man of importance who had grown old in society and at court. He went

up to Anna Pavlovna, kissed her hand, presenting to her his bald,

scented, and shining head, and complacently seated himself on the

sofa.



"First of all, dear friend, tell me how you are. Set your friend's

mind at rest," said he without altering his tone, beneath the

politeness and affected sympathy of which indifference and even

irony could be discerned.



"Can one be well while suffering morally? Can one be calm in times

like these if one has any feeling?" said Anna Pavlovna. "You are

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staying the whole evening, I hope?"



"And the fete at the English ambassador's? Today is Wednesday. I

must put in an appearance there," said the prince. "My daughter is

coming for me to take me there."



"I thought today's fete had been canceled. I confess all these

festivities and fireworks are becoming wearisome."



"If they had known that you wished it, the entertainment would

have been put off," said the prince, who, like a wound-up clock, by

force of habit said things he did not even wish to be believed.



"Don't tease! Well, and what has been decided about Novosiltsev's

dispatch? You know everything."



"What can one say about it?" replied the prince in a cold,

listless tone. "What has been decided? They have decided that

Buonaparte has burnt his boats, and I believe that we are ready to

burn ours."



Prince Vasili always spoke languidly, like an actor repeating a

stale part. Anna Pavlovna Scherer on the contrary, despite her forty

years, overflowed with animation and impulsiveness. To be an

enthusiast had become her social vocation and, sometimes even when she

did not feel like it, she became enthusiastic in order not to

disappoint the expectations of those who knew her. The subdued smile

which, though it did not suit her faded features, always played

round her lips expressed, as in a spoiled child, a continual

consciousness of her charming defect, which she neither wished, nor

could, nor considered it necessary, to correct.



In the midst of a conversation on political matters Anna Pavlovna

burst out:



"Oh, don't speak to me of Austria. Perhaps I don't understand

things, but Austria never has wished, and does not wish, for war.

She is betraying us! Russia alone must save Europe. Our gracious

sovereign recognizes his high vocation and will be true to it. That is

the one thing I have faith in! Our good and wonderful sovereign has to

perform the noblest role on earth, and he is so virtuous and noble

that God will not forsake him. He will fulfill his vocation and

crush the hydra of revolution, which has become more terrible than

ever in the person of this murderer and villain! We alone must

avenge the blood of the just one.... Whom, I ask you, can we rely

on?... England with her commercial spirit will not and cannot

understand the Emperor Alexander's loftiness of soul. She has

refused to evacuate Malta. She wanted to find, and still seeks, some

secret motive in our actions. What answer did Novosiltsev get? None.

The English have not understood and cannot understand the

self-abnegation of our Emperor who wants nothing for himself, but only

desires the good of mankind. And what have they promised? Nothing! And

what little they have promised they will not perform! Prussia has

always declared that Buonaparte is invincible, and that all Europe

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is powerless before him.... And I don't believe a word that Hardenburg

says, or Haugwitz either. This famous Prussian neutrality is just a

trap. I have faith only in God and the lofty destiny of our adored

monarch. He will save Europe!"



She suddenly paused, smiling at her own impetuosity.



"I think," said the prince with a smile, "that if you had been

sent instead of our dear Wintzingerode you would have captured the

King of Prussia's consent by assault. You are so eloquent. Will you

give me a cup of tea?"



"In a moment. A propos," she added, becoming calm again, "I am

expecting two very interesting men tonight, le Vicomte de Mortemart,

who is connected with the Montmorencys through the Rohans, one of

the best French families. He is one of the genuine emigres, the good

ones. And also the Abbe Morio. Do you know that profound thinker? He

has been received by the Emperor. Had you heard?"



"I shall be delighted to meet them," said the prince. "But tell me,"

he added with studied carelessness as if it had only just occurred

to him, though the question he was about to ask was the chief motive

of his visit, "is it true that the Dowager Empress wants Baron Funke

to be appointed first secretary at Vienna? The baron by all accounts

is a poor creature."



Prince Vasili wished to obtain this post for his son, but others

were trying through the Dowager Empress Marya Fedorovna to secure it

for the baron.



Anna Pavlovna almost closed her eyes to indicate that neither she

nor anyone else had a right to criticize what the Empress desired or

was pleased with.



"Baron Funke has been recommended to the Dowager Empress by her

sister," was all she said, in a dry and mournful tone.



As she named the Empress, Anna Pavlovna's face suddenly assumed an

expression of profound and sincere devotion and respect mingled with

sadness, and this occurred every time she mentioned her illustrious

patroness. She added that Her Majesty had deigned to show Baron

Funke beaucoup d'estime, and again her face clouded over with sadness.



The prince was silent and looked indifferent. But, with the

womanly and courtierlike quickness and tact habitual to her, Anna

Pavlovna wished both to rebuke him (for daring to speak he had done of

a man recommended to the Empress) and at the same time to console him,

so she said:



"Now about your family. Do you know that since your daughter came

out everyone has been enraptured by her? They say she is amazingly

beautiful."



The prince bowed to signify his respect and gratitude.

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"I often think," she continued after a short pause, drawing nearer

to the prince and smiling amiably at him as if to show that

political and social topics were ended and the time had come for

intimate conversation--"I often think how unfairly sometimes the

joys of life are distributed. Why has fate given you two such splendid

children? I don't speak of Anatole, your youngest. I don't like

him," she added in a tone admitting of no rejoinder and raising her

eyebrows. "Two such charming children. And really you appreciate

them less than anyone, and so you don't deserve to have them."



And she smiled her ecstatic smile.



"I can't help it," said the prince. "Lavater would have said I

lack the bump of paternity."



"Don't joke; I mean to have a serious talk with you. Do you know I

am dissatisfied with your younger son? Between ourselves" (and her

face assumed its melancholy expression), "he was mentioned at Her

Majesty's and you were pitied...."



The prince answered nothing, but she looked at him significantly,

awaiting a reply. He frowned.



"What would you have me do?" he said at last. "You know I did all

a father could for their education, and they have both turned out

fools. Hippolyte is at least a quiet fool, but Anatole is an active

one. That is the only difference between them." He said this smiling

in a way more natural and animated than usual, so that the wrinkles

round his mouth very clearly revealed something unexpectedly coarse

and unpleasant.



"And why are children born to such men as you? If you were not a

father there would be nothing I could reproach you with," said Anna

Pavlovna, looking up pensively.



"I am your faithful slave and to you alone I can confess that my

children are the bane of my life. It is the cross I have to bear. That

is how I explain it to myself. It can't be helped!"



He said no more, but expressed his resignation to cruel fate by a

gesture. Anna Pavlovna meditated.



"Have you never thought of marrying your prodigal son Anatole?"

she asked. "They say old maids have a mania for matchmaking, and

though I don't feel that weakness in myself as yet, I know a little

person who is very unhappy with her father. She is a relation of

yours, Princess Mary Bolkonskaya."



Prince Vasili did not reply, though, with the quickness of memory

and perception befitting a man of the world, he indicated by a

movement of the head that he was considering this information.



"Do you know," he said at last, evidently unable to check the sad

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current of his thoughts, "that Anatole is costing me forty thousand

rubles a year? And," he went on after a pause, "what will it be in

five years, if he goes on like this?" Presently he added: "That's what

we fathers have to put up with.... Is this princess of yours rich?"



"Her father is very rich and stingy. He lives in the country. He

is the well-known Prince Bolkonski who had to retire from the army

under the late Emperor, and was nicknamed 'the King of Prussia.' He is

very clever but eccentric, and a bore. The poor girl is very

unhappy. She has a brother; I think you know him, he married Lise

Meinen lately. He is an aide-de-camp of Kutuzov's and will be here

tonight."



"Listen, dear Annette," said the prince, suddenly taking Anna

Pavlovna's hand and for some reason drawing it downwards. "Arrange

that affair for me and I shall always be your most devoted slave-

slafe with an f, as a village elder of mine writes in his reports.

She is rich and of good family and that's all I want."



And with the familiarity and easy grace peculiar to him, he raised

the maid of honor's hand to his lips, kissed it, and swung it to and

fro as he lay back in his armchair, looking in another direction.



"Attendez," said Anna Pavlovna, reflecting, "I'll speak to Lise,

young Bolkonski's wife, this very evening, and perhaps the thing can

be arranged. It shall be on your family's behalf that I'll start my

apprenticeship as old maid."









CHAPTER II





Anna Pavlovna's drawing room was gradually filling. The highest

Petersburg society was assembled there: people differing widely in age

and character but alike in the social circle to which they belonged.

Prince Vasili's daughter, the beautiful Helene, came to take her

father to the ambassador's entertainment; she wore a ball dress and

her badge as maid of honor. The youthful little Princess

Bolkonskaya, known as la femme la plus seduisante de Petersbourg,* was

also there. She had been married during the previous winter, and being

pregnant did not go to any large gatherings, but only to small

receptions. Prince Vasili's son, Hippolyte, had come with Mortemart,

whom he introduced. The Abbe Morio and many others had also come.





*The most fascinating woman in Petersburg.





To each new arrival Anna Pavlovna said, "You have not yet seen my

aunt," or "You do not know my aunt?" and very gravely conducted him or

her to a little old lady, wearing large bows of ribbon in her cap, who

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had come sailing in from another room as soon as the guests began to

arrive; and slowly turning her eyes from the visitor to her aunt, Anna

Pavlovna mentioned each one's name and then left them.



Each visitor performed the ceremony of greeting this old aunt whom

not one of them knew, not one of them wanted to know, and not one of

them cared about; Anna Pavlovna observed these greetings with mournful

and solemn interest and silent approval. The aunt spoke to each of

them in the same words, about their health and her own, and the health

of Her Majesty, "who, thank God, was better today." And each

visitor, though politeness prevented his showing impatience, left

the old woman with a sense of relief at having performed a vexatious

duty and did not return to her the whole evening.



The young Princess Bolkonskaya had brought some work in a

gold-embroidered velvet bag. Her pretty little upper lip, on which a

delicate dark down was just perceptible, was too short for her

teeth, but it lifted all the more sweetly, and was especially charming

when she occasionally drew it down to meet the lower lip. As is always

the case with a thoroughly attractive woman, her defect--the shortness

of her upper lip and her half-open mouth--seemed to be her own special

and peculiar form of beauty. Everyone brightened at the sight of

this pretty young woman, so soon to become a mother, so full of life

and health, and carrying her burden so lightly. Old men and dull

dispirited young ones who looked at her, after being in her company

and talking to her a little while, felt as if they too were

becoming, like her, full of life and health. All who talked to her,

and at each word saw her bright smile and the constant gleam of her

white teeth, thought that they were in a specially amiable mood that

day.



The little princess went round the table with quick, short,

swaying steps, her workbag on her arm, and gaily spreading out her

dress sat down on a sofa near the silver samovar, as if all she was

doing was a pleasure to herself and to all around her. "I have brought

my work," said she in French, displaying her bag and addressing all

present. "Mind, Annette, I hope you have not played a wicked trick

on me," she added, turning to her hostess. "You wrote that it was to

be quite a small reception, and just see how badly I am dressed."

And she spread out her arms to show her short-waisted, lace-trimmed,

dainty gray dress, girdled with a broad ribbon just below the breast.



"Soyez tranquille, Lise, you will always be prettier than anyone

else," replied Anna Pavlovna.



"You know," said the princess in the same tone of voice and still in

French, turning to a general, "my husband is deserting me? He is going

to get himself killed. Tell me what this wretched war is for?" she

added, addressing Prince Vasili, and without waiting for an answer she

turned to speak to his daughter, the beautiful Helene.



"What a delightful woman this little princess is!" said Prince

Vasili to Anna Pavlovna.



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One of the next arrivals was a stout, heavily built young man with

close-cropped hair, spectacles, the light-colored breeches fashionable

at that time, a very high ruffle, and a brown dress coat. This stout

young man was an illegitimate son of Count Bezukhov, a well-known

grandee of Catherine's time who now lay dying in Moscow. The young man

had not yet entered either the military or civil service, as he had

only just returned from abroad where he had been educated, and this

was his first appearance in society. Anna Pavlovna greeted him with

the nod she accorded to the lowest hierarchy in her drawing room.

But in spite of this lowest-grade greeting, a look of anxiety and

fear, as at the sight of something too large and unsuited to the

place, came over her face when she saw Pierre enter. Though he was

certainly rather bigger than the other men in the room, her anxiety

could only have reference to the clever though shy, but observant

and natural, expression which distinguished him from everyone else

in that drawing room.



"It is very good of you, Monsieur Pierre, to come and visit a poor

invalid," said Anna Pavlovna, exchanging an alarmed glance with her

aunt as she conducted him to her.



Pierre murmured something unintelligible, and continued to look

round as if in search of something. On his way to the aunt he bowed to

the little princess with a pleased smile, as to an intimate

acquaintance.



Anna Pavlovna's alarm was justified, for Pierre turned away from the

aunt without waiting to hear her speech about Her Majesty's health.

Anna Pavlovna in dismay detained him with the words: "Do you know

the Abbe Morio? He is a most interesting man."



"Yes, I have heard of his scheme for perpetual peace, and it is very

interesting but hardly feasible."



"You think so?" rejoined Anna Pavlovna in order to say something and

get away to attend to her duties as hostess. But Pierre now

committed a reverse act of impoliteness. First he had left a lady

before she had finished speaking to him, and now he continued to speak

to another who wished to get away. With his head bent, and his big

feet spread apart, he began explaining his reasons for thinking the

abbe's plan chimerical.



"We will talk of it later," said Anna Pavlovna with a smile.



And having got rid of this young man who did not know how to behave,

she resumed her duties as hostess and continued to listen and watch,

ready to help at any point where the conversation might happen to

flag. As the foreman of a spinning mill, when he has set the hands

to work, goes round and notices here a spindle that has stopped or

there one that creaks or makes more noise than it should, and

hastens to check the machine or set it in proper motion, so Anna

Pavlovna moved about her drawing room, approaching now a silent, now a

too-noisy group, and by a word or slight rearrangement kept the

conversational machine in steady, proper, and regular motion. But amid

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these cares her anxiety about Pierre was evident. She kept an

anxious watch on him when he approached the group round Mortemart to

listen to what was being said there, and again when he passed to

another group whose center was the abbe.



Pierre had been educated abroad, and this reception at Anna

Pavlovna's was the first he had attended in Russia. He knew that all

the intellectual lights of Petersburg were gathered there and, like

a child in a toyshop, did not know which way to look, afraid of

missing any clever conversation that was to be heard. Seeing the

self-confident and refined expression on the faces of those present he

was always expecting to hear something very profound. At last he

came up to Morio. Here the conversation seemed interesting and he

stood waiting for an opportunity to express his own views, as young

people are fond of doing.









CHAPTER III





Anna Pavlovna's reception was in full swing. The spindles hummed

steadily and ceaselessly on all sides. With the exception of the aunt,

beside whom sat only one elderly lady, who with her thin careworn face

was rather out of place in this brilliant society, the whole company

had settled into three groups. One, chiefly masculine, had formed

round the abbe. Another, of young people, was grouped round the

beautiful Princess Helene, Prince Vasili's daughter, and the little

Princess Bolkonskaya, very pretty and rosy, though rather too plump

for her age. The third group was gathered round Mortemart and Anna

Pavlovna.



The vicomte was a nice-looking young man with soft features and

polished manners, who evidently considered himself a celebrity but out

of politeness modestly placed himself at the disposal of the circle in

which he found himself. Anna Pavlovna was obviously serving him up

as a treat to her guests. As a clever maitre d'hotel serves up as a

specially choice delicacy a piece of meat that no one who had seen

it in the kitchen would have cared to eat, so Anna Pavlovna served

up to her guests, first the vicomte and then the abbe, as peculiarly

choice morsels. The group about Mortemart immediately began discussing

the murder of the Duc d'Enghien. The vicomte said that the Duc

d'Enghien had perished by his own magnanimity, and that there were

particular reasons for Buonaparte's hatred of him.



"Ah, yes! Do tell us all about it, Vicomte," said Anna Pavlovna,

with a pleasant feeling that there was something a la Louis XV in

the sound of that sentence: "Contez nous cela, Vicomte."



The vicomte bowed and smiled courteously in token of his willingness

to comply. Anna Pavlovna arranged a group round him, inviting everyone

to listen to his tale.



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"The vicomte knew the duc personally," whispered Anna Pavlovna to of

the guests. "The vicomte is a wonderful raconteur," said she to

another. "How evidently he belongs to the best society," said she to a

third; and the vicomte was served up to the company in the choicest

and most advantageous style, like a well-garnished joint of roast beef

on a hot dish.



The vicomte wished to begin his story and gave a subtle smile.



"Come over here, Helene, dear," said Anna Pavlovna to the

beautiful young princess who was sitting some way off, the center of

another group.



The princess smiled. She rose with the same unchanging smile with

which she had first entered the room--the smile of a perfectly

beautiful woman. With a slight rustle of her white dress trimmed

with moss and ivy, with a gleam of white shoulders, glossy hair, and

sparkling diamonds, she passed between the men who made way for her,

not looking at any of them but smiling on all, as if graciously

allowing each the privilege of admiring her beautiful figure and

shapely shoulders, back, and bosom--which in the fashion of those days

were very much exposed--and she seemed to bring the glamour of a

ballroom with her as she moved toward Anna Pavlovna. Helene was so

lovely that not only did she not show any trace of coquetry, but on

the contrary she even appeared shy of her unquestionable and all too

victorious beauty. She seemed to wish, but to be unable, to diminish

its effect.



"How lovely!" said everyone who saw her; and the vicomte lifted

his shoulders and dropped his eyes as if startled by something

extraordinary when she took her seat opposite and beamed upon him also

with her unchanging smile.



"Madame, I doubt my ability before such an audience," said he,

smilingly inclining his head.



The princess rested her bare round arm on a little table and

considered a reply unnecessary. She smilingly waited. All the time the

story was being told she sat upright, glancing now at her beautiful

round arm, altered in shape by its pressure on the table, now at her

still more beautiful bosom, on which she readjusted a diamond

necklace. From time to time she smoothed the folds of her dress, and

whenever the story produced an effect she glanced at Anna Pavlovna, at

once adopted just the expression she saw on the maid of honor's

face, and again relapsed into her radiant smile.



The little princess had also left the tea table and followed Helene.



"Wait a moment, I'll get my work.... Now then, what are you thinking

of?" she went on, turning to Prince Hippolyte. "Fetch me my workbag."



There was a general movement as the princess, smiling and talking

merrily to everyone at once, sat down and gaily arranged herself in

her seat.

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"Now I am all right," she said, and asking the vicomte to begin, she

took up her work.



Prince Hippolyte, having brought the workbag, joined the circle

and moving a chair close to hers seated himself beside her.



Le charmant Hippolyte was surprising by his extraordinary

resemblance to his beautiful sister, but yet more by the fact that

in spite of this resemblance he was exceedingly ugly. His features

were like his sister's, but while in her case everything was lit up by

a joyous, self-satisfied, youthful, and constant smile of animation,

and by the wonderful classic beauty of her figure, his face on the

contrary was dulled by imbecility and a constant expression of

sullen self-confidence, while his body was thin and weak. His eyes,

nose, and mouth all seemed puckered into a vacant, wearied grimace,

and his arms and legs always fell into unnatural positions.



"It's not going to be a ghost story?" said he, sitting down beside

the princess and hastily adjusting his lorgnette, as if without this

instrument he could not begin to speak.



"Why no, my dear fellow," said the astonished narrator, shrugging

his shoulders.



"Because I hate ghost stories," said Prince Hippolyte in a tone

which showed that he only understood the meaning of his words after he

had uttered them.



He spoke with such self-confidence that his hearers could not be

sure whether what he said was very witty or very stupid. He was

dressed in a dark-green dress coat, knee breeches of the color of

cuisse de nymphe effrayee, as he called it, shoes, and silk stockings.



The vicomte told his tale very neatly. It was an anecdote, then

current, to the effect that the Duc d'Enghien had gone secretly to

Paris to visit Mademoiselle George; that at her house he came upon

Bonaparte, who also enjoyed the famous actress' favors, and that in

his presence Napoleon happened to fall into one of the fainting fits

to which he was subject, and was thus at the duc's mercy. The latter

spared him, and this magnanimity Bonaparte subsequently repaid by

death.



The story was very pretty and interesting, especially at the point

where the rivals suddenly recognized one another; and the ladies

looked agitated.



"Charming!" said Anna Pavlovna with an inquiring glance at the

little princess.



"Charming!" whispered the little princess, sticking the needle

into her work as if to testify that the interest and fascination of

the story prevented her from going on with it.



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The vicomte appreciated this silent praise and smiling gratefully

prepared to continue, but just then Anna Pavlovna, who had kept a

watchful eye on the young man who so alarmed her, noticed that he

was talking too loudly and vehemently with the abbe, so she hurried to

the rescue. Pierre had managed to start a conversation with the abbe

about the balance of power, and the latter, evidently interested by

the young man's simple-minded eagerness, was explaining his pet

theory. Both were talking and listening too eagerly and too naturally,

which was why Anna Pavlovna disapproved.



"The means are... the balance of power in Europe and the rights of

the people," the abbe was saying. "It is only necessary for one

powerful nation like Russia--barbaric as she is said to be--to place

herself disinterestedly at the head of an alliance having for its

object the maintenance of the balance of power of Europe, and it would

save the world!"



"But how are you to get that balance?" Pierre was beginning.



At that moment Anna Pavlovna came up and, looking severely at

Pierre, asked the Italian how he stood Russian climate. The

Italian's face instantly changed and assumed an offensively

affected, sugary expression, evidently habitual to him when conversing

with women.



"I am so enchanted by the brilliancy of the wit and culture of the

society, more especially of the feminine society, in which I have

had the honor of being received, that I have not yet had time to think

of the climate," said he.



Not letting the abbe and Pierre escape, Anna Pavlovna, the more

conveniently to keep them under observation, brought them into the

larger circle.









CHAPTER IV





Just then another visitor entered the drawing room: Prince Andrew

Bolkonski, the little princess' husband. He was a very handsome

young man, of medium height, with firm, clearcut features.

Everything about him, from his weary, bored expression to his quiet,

measured step, offered a most striking contrast to his quiet, little

wife. It was evident that he not only knew everyone in the drawing

room, but had found them to be so tiresome that it wearied him to look

at or listen to them. And among all these faces that he found so

tedious, none seemed to bore him so much as that of his pretty wife.

He turned away from her with a grimace that distorted his handsome

face, kissed Anna Pavlovna's hand, and screwing up his eyes scanned

the whole company.



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"You are off to the war, Prince?" said Anna Pavlovna.



"General Kutuzov," said Bolkonski, speaking French and stressing the

last syllable of the general's name like a Frenchman, "has been

pleased to take me as an aide-de-camp...."



"And Lise, your wife?"



"She will go to the country."



"Are you not ashamed to deprive us of your charming wife?"



"Andre," said his wife, addressing her husband in the same

coquettish manner in which she spoke to other men, "the vicomte has

been telling us such a tale about Mademoiselle George and Buonaparte!"



Prince Andrew screwed up his eyes and turned away. Pierre, who

from the moment Prince Andrew entered the room had watched him with

glad, affectionate eyes, now came up and took his arm. Before he

looked round Prince Andrew frowned again, expressing his annoyance

with whoever was touching his arm, but when he saw Pierre's beaming

face he gave him an unexpectedly kind and pleasant smile.



"There now!... So you, too, are in the great world?" said he to

Pierre.



"I knew you would be here," replied Pierre. "I will come to supper

with you. May I?" he added in a low voice so as not to disturb the

vicomte who was continuing his story.



"No, impossible!" said Prince Andrew, laughing and pressing Pierre's

hand to show that there was no need to ask the question. He wished

to say something more, but at that moment Prince Vasili and his

daughter got up to go and the two young men rose to let them pass.



"You must excuse me, dear Vicomte," said Prince Vasili to the

Frenchman, holding him down by the sleeve in a friendly way to prevent

his rising. "This unfortunate fete at the ambassador's deprives me

of a pleasure, and obliges me to interrupt you. I am very sorry to

leave your enchanting party," said he, turning to Anna Pavlovna.



His daughter, Princess Helene, passed between the chairs, lightly

holding up the folds of her dress, and the smile shone still more

radiantly on her beautiful face. Pierre gazed at her with rapturous,

almost frightened, eyes as she passed him.



"Very lovely," said Prince Andrew.



"Very," said Pierre.



In passing Prince Vasili seized Pierre's hand and said to Anna

Pavlovna: "Educate this bear for me! He has been staying with me a

whole month and this is the first time I have seen him in society.

Nothing is so necessary for a young man as the society of clever

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women."





Anna Pavlovna smiled and promised to take Pierre in hand. She knew

his father to be a connection of Prince Vasili's. The elderly lady who

had been sitting with the old aunt rose hurriedly and overtook

Prince Vasili in the anteroom. All the affectation of interest she had

assumed had left her kindly and tearworn face and it now expressed

only anxiety and fear.



"How about my son Boris, Prince?" said she, hurrying after him

into the anteroom. "I can't remain any longer in Petersburg. Tell me

what news I may take back to my poor boy."



Although Prince Vasili listened reluctantly and not very politely to

the elderly lady, even betraying some impatience, she gave him an

ingratiating and appealing smile, and took his hand that he might

not go away.



"What would it cost you to say a word to the Emperor, and then he

would be transferred to the Guards at once?" said she.



"Believe me, Princess, I am ready to do all I can," answered

Prince Vasili, "but it is difficult for me to ask the Emperor. I

should advise you to appeal to Rumyantsev through Prince Golitsyn.

That would be the best way."



The elderly lady was a Princess Drubetskaya, belonging to one of the

best families in Russia, but she was poor, and having long been out of

society had lost her former influential connections. She had now

come to Petersburg to procure an appointment in the Guards for her

only son. It was, in fact, solely to meet Prince Vasili that she had

obtained an invitation to Anna Pavlovna's reception and had sat

listening to the vicomte's story. Prince Vasili's words frightened

her, an embittered look clouded her once handsome face, but only for a

moment; then she smiled again and clutched Prince Vasili's arm more

tightly.



"Listen to me, Prince," said she. "I have never yet asked you for

anything and I never will again, nor have I ever reminded you of my

father's friendship for you; but now I entreat you for God's sake to

do this for my son--and I shall always regard you as a benefactor,"

she added hurriedly. "No, don't be angry, but promise! I have asked

Golitsyn and he has refused. Be the kindhearted man you always

were," she said, trying to smile though tears were in her eyes.



"Papa, we shall be late," said Princess Helene, turning her

beautiful head and looking over her classically molded shoulder as she

stood waiting by the door.



Influence in society, however, is a capital which has to be

economized if it is to last. Prince Vasili knew this, and having

once realized that if he asked on behalf of all who begged of him,

he would soon be unable to ask for himself, he became chary of using

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his influence. But in Princess Drubetskaya's case he felt, after her

second appeal, something like qualms of conscience. She had reminded

him of what was quite true; he had been indebted to her father for the

first steps in his career. Moreover, he could see by her manners

that she was one of those women--mostly mothers--who, having once made

up their minds, will not rest until they have gained their end, and

are prepared if necessary to go on insisting day after day and hour

after hour, and even to make scenes. This last consideration moved

him.



"My dear Anna Mikhaylovna," said he with his usual familiarity and

weariness of tone, "it is almost impossible for me to do what you ask;

but to prove my devotion to you and how I respect your father's

memory, I will do the impossible--your son shall be transferred to the

Guards. Here is my hand on it. Are you satisfied?"



"My dear benefactor! This is what I expected from you--I knew your

kindness!" He turned to go.



"Wait--just a word! When he has been transferred to the Guards..."

she faltered. "You are on good terms with Michael Ilarionovich

Kutuzov... recommend Boris to him as adjutant! Then I shall be at

rest, and then..."



Prince Vasili smiled.



"No, I won't promise that. You don't know how Kutuzov is pestered

since his appointment as Commander in Chief. He told me himself that

all the Moscow ladies have conspired to give him all their sons as

adjutants."



"No, but do promise! I won't let you go! My dear benefactor..."



"Papa," said his beautiful daughter in the same tone as before,

"we shall be late."



"Well, au revoir! Good-by! You hear her?"



"Then tomorrow you will speak to the Emperor?"



"Certainly; but about Kutuzov, I don't promise."



"Do promise, do promise, Vasili!" cried Anna Mikhaylovna as he went,

with the smile of a coquettish girl, which at one time probably came

naturally to her, but was now very ill-suited to her careworn face.



Apparently she had forgotten her age and by force of habit

employed all the old feminine arts. But as soon as the prince had gone

her face resumed its former cold, artificial expression. She

returned to the group where the vicomte was still talking, and again

pretended to listen, while waiting till it would be time to leave. Her

task was accomplished.





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CHAPTER V





"And what do you think of this latest comedy, the coronation at

Milan?" asked Anna Pavlovna, "and of the comedy of the people of Genoa

and Lucca laying their petitions before Monsieur Buonaparte, and

Monsieur Buonaparte sitting on a throne and granting the petitions

of the nations? Adorable! It is enough to make one's head whirl! It is

as if the whole world had gone crazy."



Prince Andrew looked Anna Pavlovna straight in the face with a

sarcastic smile.



"'Dieu me la donne, gare a qui la touche!'* They say he was very

fine when he said that," he remarked, repeating the words in

Italian: "'Dio mi l'ha dato. Guai a chi la tocchi!'"





*God has given it to me, let him who touches it beware!





"I hope this will prove the last drop that will make the glass run

over," Anna Pavlovna continued. "The sovereigns will not be able to

endure this man who is a menace to everything."



"The sovereigns? I do not speak of Russia," said the vicomte, polite

but hopeless: "The sovereigns, madame... What have they done for Louis

XVII, for the Queen, or for Madame Elizabeth? Nothing!" and he

became more animated. "And believe me, they are reaping the reward

of their betrayal of the Bourbon cause. The sovereigns! Why, they

are sending ambassadors to compliment the usurper."



And sighing disdainfully, he again changed his position.



Prince Hippolyte, who had been gazing at the vicomte for some time

through his lorgnette, suddenly turned completely round toward the

little princess, and having asked for a needle began tracing the Conde

coat of arms on the table. He explained this to her with as much

gravity as if she had asked him to do it.



"Baton de gueules, engrele de gueules d' azur--maison Conde," said

he.



The princess listened, smiling.



"If Buonaparte remains on the throne of France a year longer," the

vicomte continued, with the air of a man who, in a matter with which

he is better acquainted than anyone else, does not listen to others

but follows the current of his own thoughts, "things will have gone

too far. By intrigues, violence, exile, and executions, French

society--I mean good French society--will have been forever destroyed,

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and then..."



He shrugged his shoulders and spread out his hands. Pierre wished to

make a remark, for the conversation interested him, but Anna Pavlovna,

who had him under observation, interrupted:



"The Emperor Alexander," said she, with the melancholy which

always accompanied any reference of hers to the Imperial family,

"has declared that he will leave it to the French people themselves to

choose their own form of government; and I believe that once free from

the usurper, the whole nation will certainly throw itself into the

arms of its rightful king," she concluded, trying to be amiable to the

royalist emigrant.



"That is doubtful," said Prince Andrew. "Monsieur le Vicomte quite

rightly supposes that matters have already gone too far. I think it

will be difficult to return to the old regime."



"From what I have heard," said Pierre, blushing and breaking into

the conversation, "almost all the aristocracy has already gone over to

Bonaparte's side."



"It is the Buonapartists who say that," replied the vicomte

without looking at Pierre. "At the present time it is difficult to

know the real state of French public opinion."



"Bonaparte has said so," remarked Prince Andrew with a sarcastic

smile.



It was evident that he did not like the vicomte and was aiming his

remarks at him, though without looking at him.



"'I showed them the path to glory, but they did not follow it,'"

Prince Andrew continued after a short silence, again quoting

Napoleon's words. "'I opened my antechambers and they crowded in.' I

do not know how far he was justified in saying so."



"Not in the least," replied the vicomte. "After the murder of the

duc even the most partial ceased to regard him as a hero. If to some

people," he went on, turning to Anna Pavlovna, "he ever was a hero,

after the murder of the duc there was one martyr more in heaven and

one hero less on earth."



Before Anna Pavlovna and the others had time to smile their

appreciation of the vicomte's epigram, Pierre again broke into the

conversation, and though Anna Pavlovna felt sure he would say

something inappropriate, she was unable to stop him.



"The execution of the Duc d'Enghien," declared Monsieur Pierre, "was

a political necessity, and it seems to me that Napoleon showed

greatness of soul by not fearing to take on himself the whole

responsibility of that deed."



"Dieu! Mon Dieu!" muttered Anna Pavlovna in a terrified whisper.

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"What, Monsieur Pierre... Do you consider that assassination shows

greatness of soul?" said the little princess, smiling and drawing

her work nearer to her.



"Oh! Oh!" exclaimed several voices.



"Capital!" said Prince Hippolyte in English, and began slapping

his knee with the palm of his hand.



The vicomte merely shrugged his shoulders. Pierre looked solemnly at

his audience over his spectacles and continued.



"I say so," he continued desperately, "because the Bourbons fled

from the Revolution leaving the people to anarchy, and Napoleon

alone understood the Revolution and quelled it, and so for the general

good, he could not stop short for the sake of one man's life."



"Won't you come over to the other table?" suggested Anna Pavlovna.



But Pierre continued his speech without heeding her.



"No," cried he, becoming more and more eager, "Napoleon is great

because he rose superior to the Revolution, suppressed its abuses,

preserved all that was good in it--equality of citizenship and freedom

of speech and of the press--and only for that reason did he obtain

power."



"Yes, if having obtained power, without availing himself of it to

commit murder he had restored it to the rightful king, I should have

called him a great man," remarked the vicomte.



"He could not do that. The people only gave him power that he

might rid them of the Bourbons and because they saw that he was a

great man. The Revolution was a grand thing!" continued Monsieur

Pierre, betraying by this desperate and provocative proposition his

extreme youth and his wish to express all that was in his mind.



"What? Revolution and regicide a grand thing?... Well, after that...

But won't you come to this other table?" repeated Anna Pavlovna.



"Rousseau's Contrat social," said the vicomte with a tolerant smile.



"I am not speaking of regicide, I am speaking about ideas."



"Yes: ideas of robbery, murder, and regicide," again interjected

an ironical voice.



"Those were extremes, no doubt, but they are not what is most

important. What is important are the rights of man, emancipation

from prejudices, and equality of citizenship, and all these ideas

Napoleon has retained in full force."



"Liberty and equality," said the vicomte contemptuously, as if at

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last deciding seriously to prove to this youth how foolish his words

were, "high-sounding words which have long been discredited. Who

does not love liberty and equality? Even our Saviour preached

liberty and equality. Have people since the Revolution become happier?

On the contrary. We wanted liberty, but Buonaparte has destroyed it."



Prince Andrew kept looking with an amused smile from Pierre to the

vicomte and from the vicomte to their hostess. In the first moment

of Pierre's outburst Anna Pavlovna, despite her social experience, was

horror-struck. But when she saw that Pierre's sacrilegious words had

not exasperated the vicomte, and had convinced herself that it was

impossible to stop him, she rallied her forces and joined the

vicomte in a vigorous attack on the orator.



"But, my dear Monsieur Pierre," said she, "how do you explain the

fact of a great man executing a duc--or even an ordinary man who--is

innocent and untried?"



"I should like," said the vicomte, "to ask how monsieur explains the

18th Brumaire; was not that an imposture? It was a swindle, and not at

all like the conduct of a great man!"



"And the prisoners he killed in Africa? That was horrible!" said the

little princess, shrugging her shoulders.



"He's a low fellow, say what you will," remarked Prince Hippolyte.



Pierre, not knowing whom to answer, looked at them all and smiled.

His smile was unlike the half-smile of other people. When he smiled,

his grave, even rather gloomy, look was instantaneously replaced by

another--a childlike, kindly, even rather silly look, which seemed

to ask forgiveness.



The vicomte who was meeting him for the first time saw clearly

that this young Jacobin was not so terrible as his words suggested.

All were silent.



"How do you expect him to answer you all at once?" said Prince

Andrew. "Besides, in the actions of a statesman one has to distinguish

between his acts as a private person, as a general, and as an emperor.

So it seems to me."



"Yes, yes, of course!" Pierre chimed in, pleased at the arrival of

this reinforcement.



"One must admit," continued Prince Andrew, "that Napoleon as a man

was great on the bridge of Arcola, and in the hospital at Jaffa

where he gave his hand to the plague-stricken; but... but there are

other acts which it is difficult to justify."



Prince Andrew, who had evidently wished to tone down the awkwardness

of Pierre's remarks, rose and made a sign to his wife that it was time

to go.



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Suddenly Prince Hippolyte started up making signs to everyone to

attend, and asking them all to be seated began:



"I was told a charming Moscow story today and must treat you to

it. Excuse me, Vicomte--I must tell it in Russian or the point will be

lost...." And Prince Hippolyte began to tell his story in such Russian

as a Frenchman would speak after spending about a year in Russia.

Everyone waited, so emphatically and eagerly did he demand their

attention to his story.



"There is in Moscow a lady, une dame, and she is very stingy. She

must have two footmen behind her carriage, and very big ones. That was

her taste. And she had a lady's maid, also big. She said..."



Here Prince Hippolyte paused, evidently collecting his ideas with

difficulty.



"She said... Oh yes! She said, 'Girl,' to the maid, 'put on a

livery, get up behind the carriage, and come with me while I make some

calls.'"



Here Prince Hippolyte spluttered and burst out laughing long

before his audience, which produced an effect unfavorable to the

narrator. Several persons, among them the elderly lady and Anna

Pavlovna, did however smile.



"She went. Suddenly there was a great wind. The girl lost her hat

and her long hair came down...." Here he could contain himself no

longer and went on, between gasps of laughter: "And the whole world

knew...."



And so the anecdote ended. Though it was unintelligible why he had

told it, or why it had to be told in Russian, still Anna Pavlovna

and the others appreciated Prince Hippolyte's social tact in so

agreeably ending Pierre's unpleasant and unamiable outburst. After the

anecdote the conversation broke up into insignificant small talk about

the last and next balls, about theatricals, and who would meet whom,

and when and where.









CHAPTER VI





Having thanked Anna Pavlovna for her charming soiree, the guests

began to take their leave.



Pierre was ungainly. Stout, about the average height, broad, with

huge red hands; he did not know, as the saying is, how to enter a

drawing room and still less how to leave one; that is, how to say

something particularly agreeable before going away. Besides this he

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was absent-minded. When he rose to go, he took up instead of his

own, the general's three-cornered hat, and held it, pulling at the

plume, till the general asked him to restore it. All his

absent-mindedness and inability to enter a room and converse in it

was, however, redeemed by his kindly, simple, and modest expression.

Anna Pavlovna turned toward him and, with a Christian mildness that

expressed forgiveness of his indiscretion, nodded and said: "I hope to

see you again, but I also hope you will change your opinions, my

dear Monsieur Pierre."



When she said this, he did not reply and only bowed, but again

everybody saw his smile, which said nothing, unless perhaps, "Opinions

are opinions, but you see what a capital, good-natured fellow I am."

And everyone, including Anna Pavlovna, felt this.



Prince Andrew had gone out into the hall, and, turning his shoulders

to the footman who was helping him on with his cloak, listened

indifferently to his wife's chatter with Prince Hippolyte who had also

come into the hall. Prince Hippolyte stood close to the pretty,

pregnant princess, and stared fixedly at her through his eyeglass.



"Go in, Annette, or you will catch cold," said the little

princess, taking leave of Anna Pavlovna. "It is settled," she added in

a low voice.



Anna Pavlovna had already managed to speak to Lise about the match

she contemplated between Anatole and the little princess'

sister-in-law.



"I rely on you, my dear," said Anna Pavlovna, also in a low tone.

"Write to her and let me know how her father looks at the matter. Au

revoir!"--and she left the hall.



Prince Hippolyte approached the little princess and, bending his

face close to her, began to whisper something.



Two footmen, the princess' and his own, stood holding a shawl and

a cloak, waiting for the conversation to finish. They listened to

the French sentences which to them were meaningless, with an air of

understanding but not wishing to appear to do so. The princess as

usual spoke smilingly and listened with a laugh.



"I am very glad I did not go to the ambassador's," said Prince

Hippolyte "-so dull-. It has been a delightful evening, has it not?

Delightful!"



"They say the ball will be very good," replied the princess, drawing

up her downy little lip. "All the pretty women in society will be

there."



"Not all, for you will not be there; not all," said Prince Hippolyte

smiling joyfully; and snatching the shawl from the footman, whom he

even pushed aside, he began wrapping it round the princess. Either

from awkwardness or intentionally (no one could have said which) after

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the shawl had been adjusted he kept his arm around her for a long

time, as though embracing her.



Still smiling, she gracefully moved away, turning and glancing at

her husband. Prince Andrew's eyes were closed, so weary and sleepy did

he seem.



"Are you ready?" he asked his wife, looking past her.



Prince Hippolyte hurriedly put on his cloak, which in the latest

fashion reached to his very heels, and, stumbling in it, ran out

into the porch following the princess, whom a footman was helping into

the carriage.



"Princesse, au revoir," cried he, stumbling with his tongue as

well as with his feet.



The princess, picking up her dress, was taking her seat in the

dark carriage, her husband was adjusting his saber; Prince

Hippolyte, under pretense of helping, was in everyone's way.



"Allow me, sir," said Prince Andrew in Russian in a cold,

disagreeable tone to Prince Hippolyte who was blocking his path.



"I am expecting you, Pierre," said the same voice, but gently and

affectionately.



The postilion started, the carriage wheels rattled. Prince Hippolyte

laughed spasmodically as he stood in the porch waiting for the vicomte

whom he had promised to take home.



"Well, mon cher," said the vicomte, having seated himself beside

Hippolyte in the carriage, "your little princess is very nice, very

nice indeed, quite French," and he kissed the tips of his fingers.

Hippolyte burst out laughing.



"Do you know, you are a terrible chap for all your innocent airs,"

continued the vicomte. "I pity the poor husband, that little officer

who gives himself the airs of a monarch."



Hippolyte spluttered again, and amid his laughter said, "And you

were saying that the Russian ladies are not equal to the French? One

has to know how to deal with them."





Pierre reaching the house first went into Prince Andrew's study like

one quite at home, and from habit immediately lay down on the sofa,

took from the shelf the first book that came to his hand (it was

Caesar's Commentaries), and resting on his elbow, began reading it

in the middle.



"What have you done to Mlle Scherer? She will be quite ill now,"

said Prince Andrew, as he entered the study, rubbing his small white

hands.

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Pierre turned his whole body, making the sofa creak. He lifted his

eager face to Prince Andrew, smiled, and waved his hand.



"That abbe is very interesting but he does not see the thing in

the right light.... In my opinion perpetual peace is possible but--I

do not know how to express it... not by a balance of political

power...."



It was evident that Prince Andrew was not interested in such

abstract conversation.



"One can't everywhere say all one thinks, mon cher. Well, have you

at last decided on anything? Are you going to be a guardsman or a

diplomatist?" asked Prince Andrew after a momentary silence.



Pierre sat up on the sofa, with his legs tucked under him.



"Really, I don't yet know. I don't like either the one or the

other."



"But you must decide on something! Your father expects it."



Pierre at the age of ten had been sent abroad with an abbe as tutor,

and had remained away till he was twenty. When he returned to Moscow

his father dismissed the abbe and said to the young man, "Now go to

Petersburg, look round, and choose your profession. I will agree to

anything. Here is a letter to Prince Vasili, and here is money.

Write to me all about it, and I will help you in everything." Pierre

had already been choosing a career for three months, and had not

decided on anything. It was about this choice that Prince Andrew was

speaking. Pierre rubbed his forehead.



"But he must be a Freemason," said he, referring to the abbe whom he

had met that evening.



"That is all nonsense." Prince Andrew again interrupted him, "let us

talk business. Have you been to the Horse Guards?"



"No, I have not; but this is what I have been thinking and wanted to

tell you. There is a war now against Napoleon. If it were a war for

freedom I could understand it and should be the first to enter the

army; but to help England and Austria against the greatest man in

the world is not right."



Prince Andrew only shrugged his shoulders at Pierre's childish

words. He put on the air of one who finds it impossible to reply to

such nonsense, but it would in fact have been difficult to give any

other answer than the one Prince Andrew gave to this naive question.



"If no one fought except on his own conviction, there would be no

wars," he said.



"And that would be splendid," said Pierre.

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Prince Andrew smiled ironically.



"Very likely it would be splendid, but it will never come about..."



"Well, why are you going to the war?" asked Pierre.



"What for? I don't know. I must. Besides that I am going..." He

paused. "I am going because the life I am leading here does not suit

me!"









CHAPTER VII





The rustle of a woman's dress was heard in the next room. Prince

Andrew shook himself as if waking up, and his face assumed the look it

had had in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room. Pierre removed his feet

from the sofa. The princess came in. She had changed her gown for a

house dress as fresh and elegant as the other. Prince Andrew rose

and politely placed a chair for her.



"How is it," she began, as usual in French, settling down briskly

and fussily in the easy chair, "how is it Annette never got married?

How stupid you men all are not to have married her! Excuse me for

saying so, but you have no sense about women. What an argumentative

fellow you are, Monsieur Pierre!"



"And I am still arguing with your husband. I can't understand why he

wants to go to the war," replied Pierre, addressing the princess

with none of the embarrassment so commonly shown by young men in their

intercourse with young women.



The princess started. Evidently Pierre's words touched her to the

quick.



"Ah, that is just what I tell him!" said she. "I don't understand

it; I don't in the least understand why men can't live without wars.

How is it that we women don't want anything of the kind, don't need

it? Now you shall judge between us. I always tell him: Here he is

Uncle's aide-de-camp, a most brilliant position. He is so well

known, so much appreciated by everyone. The other day at the

Apraksins' I heard a lady asking, 'Is that the famous Prince

Andrew?' I did indeed." She laughed. "He is so well received

everywhere. He might easily become aide-de-camp to the Emperor. You

know the Emperor spoke to him most graciously. Annette and I were

speaking of how to arrange it. What do you think?"



Pierre looked at his friend and, noticing that he did not like the

conversation, gave no reply.



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"When are you starting?" he asked.



"Oh, don't speak of his going, don't! I won't hear it spoken of,"

said the princess in the same petulantly playful tone in which she had

spoken to Hippolyte in the drawing room and which was so plainly

ill-suited to the family circle of which Pierre was almost a member.

"Today when I remembered that all these delightful associations must

be broken off... and then you know, Andre..." (she looked

significantly at her husband) "I'm afraid, I'm afraid!" she whispered,

and a shudder ran down her back.



Her husband looked at her as if surprised to notice that someone

besides Pierre and himself was in the room, and addressed her in a

tone of frigid politeness.



"What is it you are afraid of, Lise? I don't understand," said he.



"There, what egotists men all are: all, all egotists! Just for a

whim of his own, goodness only knows why, he leaves me and locks me up

alone in the country."



"With my father and sister, remember," said Prince Andrew gently.



"Alone all the same, without my friends.... And he expects me not to

be afraid."



Her tone was now querulous and her lip drawn up, giving her not a

joyful, but an animal, squirrel-like expression. She paused as if

she felt it indecorous to speak of her pregnancy before Pierre, though

the gist of the matter lay in that.



"I still can't understand what you are afraid of," said Prince

Andrew slowly, not taking his eyes off his wife.



The princess blushed, and raised her arms with a gesture of despair.



"No, Andrew, I must say you have changed. Oh, how you have..."



"Your doctor tells you to go to bed earlier," said Prince Andrew.

"You had better go."



The princess said nothing, but suddenly her short downy lip

quivered. Prince Andrew rose, shrugged his shoulders, and walked about

the room.



Pierre looked over his spectacles with naive surprise, now at him

and now at her, moved as if about to rise too, but changed his mind.



"Why should I mind Monsieur Pierre being here?" exclaimed the little

princess suddenly, her pretty face all at once distorted by a

tearful grimace. "I have long wanted to ask you, Andrew, why you

have changed so to me? What have I done to you? You are going to the

war and have no pity for me. Why is it?"



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"Lise!" was all Prince Andrew said. But that one word expressed an

entreaty, a threat, and above all conviction that she would herself

regret her words. But she went on hurriedly:



"You treat me like an invalid or a child. I see it all! Did you

behave like that six months ago?"



"Lise, I beg you to desist," said Prince Andrew still more

emphatically.



Pierre, who had been growing more and more agitated as he listened

to all this, rose and approached the princess. He seemed unable to

bear the sight of tears and was ready to cry himself.



"Calm yourself, Princess! It seems so to you because... I assure you

I myself have experienced... and so... because... No, excuse me! An

outsider is out of place here... No, don't distress yourself...

Good-by!"



Prince Andrew caught him by the hand.



"No, wait, Pierre! The princess is too kind to wish to deprive me of

the pleasure of spending the evening with you."



"No, he thinks only of himself," muttered the princess without

restraining her angry tears.



"Lise!" said Prince Andrew dryly, raising his voice to the pitch

which indicates that patience is exhausted.



Suddenly the angry, squirrel-like expression of the princess' pretty

face changed into a winning and piteous look of fear. Her beautiful

eyes glanced askance at her husband's face, and her own assumed the

timid, deprecating expression of a dog when it rapidly but feebly wags

its drooping tail.



"Mon Dieu, mon Dieu!" she muttered, and lifting her dress with one

hand she went up to her husband and kissed him on the forehead.



"Good night, Lise," said he, rising and courteously kissing her hand

as he would have done to a stranger.









CHAPTER VIII





The friends were silent. Neither cared to begin talking. Pierre

continually glanced at Prince Andrew; Prince Andrew rubbed his

forehead with his small hand.



"Let us go and have supper," he said with a sigh, going to the door.

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They entered the elegant, newly decorated, and luxurious dining

room. Everything from the table napkins to the silver, china, and

glass bore that imprint of newness found in the households of the

newly married. Halfway through supper Prince Andrew leaned his

elbows on the table and, with a look of nervous agitation such as

Pierre had never before seen on his face, began to talk--as one who

has long had something on his mind and suddenly determines to speak

out.



"Never, never marry, my dear fellow! That's my advice: never marry

till you can say to yourself that you have done all you are capable

of, and until you have ceased to love the woman of your choice and

have seen her plainly as she is, or else you will make a cruel and

irrevocable mistake. Marry when you are old and good for nothing--or

all that is good and noble in you will be lost. It will all be

wasted on trifles. Yes! Yes! Yes! Don't look at me with such surprise.

If you marry expecting anything from yourself in the future, you

will feel at every step that for you all is ended, all is closed

except the drawing room, where you will be ranged side by side with

a court lackey and an idiot!... But what's the good?..." and he

waved his arm.



Pierre took off his spectacles, which made his face seem different

and the good-natured expression still more apparent, and gazed at

his friend in amazement.



"My wife," continued Prince Andrew, "is an excellent woman, one of

those rare women with whom a man's honor is safe; but, O God, what

would I not give now to be unmarried! You are the first and only one

to whom I mention this, because I like you."



As he said this Prince Andrew was less than ever like that Bolkonski

who had lolled in Anna Pavlovna's easy chairs and with half-closed

eyes had uttered French phrases between his teeth. Every muscle of his

thin face was now quivering with nervous excitement; his eyes, in

which the fire of life had seemed extinguished, now flashed with

brilliant light. It was evident that the more lifeless he seemed at

ordinary times, the more impassioned he became in these moments of

almost morbid irritation.



"You don't understand why I say this," he continued, "but it is

the whole story of life. You talk of Bonaparte and his career," said

he (though Pierre had not mentioned Bonaparte), "but Bonaparte when he

worked went step by step toward his goal. He was free, he had

nothing but his aim to consider, and he reached it. But tie yourself

up with a woman and, like a chained convict, you lose all freedom! And

all you have of hope and strength merely weighs you down and

torments you with regret. Drawing rooms, gossip, balls, vanity, and

triviality--these are the enchanted circle I cannot escape from. I

am now going to the war, the greatest war there ever was, and I know

nothing and am fit for nothing. I am very amiable and have a caustic

wit," continued Prince Andrew, "and at Anna Pavlovna's they listen

to me. And that stupid set without whom my wife cannot exist, and

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those women... If you only knew what those society women are, and

women in general! My father is right. Selfish, vain, stupid, trivial

in everything--that's what women are when you see them in their true

colors! When you meet them in society it seems as if there were

something in them, but there's nothing, nothing, nothing! No, don't

marry, my dear fellow; don't marry!" concluded Prince Andrew.



"It seems funny to me," said Pierre, "that you, you should

consider yourself incapable and your life a spoiled life. You have

everything before you, everything. And you..."



He did not finish his sentence, but his tone showed how highly he

thought of his friend and how much he expected of him in the future.



"How can he talk like that?" thought Pierre. He considered his

friend a model of perfection because Prince Andrew possessed in the

highest degree just the very qualities Pierre lacked, and which

might be best described as strength of will. Pierre was always

astonished at Prince Andrew's calm manner of treating everybody, his

extraordinary memory, his extensive reading (he had read everything,

knew everything, and had an opinion about everything), but above all

at his capacity for work and study. And if Pierre was often struck

by Andrew's lack of capacity for philosophical meditation (to which he

himself was particularly addicted), he regarded even this not as a

defect but as a sign of strength.



Even in the best, most friendly and simplest relations of life,

praise and commendation are essential, just as grease is necessary

to wheels that they may run smoothly.



"My part is played out," said Prince Andrew. "What's the use of

talking about me? Let us talk about you," he added after a silence,

smiling at his reassuring thoughts.



That smile was immediately reflected on Pierre's face.



"But what is there to say about me?" said Pierre, his face

relaxing into a careless, merry smile. "What am I? An illegitimate

son!" He suddenly blushed crimson, and it was plain that he had made a

great effort to say this. "Without a name and without means... And

it really..." But he did not say what "it really" was. "For the

present I am free and am all right. Only I haven't the least idea what

I am to do; I wanted to consult you seriously."



Prince Andrew looked kindly at him, yet his glance--friendly and

affectionate as it was--expressed a sense of his own superiority.



"I am fond of you, especially as you are the one live man among

our whole set. Yes, you're all right! Choose what you will; it's all

the same. You'll be all right anywhere. But look here: give up

visiting those Kuragins and leading that sort of life. It suits you so

badly--all this debauchery, dissipation, and the rest of it!"



"What would you have, my dear fellow?" answered Pierre, shrugging

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his shoulders. "Women, my dear fellow; women!"



"I don't understand it," replied Prince Andrew. "Women who are comme

il faut, that's a different matter; but the Kuragins' set of women,

'women and wine' I don't understand!"



Pierre was staying at Prince Vasili Kuragin's and sharing the

dissipated life of his son Anatole, the son whom they were planning to

reform by marrying him to Prince Andrew's sister.



"Do you know?" said Pierre, as if suddenly struck by a happy

thought, "seriously, I have long been thinking of it.... Leading

such a life I can't decide or think properly about anything. One's

head aches, and one spends all one's money. He asked me for tonight,

but I won't go."



"You give me your word of honor not to go?"



"On my honor!"









CHAPTER IX





It was past one o'clock when Pierre left his friend. It was a

cloudless, northern, summer night. Pierre took an open cab intending

to drive straight home. But the nearer he drew to the house the more

he felt the impossibility of going to sleep on such a night. It was

light enough to see a long way in the deserted street and it seemed

more like morning or evening than night. On the way Pierre

remembered that Anatole Kuragin was expecting the usual set for

cards that evening, after which there was generally a drinking bout,

finishing with visits of a kind Pierre was very fond of.



"I should like to go to Kuragin's," thought he.



But he immediately recalled his promise to Prince Andrew not to go

there. Then, as happens to people of weak character, he desired so

passionately once more to enjoy that dissipation he was so

accustomed to that he decided to go. The thought immediately

occurred to him that his promise to Prince Andrew was of no account,

because before he gave it he had already promised Prince Anatole to

come to his gathering; "besides," thought he, "all such 'words of

honor' are conventional things with no definite meaning, especially if

one considers that by tomorrow one may be dead, or something so

extraordinary may happen to one that honor and dishonor will be all

the same!" Pierre often indulged in reflections of this sort,

nullifying all his decisions and intentions. He went to Kuragin's.



Reaching the large house near the Horse Guards' barracks, in which

Anatole lived, Pierre entered the lighted porch, ascended the

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stairs, and went in at the open door. There was no one in the

anteroom; empty bottles, cloaks, and overshoes were lying about; there

was a smell of alcohol, and sounds of voices and shouting in the

distance.



Cards and supper were over, but the visitors had not yet

dispersed. Pierre threw off his cloak and entered the first room, in

which were the remains of supper. A footman, thinking no one saw

him, was drinking on the sly what was left in the glasses. From the

third room came sounds of laughter, the shouting of familiar voices,

the growling of a bear, and general commotion. Some eight or nine

young men were crowding anxiously round an open window. Three others

were romping with a young bear, one pulling him by the chain and

trying to set him at the others.



"I bet a hundred on Stevens!" shouted one.



"Mind, no holding on!" cried another.



"I bet on Dolokhov!" cried a third. "Kuragin, you part our hands."



"There, leave Bruin alone; here's a bet on."



"At one draught, or he loses!" shouted a fourth.



"Jacob, bring a bottle!" shouted the host, a tall, handsome fellow

who stood in the midst of the group, without a coat, and with his fine

linen shirt unfastened in front. "Wait a bit, you fellows.... Here

is Petya! Good man!" cried he, addressing Pierre.



Another voice, from a man of medium height with clear blue eyes,

particularly striking among all these drunken voices by its sober

ring, cried from the window: "Come here; part the bets!" This was

Dolokhov, an officer of the Semenov regiment, a notorious gambler

and duelist, who was living with Anatole. Pierre smiled, looking about

him merrily.



"I don't understand. What's it all about?"



"Wait a bit, he is not drunk yet! A bottle here," said Anatole,

taking a glass from the table he went up to Pierre.



"First of all you must drink!"



Pierre drank one glass after another, looking from under his brows

at the tipsy guests who were again crowding round the window, and

listening to their chatter. Anatole kept on refilling Pierre's glass

while explaining that Dolokhov was betting with Stevens, an English

naval officer, that he would drink a bottle of rum sitting on the

outer ledge of the third floor window with his legs hanging out.



"Go on, you must drink it all," said Anatole, giving Pierre the last

glass, "or I won't let you go!"



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"No, I won't," said Pierre, pushing Anatole aside, and he went up to

the window.



Dolokhov was holding the Englishman's hand and clearly and

distinctly repeating the terms of the bet, addressing himself

particularly to Anatole and Pierre.



Dolokhov was of medium height, with curly hair and light-blue

eyes. He was about twenty-five. Like all infantry officers he wore

no mustache, so that his mouth, the most striking feature of his face,

was clearly seen. The lines of that mouth were remarkably finely

curved. The middle of the upper lip formed a sharp wedge and closed

firmly on the firm lower one, and something like two distinct smiles

played continually round the two corners of the mouth; this,

together with the resolute, insolent intelligence of his eyes,

produced an effect which made it impossible not to notice his face.

Dolokhov was a man of small means and no connections. Yet, though

Anatole spent tens of thousands of rubles, Dolokhov lived with him and

had placed himself on such a footing that all who knew them, including

Anatole himself, respected him more than they did Anatole. Dolokhov

could play all games and nearly always won. However much he drank,

he never lost his clearheadedness. Both Kuragin and Dolokhov were at

that time notorious among the rakes and scapegraces of Petersburg.



The bottle of rum was brought. The window frame which prevented

anyone from sitting on the outer sill was being forced out by two

footmen, who were evidently flurried and intimidated by the directions

and shouts of the gentlemen around.



Anatole with his swaggering air strode up to the window. He wanted

to smash something. Pushing away the footmen he tugged at the frame,

but could not move it. He smashed a pane.



"You have a try, Hercules," said he, turning to Pierre.



Pierre seized the crossbeam, tugged, and wrenched the oak frame

out with a crash.



"Take it right out, or they'll think I'm holding on," said Dolokhov.



"Is the Englishman bragging?... Eh? Is it all right?" said Anatole.



"First-rate," said Pierre, looking at Dolokhov, who with a bottle of

rum in his hand was approaching the window, from which the light of

the sky, the dawn merging with the afterglow of sunset, was visible.



Dolokhov, the bottle of rum still in his hand, jumped onto the

window sill. "Listen!" cried he, standing there and addressing those

in the room. All were silent.



"I bet fifty imperials"--he spoke French that the Englishman might

understand him, but he did, not speak it very well--"I bet fifty

imperials... or do you wish to make it a hundred?" added he,

addressing the Englishman.

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"No, fifty," replied the latter.



"All right. Fifty imperials... that I will drink a whole bottle of

rum without taking it from my mouth, sitting outside the window on

this spot" (he stooped and pointed to the sloping ledge outside the

window) "and without holding on to anything. Is that right?"



"Quite right," said the Englishman.



Anatole turned to the Englishman and taking him by one of the

buttons of his coat and looking down at him--the Englishman was short-

began repeating the terms of the wager to him in English.



"Wait!" cried Dolokhov, hammering with the bottle on the window sill

to attract attention. "Wait a bit, Kuragin. Listen! If anyone else

does the same, I will pay him a hundred imperials. Do you understand?"



The Englishman nodded, but gave no indication whether he intended to

accept this challenge or not. Anatole did not release him, and

though he kept nodding to show that he understood, Anatole went on

translating Dolokhov's words into English. A thin young lad, an hussar

of the Life Guards, who had been losing that evening, climbed on the

window sill, leaned over, and looked down.



"Oh! Oh! Oh!" he muttered, looking down from the window at the

stones of the pavement.



"Shut up!" cried Dolokhov, pushing him away from the window. The lad

jumped awkwardly back into the room, tripping over his spurs.



Placing the bottle on the window sill where he could reach it

easily, Dolokhov climbed carefully and slowly through the window and

lowered his legs. Pressing against both sides of the window, he

adjusted himself on his seat, lowered his hands, moved a little to the

right and then to the left, and took up the bottle. Anatole brought

two candles and placed them on the window sill, though it was

already quite light. Dolokhov's back in his white shirt, and his curly

head, were lit up from both sides. Everyone crowded to the window, the

Englishman in front. Pierre stood smiling but silent. One man, older

than the others present, suddenly pushed forward with a scared and

angry look and wanted to seize hold of Dolokhov's shirt.



"I say, this is folly! He'll be killed," said this more sensible

man.



Anatole stopped him.



"Don't touch him! You'll startle him and then he'll be killed.

Eh?... What then?... Eh?"



Dolokhov turned round and, again holding on with both hands,

arranged himself on his seat.



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"If anyone comes meddling again," said he, emitting the words

separately through his thin compressed lips, "I will throw him down

there. Now then!"



Saying this he again turned round, dropped his hands, took the

bottle and lifted it to his lips, threw back his head, and raised

his free hand to balance himself. One of the footmen who had stooped

to pick up some broken glass remained in that position without

taking his eyes from the window and from Dolokhov's back. Anatole

stood erect with staring eyes. The Englishman looked on sideways,

pursing up his lips. The man who had wished to stop the affair ran

to a corner of the room and threw himself on a sofa with his face to

the wall. Pierre hid his face, from which a faint smile forgot to fade

though his features now expressed horror and fear. All were still.

Pierre took his hands from his eyes. Dolokhov still sat in the same

position, only his head was thrown further back till his curly hair

touched his shirt collar, and the hand holding the bottle was lifted

higher and higher and trembled with the effort. The bottle was

emptying perceptibly and rising still higher and his head tilting

yet further back. "Why is it so long?" thought Pierre. It seemed to

him that more than half an hour had elapsed. Suddenly Dolokhov made

a backward movement with his spine, and his arm trembled nervously;

this was sufficient to cause his whole body to slip as he sat on the

sloping ledge. As he began slipping down, his head and arm wavered

still more with the strain. One hand moved as if to clutch the

window sill, but refrained from touching it. Pierre again covered

his eyes and thought he would never never them again. Suddenly he

was aware of a stir all around. He looked up: Dolokhov was standing on

the window sill, with a pale but radiant face.



"It's empty."



He threw the bottle to the Englishman, who caught it neatly.

Dolokhov jumped down. He smelt strongly of rum.



"Well done!... Fine fellow!... There's a bet for you!... Devil

take you!" came from different sides.



The Englishman took out his purse and began counting out the

money. Dolokhov stood frowning and did not speak. Pierre jumped upon

the window sill.



"Gentlemen, who wishes to bet with me? I'll do the same thing!" he

suddenly cried. "Even without a bet, there! Tell them to bring me a

bottle. I'll do it.... Bring a bottle!"



"Let him do it, let him do it," said Dolokhov, smiling.



"What next? Have you gone mad?... No one would let you!... Why,

you go giddy even on a staircase," exclaimed several voices.



"I'll drink it! Let's have a bottle of rum!" shouted Pierre, banging

the table with a determined and drunken gesture and preparing to climb

out of the window.

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They seized him by his arms; but he was so strong that everyone

who touched him was sent flying.



"No, you'll never manage him that way," said Anatole. "Wait a bit

and I'll get round him.... Listen! I'll take your bet tomorrow, but

now we are all going to ----'s."



"Come on then," cried Pierre. "Come on!... And we'll take Bruin with

us."



And he caught the bear, took it in his arms, lifted it from the

ground, and began dancing round the room with it.









CHAPTER X





Prince Vasili kept the promise he had given to Princess

Drubetskaya who had spoken to him on behalf of her only son Boris on

the evening of Anna Pavlovna's soiree. The matter was mentioned to the

Emperor, an exception made, and Boris transferred into the regiment of

Semenov Guards with the rank of cornet. He received, however, no

appointment to Kutuzov's staff despite all Anna Mikhaylovna's

endeavors and entreaties. Soon after Anna Pavlovna's reception Anna

Mikhaylovna returned to Moscow and went straight to her rich

relations, the Rostovs, with whom she stayed when in the town and

where her darling Bory, who had only just entered a regiment

of the line and was being at once transferred to the Guards as a

cornet, had been educated from childhood and lived for years at a

time. The Guards had already left Petersburg on the tenth of August,

and her son, who had remained in Moscow for his equipment, was to join

them on the march to Radzivilov.



It was St. Natalia's day and the name day of two of the Rostovs--the

mother and the youngest daughter--both named Nataly. Ever since the

morning, carriages with six horses had been coming and going

continually, bringing visitors to the Countess Rostova's big house

on the Povarskaya, so well known to all Moscow. The countess herself

and her handsome eldest daughter were in the drawing-room with the

visitors who came to congratulate, and who constantly succeeded one

another in relays.



The countess was a woman of about forty-five, with a thin Oriental

type of face, evidently worn out with childbearing--she had had

twelve. A languor of motion and speech, resulting from weakness,

gave her a distinguished air which inspired respect. Princess Anna

Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya, who as a member of the household was also

seated in the drawing room, helped to receive and entertain the

visitors. The young people were in one of the inner rooms, not

considering it necessary to take part in receiving the visitors. The

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count met the guests and saw them off, inviting them all to dinner.



"I am very, very grateful to you, mon cher," or "ma chere"--he

called everyone without exception and without the slightest

variation in his tone, "my dear," whether they were above or below him

in rank--"I thank you for myself and for our two dear ones whose

name day we are keeping. But mind you come to dinner or I shall be

offended, ma chere! On behalf of the whole family I beg you to come,

mon cher!" These words he repeated to everyone without exception or

variation, and with the same expression on his full, cheerful,

clean-shaven face, the same firm pressure of the hand and the same

quick, repeated bows. As soon as he had seen a visitor off he returned

to one of those who were still in the drawing room, drew a chair

toward him or her, and jauntily spreading out his legs and putting his

hands on his knees with the air of a man who enjoys life and knows how

to live, he swayed to and fro with dignity, offered surmises about the

weather, or touched on questions of health, sometimes in Russian and

sometimes in very bad but self-confident French; then again, like a

man weary but unflinching in the fulfillment of duty, he rose to see

some visitors off and, stroking his scanty gray hairs over his bald

patch, also asked them to dinner. Sometimes on his way back from the

anteroom he would pass through the conservatory and pantry into the

large marble dining hall, where tables were being set out for eighty

people; and looking at the footmen, who were bringing in silver and

china, moving tables, and unfolding damask table linen, he would

call Dmitri Vasilevich, a man of good family and the manager of all

his affairs, and while looking with pleasure at the enormous table

would say: "Well, Dmitri, you'll see that things are all as they

should be? That's right! The great thing is the serving, that's it."

And with a complacent sigh he would return to the drawing room.



"Marya Lvovna Karagina and her daughter!" announced the countess'

gigantic footman in his bass voice, entering the drawing room. The

countess reflected a moment and took a pinch from a gold snuffbox with

her husband's portrait on it.



"I'm quite worn out by these callers. However, I'll see her and no

more. She is so affected. Ask her in," she said to the footman in a

sad voice, as if saying: "Very well, finish me off."



A tall, stout, and proud-looking woman, with a round-faced smiling

daughter, entered the drawing room, their dresses rustling.



"Dear Countess, what an age... She has been laid up, poor child...

at the Razumovski's ball... and Countess Apraksina... I was so

delighted..." came the sounds of animated feminine voices,

interrupting one another and mingling with the rustling of dresses and

the scraping of chairs. Then one of those conversations began which

last out until, at the first pause, the guests rise with a rustle of

dresses and say, "I am so delighted... Mamma's health... and

Countess Apraksina..." and then, again rustling, pass into the

anteroom, put on cloaks or mantles, and drive away. The conversation

was on the chief topic of the day: the illness of the wealthy and

celebrated beau of Catherine's day, Count Bezukhov, and about his

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illegitimate son Pierre, the one who had behaved so improperly at Anna

Pavlovna's reception.



"I am so sorry for the poor count," said the visitor. "He is in such

bad health, and now this vexation about his son is enough to kill

him!"



"What is that?" asked the countess as if she did not know what the

visitor alluded to, though she had already heard about the cause of

Count Bezukhov's distress some fifteen times.



"That's what comes of a modern education," exclaimed the visitor.

"It seems that while he was abroad this young man was allowed to do as

he liked, now in Petersburg I hear he has been doing such terrible

things that he has been expelled by the police."



"You don't say so!" replied the countess.



"He chose his friends badly," interposed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Prince

Vasili's son, he, and a certain Dolokhov have, it is said, been up

to heaven only knows what! And they have had to suffer for it.

Dolokhov has been degraded to the ranks and Bezukhov's son sent back

to Moscow. Anatole Kuragin's father managed somehow to get his son's

affair hushed up, but even he was ordered out of Petersburg."



"But what have they been up to?" asked the countess.



"They are regular brigands, especially Dolokhov," replied the

visitor. "He is a son of Marya Ivanovna Dolokhova, such a worthy

woman, but there, just fancy! Those three got hold of a bear

somewhere, put it in a carriage, and set off with it to visit some

actresses! The police tried to interfere, and what did the young men

do? They tied a policeman and the bear back to back and put the bear

into the Moyka Canal. And there was the bear swimming about with the

policeman on his back!"



"What a nice figure the policeman must have cut, my dear!" shouted

the count, dying with laughter.



"Oh, how dreadful! How can you laugh at it, Count?"



Yet the ladies themselves could not help laughing.



"It was all they could do to rescue the poor man," continued the

visitor. "And to think it is Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov's son who

amuses himself in this sensible manner! And he was said to be so

well educated and clever. This is all that his foreign education has

done for him! I hope that here in Moscow no one will receive him, in

spite of his money. They wanted to introduce him to me, but I quite

declined: I have my daughters to consider."



"Why do you say this young man is so rich?" asked the countess,

turning away from the girls, who at once assumed an air of

inattention. "His children are all illegitimate. I think Pierre also

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is illegitimate."



The visitor made a gesture with her hand.



"I should think he has a score of them."



Princess Anna Mikhaylovna intervened in the conversation,

evidently wishing to show her connections and knowledge of what went

on in society.



"The fact of the matter is," said she significantly, and also in a

half whisper, "everyone knows Count Cyril's reputation.... He has lost

count of his children, but this Pierre was his favorite."



"How handsome the old man still was only a year ago!" remarked the

countess. "I have never seen a handsomer man."



"He is very much altered now," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "Well, as I

was saying, Prince Vasili is the next heir through his wife, but the

count is very fond of Pierre, looked after his education, and wrote to

the Emperor about him; so that in the case of his death--and he is

so ill that he may die at any moment, and Dr. Lorrain has come from

Petersburg--no one knows who will inherit his immense fortune,

Pierre or Prince Vasili. Forty thousand serfs and millions of

rubles! I know it all very well for Prince Vasili told me himself.

Besides, Cyril Vladimirovich is my mother's second cousin. He's also

my Bory's godfather," she added, as if she attached no importance at

all to the fact.



"Prince Vasili arrived in Moscow yesterday. I hear he has come on

some inspection business," remarked the visitor.



"Yes, but between ourselves," said the princess, "that is a

pretext. The fact is he has come to see Count Cyril Vladimirovich,

hearing how ill he is."



"But do you know, my dear, that was a capital joke," said the count;

and seeing that the elder visitor was not listening, he turned to

the young ladies. "I can just imagine what a funny figure that

policeman cut!"



And as he waved his arms to impersonate the policeman, his portly

form again shook with a deep ringing laugh, the laugh of one who

always eats well and, in particular, drinks well. "So do come and dine

with us!" he said.









CHAPTER XI





Silence ensued. The countess looked at her callers, smiling affably,

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but not concealing the fact that she would not be distressed if they

now rose and took their leave. The visitor's daughter was already

smoothing down her dress with an inquiring look at her mother, when

suddenly from the next room were heard the footsteps of boys and girls

running to the door and the noise of a chair falling over, and a

girl of thirteen, hiding something in the folds of her short muslin

frock, darted in and stopped short in the middle of the room. It was

evident that she had not intended her flight to bring her so far.

Behind her in the doorway appeared a student with a crimson coat

collar, an officer of the Guards, a girl of fifteen, and a plump

rosy-faced boy in a short jacket.



The count jumped up and, swaying from side to side, spread his

arms wide and threw them round the little girl who had run in.



"Ah, here she is!" he exclaimed laughing. "My pet, whose name day it

is. My dear pet!"



"Ma chere, there is a time for everything," said the countess with

feigned severity. "You spoil her, Ilya," she added, turning to her

husband.



"How do you do, my dear? I wish you many happy returns of your

name day," said the visitor. "What a charming child," she added,

addressing the mother.



This black-eyed, wide-mouthed girl, not pretty but full of life-

with childish bare shoulders which after her run heaved and shook

her bodice, with black curls tossed backward, thin bare arms, little

legs in lace-frilled drawers, and feet in low slippers--was just at

that charming age when a girl is no longer a child, though the child

is not yet a young woman. Escaping from her father she ran to hide her

flushed face in the lace of her mother's mantilla--not paying the

least attention to her severe remark--and began to laugh. She laughed,

and in fragmentary sentences tried to explain about a doll which she

produced from the folds of her frock.



"Do you see?... My doll... Mimi... You see..." was all Natasha

managed to utter (to her everything seemed funny). She leaned

against her mother and burst into such a loud, ringing fit of laughter

that even the prim visitor could not help joining in.



"Now then, go away and take your monstrosity with you," said the

mother, pushing away her daughter with pretended sternness, and

turning to the visitor she added: "She is my youngest girl."



Natasha, raising her face for a moment from her mother's mantilla,

glanced up at her through tears of laughter, and again hid her face.



The visitor, compelled to look on at this family scene, thought it

necessary to take some part in it.



"Tell me, my dear," said she to Natasha, "is Mimi a relation of

yours? A daughter, I suppose?"

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Natasha did not like the visitor's tone of condescension to childish

things. She did not reply, but looked at her seriously.



Meanwhile the younger generation: Boris, the officer, Anna

Mikhaylovna's son; Nicholas, the undergraduate, the count's eldest

son; Sonya, the count's fifteen-year-old niece, and little Petya,

his youngest boy, had all settled down in the drawing room and were

obviously trying to restrain within the bounds of decorum the

excitement and mirth that shone in all their faces. Evidently in the

back rooms, from which they had dashed out so impetuously, the

conversation had been more amusing than the drawing-room talk of

society scandals, the weather, and Countess Apraksina. Now and then

they glanced at one another, hardly able to suppress their laughter.



The two young men, the student and the officer, friends from

childhood, were of the same age and both handsome fellows, though

not alike. Boris was tall and fair, and his calm and handsome face had

regular, delicate features. Nicholas was short with curly hair and

an open expression. Dark hairs were already showing on his upper

lip, and his whole face expressed impetuosity and enthusiasm. Nicholas

blushed when he entered the drawing room. He evidently tried to find

something to say, but failed. Boris on the contrary at once found

his footing, and related quietly and humorously how he had know that

doll Mimi when she was still quite a young lady, before her nose was

broken; how she had aged during the five years he had known her, and

how her head had cracked right across the skull. Having said this he

glanced at Natasha. She turned away from him and glanced at her

younger brother, who was screwing up his eyes and shaking with

suppressed laughter, and unable to control herself any longer, she

jumped up and rushed from the room as fast as her nimble little feet

would carry her. Boris did not laugh.



"You were meaning to go out, weren't you, Mamma? Do you want the

carriage?" he asked his mother with a smile.



"Yes, yes, go and tell them to get it ready," she answered,

returning his smile.



Boris quietly left the room and went in search of Natasha. The plump

boy ran after them angrily, as if vexed that their program had been

disturbed.









CHAPTER XII





The only young people remaining in the drawing room, not counting

the young lady visitor and the countess' eldest daughter (who was four

years older than her sister and behaved already like a grown-up

person), were Nicholas and Sonya, the niece. Sonya was a slender

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little brunette with a tender look in her eyes which were veiled by

long lashes, thick black plaits coiling twice round her head, and a

tawny tint in her complexion and especially in the color of her

slender but graceful and muscular arms and neck. By the grace of her

movements, by the softness and flexibility of her small limbs, and

by a certain coyness and reserve of manner, she reminded one of a

pretty, half-grown kitten which promises to become a beautiful

little cat. She evidently considered it proper to show an interest

in the general conversation by smiling, but in spite of herself her

eyes under their thick long lashes watched her cousin who was going to

join the army, with such passionate girlish adoration that her smile

could not for a single instant impose upon anyone, and it was clear

that the kitten had settled down only to spring up with more energy

and again play with her cousin as soon as they too could, like Natasha

and Boris, escape from the drawing room.



"Ah yes, my dear," said the count, addressing the visitor and

pointing to Nicholas, "his friend Boris has become an officer, and

so for friendship's sake he is leaving the university and me, his

old father, and entering the military service, my dear. And there

was a place and everything waiting for him in the Archives Department!

Isn't that friendship?" remarked the count in an inquiring tone.



"But they say that war has been declared," replied the visitor.



"They've been saying so a long while," said the count, "and

they'll say so again and again, and that will be the end of it. My

dear, there's friendship for you," he repeated. "He's joining the

hussars."



The visitor, not knowing what to say, shook her head.



"It's not at all from friendship," declared Nicholas, flaring up and

turning away as if from a shameful aspersion. "It is not from

friendship at all; I simply feel that the army is my vocation."



He glanced at his cousin and the young lady visitor; and they were

both regarding him with a smile of approbation.



"Schubert, the colonel of the Pavlograd Hussars, is dining with us

today. He has been here on leave and is taking Nicholas back with him.

It can't be helped!" said the count, shrugging his shoulders and

speaking playfully of a matter that evidently distressed him.



"I have already told you, Papa," said his son, "that if you don't

wish to let me go, I'll stay. But I know I am no use anywhere except

in the army; I am not a diplomat or a government clerk.--I don't

know how to hide what I feel." As he spoke he kept glancing with the

flirtatiousness of a handsome youth at Sonya and the young lady

visitor.



The little kitten, feasting her eyes on him, seemed ready at any

moment to start her gambols again and display her kittenish nature.



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"All right, all right!" said the old count. "He always flares up!

This Buonaparte has turned all their heads; they all think of how he

rose from an ensign and became Emperor. Well, well, God grant it,"

he added, not noticing his visitor's sarcastic smile.



The elders began talking about Bonaparte. Julie Karagina turned to

young Rostov.



"What a pity you weren't at the Arkharovs' on Thursday. It was so

dull without you," said she, giving him a tender smile.



The young man, flattered, sat down nearer to her with a coquettish

smile, and engaged the smiling Julie in a confidential conversation

without at all noticing that his involuntary smile had stabbed the

heart of Sonya, who blushed and smiled unnaturally. In the midst of

his talk he glanced round at her. She gave him a passionately angry

glance, and hardly able to restrain her tears and maintain the

artificial smile on her lips, she got up and left the room. All

Nicholas' animation vanished. He waited for the first pause in the

conversation, and then with a distressed face left the room to find

Sonya.



"How plainly all these young people wear their hearts on their

sleeves!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, pointing to Nicholas as he went

out. "Cousinage--dangereux voisinage;"* she added.





*Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood.





"Yes," said the countess when the brightness these young people

had brought into the room had vanished; and as if answering a question

no one had put but which was always in her mind, "and how much

suffering, how much anxiety one has had to go through that we might

rejoice in them now! And yet really the anxiety is greater now than

the joy. One is always, always anxious! Especially just at this age,

so dangerous both for girls and boys."



"It all depends on the bringing up," remarked the visitor.



"Yes, you're quite right," continued the countess. "Till now I

have always, thank God, been my children's friend and had their full

confidence," said she, repeating the mistake of so many parents who

imagine that their children have no secrets from them. "I know I shall

always be my daughters' first confidante, and that if Nicholas, with

his impulsive nature, does get into mischief (a boy can't help it), he

will all the same never be like those Petersburg young men."



"Yes, they are splendid, splendid youngsters," chimed in the

count, who always solved questions that seemed to him perplexing by

deciding that everything was splendid. "Just fancy: wants to be an

hussar. What's one to do, my dear?"



"What a charming creature your younger girl is," said the visitor;

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"a little volcano!"



"Yes, a regular volcano," said the count. "Takes after me! And

what a voice she has; though she's my daughter, I tell the truth

when I say she'll be a singer, a second Salomoni! We have engaged an

Italian to give her lessons."



"Isn't she too young? I have heard that it harms the voice to

train it at that age."



"Oh no, not at all too young!" replied the count. "Why, our

mothers used to be married at twelve or thirteen."



"And she's in love with Boris already. Just fancy!" said the

countess with a gentle smile, looking at Boris' and went on, evidently

concerned with a thought that always occupied her: "Now you see if I

were to be severe with her and to forbid it... goodness knows what

they might be up to on the sly" (she meant that they would be

kissing), "but as it is, I know every word she utters. She will come

running to me of her own accord in the evening and tell me everything.

Perhaps I spoil her, but really that seems the best plan. With her

elder sister I was stricter."



"Yes, I was brought up quite differently," remarked the handsome

elder daughter, Countess Vera, with a smile.



But the smile did not enhance Vera's beauty as smiles generally

do; on the contrary it gave her an unnatural, and therefore

unpleasant, expression. Vera was good-looking, not at all stupid,

quick at learning, was well brought up, and had a pleasant voice; what

she said was true and appropriate, yet, strange to say, everyone-

the visitors and countess alike--turned to look at her as if wondering

why she had said it, and they all felt awkward.



"People are always too clever with their eldest children and try

to make something exceptional of them," said the visitor.



"What's the good of denying it, my dear? Our dear countess was too

clever with Vera," said the count. "Well, what of that? She's turned

out splendidly all the same," he added, winking at Vera.



The guests got up and took their leave, promising to return to

dinner.



"What manners! I thought they would never go," said the countess,

when she had seen her guests out.









CHAPTER XIII





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When Natasha ran out of the drawing room she only went as far as the

conservatory. There she paused and stood listening to the conversation

in the drawing room, waiting for Boris to come out. She was already

growing impatient, and stamped her foot, ready to cry at his not

coming at once, when she heard the young man's discreet steps

approaching neither quickly nor slowly. At this Natasha dashed swiftly

among the flower tubs and hid there.



Boris paused in the middle of the room, looked round, brushed a

little dust from the sleeve of his uniform, and going up to a mirror

examined his handsome face. Natasha, very still, peered out from her

ambush, waiting to see what he would do. He stood a little while

before the glass, smiled, and walked toward the other door. Natasha

was about to call him but changed her mind. "Let him look for me,"

thought she. Hardly had Boris gone than Sonya, flushed, in tears,

and muttering angrily, came in at the other door. Natasha checked

her first impulse to run out to her, and remained in her hiding place,

watching--as under an invisible cap--to see what went on in the world.

She was experiencing a new and peculiar pleasure. Sonya, muttering

to herself, kept looking round toward the drawing-room door. It opened

and Nicholas came in.



"Sonya, what is the matter with you? How can you?" said he,

running up to her.



"It's nothing, nothing; leave me alone!" sobbed Sonya.



"Ah, I know what it is."



"Well, if you do, so much the better, and you can go back to her!"



"So-o-onya! Look here! How can you torture me and yourself like

that, for a mere fancy?" said Nicholas taking her hand.



Sonya did not pull it away, and left off crying. Natasha, not

stirring and scarcely breathing, watched from her ambush with

sparkling eyes. "What will happen now?" thought she.



"Sonya! What is anyone in the world to me? You alone are

everything!" said Nicholas. "And I will prove it to you."



"I don't like you to talk like that."



"Well, then, I won't; only forgive me, Sonya!" He drew her to him

and kissed her.



"Oh, how nice," thought Natasha; and when Sonya and Nicholas had

gone out of the conservatory she followed and called Boris to her.



"Boris, come here," said she with a sly and significant look. "I

have something to tell you. Here, here!" and she led him into the

conservatory to the place among the tubs where she had been hiding.



Boris followed her, smiling.

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"What is the something?" asked he.



She grew confused, glanced round, and, seeing the doll she had

thrown down on one of the tubs, picked it up.



"Kiss the doll," said she.



Boris looked attentively and kindly at her eager face, but did not

reply.



"Don't you want to? Well, then, come here," said she, and went

further in among the plants and threw down the doll. "Closer, closer!"

she whispered.



She caught the young officer by his cuffs, and a look of solemnity

and fear appeared on her flushed face.



"And me? Would you like to kiss me?" she whispered almost inaudibly,

glancing up at him from under her brows, smiling, and almost crying

from excitement.



Boris blushed.



"How funny you are!" he said, bending down to her and blushing still

more, but he waited and did nothing.



Suddenly she jumped up onto a tub to be higher than he, embraced him

so that both her slender bare arms clasped him above his neck, and,

tossing back her hair, kissed him full on the lips.



Then she slipped down among the flowerpots on the other side of

the tubs and stood, hanging her head.



"Natasha," he said, "you know that I love you, but..."



"You are in love with me?" Natasha broke in.



"Yes, I am, but please don't let us do like that.... In another four

years... then I will ask for your hand."



Natasha considered.



"Thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen," she counted on her slender

little fingers. "All right! Then it's settled?"



A smile of joy and satisfaction lit up her eager face.



"Settled!" replied Boris.



"Forever?" said the little girl. "Till death itself?"



She took his arm and with a happy face went with him into the

adjoining sitting room.

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CHAPTER XIV





After receiving her visitors, the countess was so tired that she

gave orders to admit no more, but the porter was told to be sure to

invite to dinner all who came "to congratulate." The countess wished

to have a tete-a-tete talk with the friend of her childhood,

Princess Anna Mikhaylovna, whom she had not seen properly since she

returned from Petersburg. Anna Mikhaylovna, with her tear-worn but

pleasant face, drew her chair nearer to that of the countess.



"With you I will be quite frank," said Anna Mikhaylovna. "There

are not many left of us old friends! That's why I so value your

friendship."



Anna Mikhaylovna looked at Vera and paused. The countess pressed her

friend's hand.



"Vera," she said to her eldest daughter who was evidently not a

favorite, "how is it you have so little tact? Don't you see you are

not wanted here? Go to the other girls, or..."



The handsome Vera smiled contemptuously but did not seem at all

hurt.



"If you had told me sooner, Mamma, I would have gone," she replied

as she rose to go to her own room.



But as she passed the sitting room she noticed two couples

sitting, one pair at each window. She stopped and smiled scornfully.

Sonya was sitting close to Nicholas who was copying out some verses

for her, the first he had ever written. Boris and Natasha were at

the other window and ceased talking when Vera entered. Sonya and

Natasha looked at Vera with guilty, happy faces.



It was pleasant and touching to see these little girls in love;

but apparently the sight of them roused no pleasant feeling in Vera.



"How often have I asked you not to take my things?" she said. "You

have a room of your own," and she took the inkstand from Nicholas.



"In a minute, in a minute," he said, dipping his pen.



"You always manage to do things at the wrong time," continued

Vera. "You came rushing into the drawing room so that everyone felt

ashamed of you."



Though what she said was quite just, perhaps for that very reason no

one replied, and the four simply looked at one another. She lingered

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in the room with the inkstand in her hand.



"And at your age what secrets can there be between Natasha and

Boris, or between you two? It's all nonsense!"



"Now, Vera, what does it matter to you?" said Natasha in defense,

speaking very gently.



She seemed that day to be more than ever kind and affectionate to

everyone.



"Very silly," said Vera. "I am ashamed of you. Secrets indeed!"



"All have secrets of their own," answered Natasha, getting warmer.

"We don't interfere with you and Berg."



"I should think not," said Vera, "because there can never be

anything wrong in my behavior. But I'll just tell Mamma how you are

behaving with Boris."



"Natalya Ilynichna behaves very well to me," remarked Boris. "I have

nothing to complain of."



"Don't, Boris! You are such a diplomat that it is really

tiresome," said Natasha in a mortified voice that trembled slightly.

(She used the word "diplomat," which was just then much in vogue among

the children, in the special sense they attached to it.) "Why does she

bother me?" And she added, turning to Vera, "You'll never understand

it, because you've never loved anyone. You have no heart! You are a

Madame de Genlis and nothing more" (this nickname, bestowed on Vera by

Nicholas, was considered very stinging), "and your greatest pleasure

is to be unpleasant to people! Go and flirt with Berg as much as you

please," she finished quickly.



"I shall at any rate not run after a young man before visitors..."



"Well, now you've done what you wanted," put in Nicholas--"said

unpleasant things to everyone and upset them. Let's go to the

nursery."



All four, like a flock of scared birds, got up and left the room.



"The unpleasant things were said to me," remarked Vera, "I said none

to anyone."



"Madame de Genlis! Madame de Genlis!" shouted laughing voices

through the door.



The handsome Vera, who produced such an irritating and unpleasant

effect on everyone, smiled and, evidently unmoved by what had been

said to her, went to the looking glass and arranged her hair and

scarf. Looking at her own handsome face she seemed to become still

colder and calmer.



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In the drawing room the conversation was still going on.



"Ah, my dear," said the countess, "my life is not all roses

either. Don't I know that at the rate we are living our means won't

last long? It's all the Club and his easygoing nature. Even in the

country do we get any rest? Theatricals, hunting, and heaven knows

what besides! But don't let's talk about me; tell me how you managed

everything. I often wonder at you, Annette--how at your age you can

rush off alone in a carriage to Moscow, to Petersburg, to those

ministers and great people, and know how to deal with them all! It's

quite astonishing. How did you get things settled? I couldn't possibly

do it."



"Ah, my love," answered Anna Mikhaylovna, "God grant you never

know what it is to be left a widow without means and with a son you

love to distraction! One learns many things then," she added with a

certain pride. "That lawsuit taught me much. When I want to see one of

those big people I write a note: 'Princess So-and-So desires an

interview with So and-So,' and then I take a cab and go myself two,

three, or four times--till I get what I want. I don't mind what they

think of me."



"Well, and to whom did you apply about Bory?" asked the countess.

"You see yours is already an officer in the Guards, while my

Nicholas is going as a cadet. There's no one to interest himself for

him. To whom did you apply?"



"To Prince Vasili. He was so kind. He at once agreed to

everything, and put the matter before the Emperor," said Princess Anna

Mikhaylovna enthusiastically, quite forgetting all the humiliation she

had endured to gain her end.



"Has Prince Vasili aged much?" asked the countess. "I have not

seen him since we acted together at the Rumyantsovs' theatricals. I

expect he has forgotten me. He paid me attentions in those days," said

the countess, with a smile.



"He is just the same as ever," replied Anna Mikhaylovna,

"overflowing with amiability. His position has not turned his head

at all. He said to me, 'I am sorry I can do so little for you, dear

Princess. I am at your command.' Yes, he is a fine fellow and a very

kind relation. But, Nataly, you know my love for my son: I would do

anything for his happiness! And my affairs are in such a bad way

that my position is now a terrible one," continued Anna Mikhaylovna,

sadly, dropping her voice. "My wretched lawsuit takes all I have and

makes no progress. Would you believe it, I have literally not a

penny and don't know how to equip Boris." She took out her

handkerchief and began to cry. "I need five hundred rubles, and have

only one twenty-five-ruble note. I am in such a state.... My only hope

now is in Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov. If he will not assist

his godson--you know he is Bory's godfather--and allow him something

for his maintenance, all my trouble will have been thrown away.... I

shall not be able to equip him."

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The countess' eyes filled with tears and she pondered in silence.



"I often think, though, perhaps it's a sin," said the princess,

"that here lives Count Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov so rich, all

alone... that tremendous fortune... and what is his life worth? It's a

burden to him, and Bory's life is only just beginning...."



"Surely he will leave something to Boris," said the countess.



"Heaven only knows, my dear! These rich grandees are so selfish.

Still, I will take Boris and go to see him at once, and I shall

speak to him straight out. Let people think what they will of me, it's

really all the same to me when my son's fate is at stake." The

princess rose. "It's now two o'clock and you dine at four. There

will just be time."



And like a practical Petersburg lady who knows how to make the

most of time, Anna Mikhaylovna sent someone to call her son, and

went into the anteroom with him.



"Good-by, my dear," said she to the countess who saw her to the

door, and added in a whisper so that her son should not hear, "Wish me

good luck."



"Are you going to Count Cyril Vladimirovich, my dear?" said the

count coming out from the dining hall into the anteroom, and he added:

"If he is better, ask Pierre to dine with us. He has been to the

house, you know, and danced with the children. Be sure to invite

him, my dear. We will see how Taras distinguishes himself today. He

says Count Orlov never gave such a dinner as ours will be!"









CHAPTER XV



"My dear Boris," said Princess Anna Mikhaylovna to her son as

Countess Rostova's carriage in which they were seated drove over the

straw covered street and turned into the wide courtyard of Count Cyril

Vladimirovich Bezukhov's house. "My dear Boris," said the mother,

drawing her hand from beneath her old mantle and laying it timidly and

tenderly on her son's arm, "be affectionate and attentive to him.

Count Cyril Vladimirovich is your godfather after all, your future

depends on him. Remember that, my dear, and be nice to him, as you

so well know how to be."



"If only I knew that anything besides humiliation would come of

it..." answered her son coldly. "But I have promised and will do it

for your sake."



Although the hall porter saw someone's carriage standing at the

entrance, after scrutinizing the mother and son (who without asking to

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be announced had passed straight through the glass porch between the

rows of statues in niches) and looking significantly at the lady's old

cloak, he asked whether they wanted the count or the princesses,

and, hearing that they wished to see the count, said his excellency

was worse today, and that his excellency was not receiving anyone.



"We may as well go back," said the son in French.



"My dear!" exclaimed his mother imploringly, again laying her hand

on his arm as if that touch might soothe or rouse him.



Boris said no more, but looked inquiringly at his mother without

taking off his cloak.



"My friend," said Anna Mikhaylovna in gentle tones, addressing the

hall porter, "I know Count Cyril Vladimirovich is very ill... that's

why I have come... I am a relation. I shall not disturb him, my

friend... I only need see Prince Vasili Sergeevich: he is staying

here, is he not? Please announce me."



The hall porter sullenly pulled a bell that rang upstairs, and

turned away.



"Princess Drubetskaya to see Prince Vasili Sergeevich," he called to

a footman dressed in knee breeches, shoes, and a swallow-tail coat,

who ran downstairs and looked over from the halfway landing.



The mother smoothed the folds of her dyed silk dress before a

large Venetian mirror in the wall, and in her trodden-down shoes

briskly ascended the carpeted stairs.



"My dear," she said to her son, once more stimulating him by a

touch, "you promised me!"



The son, lowering his eyes, followed her quietly.



They entered the large hall, from which one of the doors led to

the apartments assigned to Prince Vasili.



Just as the mother and son, having reached the middle of the hall,

were about to ask their way of an elderly footman who had sprung up as

they entered, the bronze handle of one of the doors turned and

Prince Vasili came out--wearing a velvet coat with a single star on

his breast, as was his custom when at home--taking leave of a

good-looking, dark-haired man. This was the celebrated Petersburg

doctor, Lorrain.



"Then it is certain?" said the prince.



"Prince, humanum est errare,* but..." replied the doctor, swallowing

his r's, and pronouncing the Latin words with a French accent.





*To err is human.

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"Very well, very well..."



Seeing Anna Mikhaylovna and her son, Prince Vasili dismissed the

doctor with a bow and approached them silently and with a look of

inquiry. The son noticed that an expression of profound sorrow

suddenly clouded his mother's face, and he smiled slightly.



"Ah, Prince! In what sad circumstances we meet again! And how is our

dear invalid?" said she, as though unaware of the cold offensive

look fixed on her.



Prince Vasili stared at her and at Boris questioningly and

perplexed. Boris bowed politely. Prince Vasili without acknowledging

the bow turned to Anna Mikhaylovna, answering her query by a

movement of the head and lips indicating very little hope for the

patient.



"Is it possible?" exclaimed Anna Mikhaylovna. "Oh, how awful! It

is terrible to think.... This is my son," she added, indicating Boris.

"He wanted to thank you himself."



Boris bowed again politely.



"Believe me, Prince, a mother's heart will never forget what you

have done for us."



"I am glad I was able to do you a service, my dear Anna

Mikhaylovna," said Prince Vasili, arranging his lace frill, and in

tone and manner, here in Moscow to Anna Mikhaylovna whom he had placed

under an obligation, assuming an air of much greater importance than

he had done in Petersburg at Anna Scherer's reception.



"Try to serve well and show yourself worthy," added he, addressing

Boris with severity. "I am glad.... Are you here on leave?" he went on

in his usual tone of indifference.



"I am awaiting orders to join my new regiment, your excellency,"

replied Boris, betraying neither annoyance at the prince's brusque

manner nor a desire to enter into conversation, but speaking so

quietly and respectfully that the prince gave him a searching glance.



"Are you living with your mother?"



"I am living at Countess Rostova's," replied Boris, again adding,

"your excellency."



"That is, with Ilya Rostov who married Nataly Shinshina," said

Anna Mikhaylovna.



"I know, I know," answered Prince Vasili in his monotonous voice. "I

never could understand how Nataly made up her mind to marry that

unlicked bear! A perfectly absurd and stupid fellow, and a gambler

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too, I am told."



"But a very kind man, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a pathetic

smile, as though she too knew that Count Rostov deserved this censure,

but asked him not to be too hard on the poor old man. "What do the

doctors say?" asked the princess after a pause, her worn face again

expressing deep sorrow.



"They give little hope," replied the prince.



"And I should so like to thank Uncle once for all his kindness to me

and Boris. He is his godson," she added, her tone suggesting that this

fact ought to give Prince Vasili much satisfaction.



Prince Vasili became thoughtful and frowned. Anna Mikhaylovna saw

that he was afraid of finding in her a rival for Count Bezukhov's

fortune, and hastened to reassure him.



"If it were not for my sincere affection and devotion to Uncle,"

said she, uttering the word with peculiar assurance and unconcern,

"I know his character: noble, upright... but you see he has no one

with him except the young princesses.... They are still young...." She

bent her head and continued in a whisper: "Has he performed his

final duty, Prince? How priceless are those last moments! It can

make things no worse, and it is absolutely necessary to prepare him if

he is so ill. We women, Prince," and she smiled tenderly, "always know

how to say these things. I absolutely must see him, however painful it

may be for me. I am used to suffering."



Evidently the prince understood her, and also understood, as he

had done at Anna Pavlovna's, that it would be difficult to get rid

of Anna Mikhaylovna.



"Would not such a meeting be too trying for him, dear Anna

Mikhaylovna?" said he. "Let us wait until evening. The doctors are

expecting a crisis."



"But one cannot delay, Prince, at such a moment! Consider that the

welfare of his soul is at stake. Ah, it is awful: the duties of a

Christian..."



A door of one of the inner rooms opened and one of the princesses,

the count's niece, entered with a cold, stern face. The length of

her body was strikingly out of proportion to her short legs. Prince

Vasili turned to her.



"Well, how is he?"



"Still the same; but what can you expect, this noise..." said the

princess, looking at Anna Mikhaylovna as at a stranger.



"Ah, my dear, I hardly knew you," said Anna Mikhaylovna with a happy

smile, ambling lightly up to the count's niece. "I have come, and am

at your service to help you nurse my uncle. I imagine what you have

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gone through," and she sympathetically turned up her eyes.



The princess gave no reply and did not even smile, but left the room

as Anna Mikhaylovna took off her gloves and, occupying the position

she had conquered, settled down in an armchair, inviting Prince Vasili

to take a seat beside her.



"Boris," she said to her son with a smile, "I shall go in to see the

count, my uncle; but you, my dear, had better go to Pierre meanwhile

and don't forget to give him the Rostovs' invitation. They ask him

to dinner. I suppose he won't go?" she continued, turning to the

prince.



"On the contrary," replied the prince, who had plainly become

depressed, "I shall be only too glad if you relieve me of that young

man.... Here he is, and the count has not once asked for him."



He shrugged his shoulders. A footman conducted Boris down one flight

of stairs and up another, to Pierre's rooms.









CHAPTER XVI





Pierre, after all, had not managed to choose a career for himself in

Petersburg, and had been expelled from there for riotous conduct and

sent to Moscow. The story told about him at Count Rostov's was true.

Pierre had taken part in tying a policeman to a bear. He had now

been for some days in Moscow and was staying as usual at his

father's house. Though he expected that the story of his escapade

would be already known in Moscow and that the ladies about his father-

who were never favorably disposed toward him--would have used it to

turn the count against him, he nevertheless on the day of his

arrival went to his father's part of the house. Entering the drawing

room, where the princesses spent most of their time, he greeted the

ladies, two of whom were sitting at embroidery frames while a third

read aloud. It was the eldest who was reading--the one who had met

Anna Mikhaylovna. The two younger ones were embroidering: both were

rosy and pretty and they differed only in that one had a little mole

on her lip which made her much prettier. Pierre was received as if

he were a corpse or a leper. The eldest princess paused in her reading

and silently stared at him with frightened eyes; the second assumed

precisely the same expression; while the youngest, the one with the

mole, who was of a cheerful and lively disposition, bent over her

frame to hide a smile probably evoked by the amusing scene she

foresaw. She drew her wool down through the canvas and, scarcely

able to refrain from laughing, stooped as if trying to make out the

pattern.



"How do you do, cousin?" said Pierre. "You don't recognize me?"



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"I recognize you only too well, too well."



"How is the count? Can I see him?" asked Pierre, awkwardly as usual,

but unabashed.



"The count is suffering physically and mentally, and apparently

you have done your best to increase his mental sufferings."



"Can I see the count?" Pierre again asked.



"Hm.... If you wish to kill him, to kill him outright, you can see

him... Olga, go and see whether Uncle's beef tea is ready--it is

almost time," she added, giving Pierre to understand that they were

busy, and busy making his father comfortable, while evidently he,

Pierre, was only busy causing him annoyance.



Olga went out. Pierre stood looking at the sisters; then he bowed

and said: "Then I will go to my rooms. You will let me know when I can

see him."



And he left the room, followed by the low but ringing laughter of

the sister with the mole.



Next day Prince Vasili had arrived and settled in the count's house.

He sent for Pierre and said to him: "My dear fellow, if you are

going to behave here as you did in Petersburg, you will end very

badly; that is all I have to say to you. The count is very, very

ill, and you must not see him at all."



Since then Pierre had not been disturbed and had spent the whole

time in his rooms upstairs.



When Boris appeared at his door Pierre was pacing up and down his

room, stopping occasionally at a corner to make menacing gestures at

the wall, as if running a sword through an invisible foe, and

glaring savagely over his spectacles, and then again resuming his

walk, muttering indistinct words, shrugging his shoulders and

gesticulating.



"England is done for," said he, scowling and pointing his finger

at someone unseen. "Mr. Pitt, as a traitor to the nation and to the

rights of man, is sentenced to..." But before Pierre--who at that

moment imagined himself to be Napoleon in person and to have just

effected the dangerous crossing of the Straits of Dover and captured

London--could pronounce Pitt's sentence, he saw a well-built and

handsome young officer entering his room. Pierre paused. He had left

Moscow when Boris was a boy of fourteen, and had quite forgotten

him, but in his usual impulsive and hearty way he took Boris by the

hand with a friendly smile.



"Do you remember me?" asked Boris quietly with a pleasant smile.

"I have come with my mother to see the count, but it seems he is not

well."



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"Yes, it seems he is ill. People are always disturbing him,"

answered Pierre, trying to remember who this young man was.



Boris felt that Pierre did not recognize him but did not consider it

necessary to introduce himself, and without experiencing the least

embarrassment looked Pierre straight in the face.



"Count Rostov asks you to come to dinner today," said he, after a

considerable pause which made Pierre feel uncomfortable.



"Ah, Count Rostov!" exclaimed Pierre joyfully. "Then you are his

son, Ilya? Only fancy, I didn't know you at first. Do you remember how

we went to the Sparrow Hills with Madame Jacquot?... It's such an

age..."



"You are mistaken," said Boris deliberately, with a bold and

slightly sarcastic smile. "I am Boris, son of Princess Anna

Mikhaylovna Drubetskaya. Rostov, the father, is Ilya, and his son is

Nicholas. I never knew any Madame Jacquot."



Pierre shook his head and arms as if attacked by mosquitoes or bees.



"Oh dear, what am I thinking about? I've mixed everything up. One

has so many relatives in Moscow! So you are Boris? Of course. Well,

now we know where we are. And what do you think of the Boulogne

expedition? The English will come off badly, you know, if Napoleon

gets across the Channel. I think the expedition is quite feasible.

If only Villeneuve doesn't make a mess of things!"



Boris knew nothing about the Boulogne expedition; he did not read

the papers and it was the first time he had heard Villeneuve's name.



"We here in Moscow are more occupied with dinner parties and scandal

than with politics," said he in his quiet ironical tone. "I know

nothing about it and have not thought about it. Moscow is chiefly busy

with gossip," he continued. "Just now they are talking about you and

your father."



Pierre smiled in his good-natured way as if afraid for his

companion's sake that the latter might say something he would

afterwards regret. But Boris spoke distinctly, clearly, and dryly,

looking straight into Pierre's eyes.



"Moscow has nothing else to do but gossip," Boris went on.

"Everybody is wondering to whom the count will leave his fortune,

though he may perhaps outlive us all, as I sincerely hope he will..."



"Yes, it is all very horrid," interrupted Pierre, "very horrid."



Pierre was still afraid that this officer might inadvertently say

something disconcerting to himself.



"And it must seem to you," said Boris flushing slightly, but not

changing his tone or attitude, "it must seem to you that everyone is

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trying to get something out of the rich man?"



"So it does," thought Pierre.



"But I just wish to say, to avoid misunderstandings, that you are

quite mistaken if you reckon me or my mother among such people. We are

very poor, but for my own part at any rate, for the very reason that

your father is rich, I don't regard myself as a relation of his, and

neither I nor my mother would ever ask or take anything from him."



For a long time Pierre could not understand, but when he did, he

jumped up from the sofa, seized Boris under the elbow in his quick,

clumsy way, and, blushing far more than Boris, began to speak with a

feeling of mingled shame and vexation.



"Well, this is strange! Do you suppose I... who could think?... I

know very well..."



But Boris again interrupted him.



"I am glad I have spoken out fully. Perhaps you did not like it? You

must excuse me," said he, putting Pierre at ease instead of being

put at ease by him, "but I hope I have not offended you. I always make

it a rule to speak out... Well, what answer am I to take? Will you

come to dinner at the Rostovs'?"



And Boris, having apparently relieved himself of an onerous duty and

extricated himself from an awkward situation and placed another in it,

became quite pleasant again.



"No, but I say," said Pierre, calming down, "you are a wonderful

fellow! What you have just said is good, very good. Of course you

don't know me. We have not met for such a long time... not since we

were children. You might think that I... I understand, quite

understand. I could not have done it myself, I should not have had the

courage, but it's splendid. I am very glad to have made your

acquaintance. It's queer," he added after a pause, "that you should

have suspected me!" He began to laugh. "Well, what of it! I hope we'll

get better acquainted," and he pressed Boris' hand. "Do you know, I

have not once been in to see the count. He has not sent for me.... I

am sorry for him as a man, but what can one do?"



"And so you think Napoleon will manage to get an army across?" asked

Boris with a smile.



Pierre saw that Boris wished to change the subject, and being of the

same mind he began explaining the advantages and disadvantages of

the Boulogne expedition.



A footman came in to summon Boris--the princess was going. Pierre,

in order to make Boris' better acquaintance, promised to come to

dinner, and warmly pressing his hand looked affectionately over his

spectacles into Boris' eyes. After he had gone Pierre continued pacing

up and down the room for a long time, no longer piercing an

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imaginary foe with his imaginary sword, but smiling at the remembrance

of that pleasant, intelligent, and resolute young man.



As often happens in early youth, especially to one who leads a

lonely life, he felt an unaccountable tenderness for this young man

and made up his mind that they would be friends.



Prince Vasili saw the princess off. She held a handkerchief to her

eyes and her face was tearful.



"It is dreadful, dreadful!" she was saying, "but cost me what it may

I shall do my duty. I will come and spend the night. He must not be

left like this. Every moment is precious. I can't think why his nieces

put it off. Perhaps God will help me to find a way to prepare

him!... Adieu, Prince! May God support you..."



"Adieu, ma bonne," answered Prince Vasili turning away from her.



"Oh, he is in a dreadful state," said the mother to her son when

they were in the carriage. "He hardly recognizes anybody."



"I don't understand, Mamma--what is his attitude to Pierre?" asked

the son.



"The will will show that, my dear; our fate also depends on it."



"But why do you expect that he will leave us anything?"



"Ah, my dear! He is so rich, and we are so poor!"



"Well, that is hardly a sufficient reason, Mamma..."



"Oh, Heaven! How ill he is!" exclaimed the mother.









CHAPTER XVII



After Anna Mikhaylovna had driven off with her son to visit Count

Cyril Vladimirovich Bezukhov, Countess Rostova sat for a long time all

alone applying her handkerchief to her eyes. At last she rang.



"What is the matter with you, my dear?" she said crossly to the maid

who kept her waiting some minutes. "Don't you wish to serve me? Then

I'll find you another place."



The countess was upset by her friend's sorrow and humiliating

poverty, and was therefore out of sorts, a state of mind which with

her always found expression in calling her maid "my dear" and speaking

to her with exaggerated politeness.



"I am very sorry, ma'am," answered the maid.

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"Ask the count to come to me."



The count came waddling in to see his wife with a rather guilty look

as usual.



"Well, little countess? What a saute of game au madere we are to

have, my dear! I tasted it. The thousand rubles I paid for Taras

were not ill-spent. He is worth it!"



He sat down by his wife, his elbows on his knees and his hands

ruffling his gray hair.



"What are your commands, little countess?"



"You see, my dear... What's that mess?" she said, pointing to his

waistcoat. "It's the saute, most likely," she added with a smile.

"Well, you see, Count, I want some money."



Her face became sad.



"Oh, little countess!"... and the count began bustling to get out

his pocketbook.



"I want a great deal, Count! I want five hundred rubles," and taking

out her cambric handkerchief she began wiping her husband's waistcoat.



"Yes, immediately, immediately! Hey, who's there?" he called out

in a tone only used by persons who are certain that those they call

will rush to obey the summons. "Send Dmitri to me!"



Dmitri, a man of good family who had been brought up in the

count's house and now managed all his affairs, stepped softly into the

room.



"This is what I want, my dear fellow," said the count to the

deferential young man who had entered. "Bring me..." he reflected a

moment, "yes, bring me seven hundred rubles, yes! But mind, don't

bring me such tattered and dirty notes as last time, but nice clean

ones for the countess."



"Yes, Dmitri, clean ones, please," said the countess, sighing

deeply.



"When would you like them, your excellency?" asked Dmitri. "Allow me

to inform you... But, don't be uneasy," he added, noticing that the

count was beginning to breathe heavily and quickly which was always

a sign of approaching anger. "I was forgetting... Do you wish it

brought at once?"



"Yes, yes; just so! Bring it. Give it to the countess."



"What a treasure that Dmitri is," added the count with a smile

when the young man had departed. "There is never any 'impossible'

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with him. That's a thing I hate! Everything is possible."



"Ah, money, Count, money! How much sorrow it causes in the world,"

said the countess. "But I am in great need of this sum."



"You, my little countess, are a notorious spendthrift," said the

count, and having kissed his wife's hand he went back to his study.



When Anna Mikhaylovna returned from Count Bezukhov's the money,

all in clean notes, was lying ready under a handkerchief on the

countess' little table, and Anna Mikhaylovna noticed that something

was agitating her.



"Well, my dear?" asked the countess.



"Oh, what a terrible state he is in! One would not know him, he is

so ill! I was only there a few moments and hardly said a word..."



"Annette, for heaven's sake don't refuse me," the countess began,

with a blush that looked very strange on her thin, dignified,

elderly face, and she took the money from under the handkerchief.



Anna Mikhaylovna instantly guessed her intention and stooped to be

ready to embrace the countess at the appropriate moment.



"This is for Boris from me, for his outfit."



Anna Mikhaylovna was already embracing her and weeping. The countess

wept too. They wept because they were friends, and because they were

kindhearted, and because they--friends from childhood--had to think

about such a base thing as money, and because their youth was over....

But those tears were pleasant to them both.









CHAPTER XVIII





Countess Rostova, with her daughters and a large number of guests,

was already seated in the drawing room. The count took the gentlemen

into his study and showed them his choice collection of Turkish pipes.

From time to time he went out to ask: "Hasn't she come yet?" They were

expecting Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, known in society as le

terrible dragon, a lady distinguished not for wealth or rank, but

for common sense and frank plainness of speech. Marya Dmitrievna was

known to the Imperial family as well as to all Moscow and

Petersburg, and both cities wondered at her, laughed privately at

her rudenesses, and told good stories about her, while none the less

all without exception respected and feared her.



In the count's room, which was full of tobacco smoke, they talked of

war that had been announced in a manifesto, and about the

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recruiting. None of them had yet seen the manifesto, but they all knew

it had appeared. The count sat on the sofa between two guests who were

smoking and talking. He neither smoked nor talked, but bending his

head first to one side and then to the other watched the smokers

with evident pleasure and listened to the conversation of his two

neighbors, whom he egged on against each other.



One of them was a sallow, clean-shaven civilian with a thin and

wrinkled face, already growing old, though he was dressed like a

most fashionable young man. He sat with his legs up on the sofa as

if quite at home and, having stuck an amber mouthpiece far into his

mouth, was inhaling the smoke spasmodically and screwing up his

eyes. This was an old bachelor, Shinshin, a cousin of the countess', a

man with "a sharp tongue" as they said in Moscow society. He seemed to

be condescending to his companion. The latter, a fresh, rosy officer

of the Guards, irreproachably washed, brushed, and buttoned, held

his pipe in the middle of his mouth and with red lips gently inhaled

the smoke, letting it escape from his handsome mouth in rings. This

was Lieutenant Berg, an officer in the Semenov regiment with whom

Boris was to travel to join the army, and about whom Natasha had,

teased her elder sister Vera, speaking of Berg as her "intended."

The count sat between them and listened attentively. His favorite

occupation when not playing boston, a card game he was very fond of,

was that of listener, especially when he succeeded in setting two

loquacious talkers at one another.



"Well, then, old chap, mon tres honorable Alphonse Karlovich,"

said Shinshin, laughing ironically and mixing the most ordinary

Russian expressions with the choicest French phrases--which was a

peculiarity of his speech. "Vous comptez vous faire des rentes sur

l'etat;* you want to make something out of your company?"





*You expect to make an income out of the government.





"No, Peter Nikolaevich; I only want to show that in the cavalry

the advantages are far less than in the infantry. Just consider my own

position now, Peter Nikolaevich..."



Berg always spoke quietly, politely, and with great precision. His

conversation always related entirely to himself; he would remain

calm and silent when the talk related to any topic that had no

direct bearing on himself. He could remain silent for hours without

being at all put out of countenance himself or making others

uncomfortable, but as soon as the conversation concerned himself he

would begin to talk circumstantially and with evident satisfaction.



"Consider my position, Peter Nikolaevich. Were I in the cavalry I

should get not more than two hundred rubles every four months, even

with the rank of lieutenant; but as it is I receive two hundred and

thirty," said he, looking at Shinshin and the count with a joyful,

pleasant smile, as if it were obvious to him that his success must

always be the chief desire of everyone else.

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"Besides that, Peter Nikolaevich, by exchanging into the Guards I

shall be in a more prominent position," continued Berg, "and vacancies

occur much more frequently in the Foot Guards. Then just think what

can be done with two hundred and thirty rubles! I even manage to put a

little aside and to send something to my father," he went on, emitting

a smoke ring.



"La balance y est...* A German knows how to skin a flint, as the

proverb says," remarked Shinshin, moving his pipe to the other side of

his mouth and winking at the count.





*So that squares matters.





The count burst out laughing. The other guests seeing that

Shinshin was talking came up to listen. Berg, oblivious of irony or

indifference, continued to explain how by exchanging into the Guards

he had already gained a step on his old comrades of the Cadet Corps;

how in wartime the company commander might get killed and he, as

senior in the company, might easily succeed to the post; how popular

he was with everyone in the regiment, and how satisfied his father was

with him. Berg evidently enjoyed narrating all this, and did not

seem to suspect that others, too, might have their own interests.

But all he said was so prettily sedate, and the naivete of his

youthful egotism was so obvious, that he disarmed his hearers.



"Well, my boy, you'll get along wherever you go--foot or horse--that

I'll warrant," said Shinshin, patting him on the shoulder and taking

his feet off the sofa.



Berg smiled joyously. The count, by his guests, went into the

drawing room.



It was just the moment before a big dinner when the assembled

guests, expecting the summons to zakuska,* avoid engaging in any

long conversation but think it necessary to move about and talk, in

order to show that they are not at all impatient for their food. The

host and hostess look toward the door, and now and then glance at

one another, and the visitors try to guess from these glances who,

or what, they are waiting for--some important relation who has not yet

arrived, or a dish that is not yet ready.





*Hors d'oeuvres.





Pierre had come just at dinnertime and was sitting awkwardly in

the middle of the drawing room on the first chair he had come

across, blocking the way for everyone. The countess tried to make

him talk, but he went on naively looking around through his spectacles

as if in search of somebody and answered all her questions in

monosyllables. He was in the way and was the only one who did not

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notice the fact. Most of the guests, knowing of the affair with the

bear, looked with curiosity at this big, stout, quiet man, wondering

how such a clumsy, modest fellow could have played such a prank on a

policeman.



"You have only lately arrived?" the countess asked him.



"Oui, madame," replied he, looking around him.



"You have not yet seen my husband?"



"Non, madame." He smiled quite inappropriately.



"You have been in Paris recently, I believe? I suppose it's very

interesting."



"Very interesting."



The countess exchanged glances with Anna Mikhaylovna. The latter

understood that she was being asked to entertain this young man, and

sitting down beside him she began to speak about his father; but he

answered her, as he had the countess, only in monosyllables. The other

guests were all conversing with one another. "The Razumovskis... It

was charming... You are very kind... Countess Apraksina..." was

heard on all sides. The countess rose and went into the ballroom.



"Marya Dmitrievna?" came her voice from there.



"Herself," came the answer in a rough voice, and Marya Dmitrievna

entered the room.



All the unmarried ladies and even the married ones except the very

oldest rose. Marya Dmitrievna paused at the door. Tall and stout,

holding high her fifty-year-old head with its gray curls, she stood

surveying the guests, and leisurely arranged her wide sleeves as if

rolling them up. Marya Dmitrievna always spoke in Russian.



"Health and happiness to her whose name day we are keeping and to

her children," she said, in her loud, full-toned voice which drowned

all others. "Well, you old sinner," she went on, turning to the

count who was kissing her hand, "you're feeling dull in Moscow, I

daresay? Nowhere to hunt with your dogs? But what is to be done, old

man? Just see how these nestlings are growing up," and she pointed

to the girls. "You must look for husbands for them whether you like it

or not...."



"Well," said she, "how's my Cossack?" (Marya Dmitrievna always called

Natasha a Cossack) and she stroked the child's arm as she came up

fearless and gay to kiss her hand. "I know she's a scamp of a girl,

but I like her."



She took a pair of pear-shaped ruby earrings from her huge

reticule and, having given them to the rosy Natasha, who beamed with

the pleasure of her saint's-day fete, turned away at once and

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addressed herself to Pierre.



"Eh, eh, friend! Come here a bit," said she, assuming a soft high

tone of voice. "Come here, my friend..." and she ominously tucked up

her sleeves still higher. Pierre approached, looking at her in a

childlike way through his spectacles.



"Come nearer, come nearer, friend! I used to be the only one to tell

your father the truth when he was in favor, and in your case it's my

evident duty." She paused. All were silent, expectant of what was to

follow, for this was dearly only a prelude.



"A fine lad! My word! A fine lad!... His father lies on his deathbed

and he amuses himself setting a policeman astride a bear! For shame,

sir, for shame! It would be better if you went to the war."



She turned away and gave her hand to the count, who could hardly

keep from laughing.



"Well, I suppose it is time we were at table?" said Marya

Dmitrievna.



The count went in first with Marya Dmitrievna, the countess followed

on the arm of a colonel of hussars, a man of importance to them

because Nicholas was to go with him to the regiment; then came Anna

Mikhaylovna with Shinshin. Berg gave his arm to Vera. The smiling

Julie Karagina went in with Nicholas. After them other couples

followed, filling the whole dining hall, and last of all the children,

tutors, and governesses followed singly. The footmen began moving

about, chairs scraped, the band struck up in the gallery, and the

guests settled down in their places. Then the strains of the count's

household band were replaced by the clatter of knives and forks, the

voices of visitors, and the soft steps of the footmen. At one end of

the table sat the countess with Marya Dmitrievna on her right and Anna

Mikhaylovna on her left, the other lady visitors were farther down. At

the other end sat the count, with the hussar colonel on his left and

Shinshin and the other male visitors on his right. Midway down the

long table on one side sat the grownup young people: Vera beside Berg,

and Pierre beside Boris; and on the other side, the children,

tutors, and governesses. From behind the crystal decanters and fruit

vases the count kept glancing at his wife and her tall cap with its

light-blue ribbons, and busily filled his neighbors' glasses, not

neglecting his own. The countess in turn, without omitting her

duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the

pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their

redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At the ladies'

end an even chatter of voices was heard all the time, at the men's end

the voices sounded louder and louder, especially that of the colonel

of hussars who, growing more and more flushed, ate and drank so much

that the count held him up as a pattern to the other guests. Berg with

tender smiles was saying to Vera that love is not an earthly but a

heavenly feeling. Boris was telling his new friend Pierre who the

guests were and exchanging glances with Natasha, who was sitting

opposite. Pierre spoke little but examined the new faces, and ate a

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great deal. Of the two soups he chose turtle with savory patties and

went on to the game without omitting a single dish or one of the

wines. These latter the butler thrust mysteriously forward, wrapped in

a napkin, from behind the next man's shoulders and whispered: "Dry

Madeira"... "Hungarian"... or "Rhine wine" as the case might be. Of

the four crystal glasses engraved with the count's monogram that stood

before his plate, Pierre held out one at random and drank with

enjoyment, gazing with ever-increasing amiability at the other guests.

Natasha, who sat opposite, was looking at Boris as girls of thirteen

look at the boy they are in love with and have just kissed for the

first time. Sometimes that same look fell on Pierre, and that funny

lively little girl's look made him inclined to laugh without knowing

why.



Nicholas sat at some distance from Sonya, beside Julie Karagina,

to whom he was again talking with the same involuntary smile. Sonya

wore a company smile but was evidently tormented by jealousy; now

she turned pale, now blushed and strained every nerve to overhear what

Nicholas and Julie were saying to one another. The governess kept

looking round uneasily as if preparing to resent any slight that might

be put upon the children. The German tutor was trying to remember

all the dishes, wines, and kinds of dessert, in order to send a full

description of the dinner to his people in Germany; and he felt

greatly offended when the butler with a bottle wrapped in a napkin

passed him by. He frowned, trying to appear as if he did not want

any of that wine, but was mortified because no one would understand

that it was not to quench his thirst or from greediness that he wanted

it, but simply from a conscientious desire for knowledge.









CHAPTER XIX





At the men's end of the table the talk grew more and more

animated. The colonel told them that the declaration of war had

already appeared in Petersburg and that a copy, which he had himself

seen, had that day been forwarded by courier to the commander in

chief.



"And why the deuce are we going to fight Bonaparte?" remarked

Shinshin. "He has stopped Austria's cackle and I fear it will be our

turn next."



The colonel was a stout, tall, plethoric German, evidently devoted

to the service and patriotically Russian. He resented Shinshin's

remark.



"It is for the reasson, my goot sir," said he, speaking with a

German accent, "for the reasson zat ze Emperor knows zat. He

declares in ze manifessto zat he cannot fiew wiz indifference ze

danger vreatening Russia and zat ze safety and dignity of ze Empire as

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vell as ze sanctity of its alliances..." he spoke this last word

with particular emphasis as if in it lay the gist of the matter.



Then with the unerring official memory that characterized him he

repeated from the opening words of the manifesto:



... and the wish, which constitutes the Emperor's sole and

absolute aim--to establish peace in Europe on firm foundations--has

now decided him to despatch part of the army abroad and to create a

new condition for the attainment of that purpose.



"Zat, my dear sir, is vy..." he concluded, drinking a tumbler of

wine with dignity and looking to the count for approval.



"Connaissez-vous le Proverbe:* 'Jerome, Jerome, do not roam, but

turn spindles at home!'?" said Shinshin, puckering his brows and

smiling. "Cela nous convient a merveille.*[2] Suvorov now--he knew

what he was about; yet they beat him a plate couture,*[3] and where

are we to find Suvorovs now? Je vous demande un peu,"*[4] said he,

continually changing from French to Russian.





*Do you know the proverb?



*[2] That suits us down to the ground.



*[3] Hollow.



*[4] I just ask you that.





"Ve must vight to the last tr-r-op of our plood!" said the

colonel, thumping the table; "and ve must tie for our Emperor, and zen

all vill pe vell. And ve must discuss it as little as po-o-ossible"...

he dwelt particularly on the word possible... "as po-o-ossible," he

ended, again turning to the count. "Zat is how ve old hussars look

at it, and zere's an end of it! And how do you, a young man and a

young hussar, how do you judge of it?" he added, addressing

Nicholas, who when he heard that the war was being discussed had

turned from his partner with eyes and ears intent on the colonel.



"I am quite of your opinion," replied Nicholas, flaming up,

turning his plate round and moving his wineglasses about with as

much decision and desperation as though he were at that moment

facing some great danger. "I am convinced that we Russians must die or

conquer," he concluded, conscious--as were others--after the words

were uttered that his remarks were too enthusiastic and emphatic for

the occasion and were therefore awkward.



"What you said just now was splendid!" said his partner Julie.



Sonya trembled all over and blushed to her ears and behind them

and down to her neck and shoulders while Nicholas was speaking.



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Pierre listened to the colonel's speech and nodded approvingly.



"That's fine," said he.



"The young man's a real hussar!" shouted the colonel, again thumping

the table.



"What are you making such a noise about over there?" Marya

Dmitrievna's deep voice suddenly inquired from the other end of the

table. "What are you thumping the table for?" she demanded of the

hussar, "and why are you exciting yourself? Do you think the French

are here?"



"I am speaking ze truce," replied the hussar with a smile.



"It's all about the war," the count shouted down the table. "You

know my son's going, Marya Dmitrievna? My son is going."



"I have four sons in the army but still I don't fret. It is all in

God's hands. You may die in your bed or God may spare you in a

battle," replied Marya Dmitrievna's deep voice, which easily carried

the whole length of the table.



"That's true!"



Once more the conversations concentrated, the ladies' at the one end

and the men's at the other.



"You won't ask," Natasha's little brother was saying; "I know you

won't ask!"



"I will," replied Natasha.



Her face suddenly flushed with reckless and joyous resolution. She

half rose, by a glance inviting Pierre, who sat opposite, to listen to

what was coming, and turning to her mother:



"Mamma!" rang out the clear contralto notes of her childish voice,

audible the whole length of the table.



"What is it?" asked the countess, startled; but seeing by her

daughter's face that it was only mischief, she shook a finger at her

sternly with a threatening and forbidding movement of her head.



The conversation was hushed.



"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" and Natasha's voice

sounded still more firm and resolute.



The countess tried to frown, but could not. Marya Dmitrievna shook

her fat finger.



"Cossack!" she said threateningly.



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Most of the guests, uncertain how to regard this sally, looked at

the elders.



"You had better take care!" said the countess.



"Mamma! What sweets are we going to have?" Natasha again cried

boldly, with saucy gaiety, confident that her prank would be taken

in good part.



Sonya and fat little Petya doubled up with laughter.



"You see! I have asked," whispered Natasha to her little brother and

to Pierre, glancing at him again.



"Ice pudding, but you won't get any," said Marya Dmitrievna.



Natasha saw there was nothing to be afraid of and so she braved even

Marya Dmitrievna.



"Marya Dmitrievna! What kind of ice pudding? I don't like ice

cream."



"Carrot ices."



"No! What kind, Marya Dmitrievna? What kind?" she almost screamed;

"I want to know!"



Marya Dmitrievna and the countess burst out laughing, and all the

guests joined in. Everyone laughed, not at Marya Dmitrievna's answer

but at the incredible boldness and smartness of this little girl who

had dared to treat Marya Dmitrievna in this fashion.



Natasha only desisted when she had been told that there would be

pineapple ice. Before the ices, champagne was served round. The band

again struck up, the count and countess kissed, and the guests,

leaving their seats, went up to "congratulate" the countess, and

reached across the table to clink glasses with the count, with the

children, and with one another. Again the footmen rushed about, chairs

scraped, and in the same order in which they had entered but with

redder faces, the guests returned to the drawing room and to the

count's study.









CHAPTER XX





The card tables were drawn out, sets made up for boston, and the

count's visitors settled themselves, some in the two drawing rooms,

some in the sitting room, some in the library.



The count, holding his cards fanwise, kept himself with difficulty

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from dropping into his usual after-dinner nap, and laughed at

everything. The young people, at the countess' instigation, gathered

round the clavichord and harp. Julie by general request played

first. After she had played a little air with variations on the

harp, she joined the other young ladies in begging Natasha and

Nicholas, who were noted for their musical talent, to sing

something. Natasha, who was treated as though she were grown up, was

evidently very proud of this but at the same time felt shy.



"What shall we sing?" she said.



"'The Brook,'" suggested Nicholas.



"Well, then, let's be quick. Boris, come here," said Natasha. "But

where is Sonya?"



She looked round and seeing that her friend was not in the room

ran to look for her.



Running into Sonya's room and not finding her there, Natasha ran

to the nursery, but Sonya was not there either. Natasha concluded that

she must be on the chest in the passage. The chest in the passage

was the place of mourning for the younger female generation in the

Rostov household. And there in fact was Sonya lying face downward on

Nurse's dirty feather bed on the top of the chest, crumpling her gauzy

pink dress under her, hiding her face with her slender fingers, and

sobbing so convulsively that her bare little shoulders shook.

Natasha's face, which had been so radiantly happy all that saint's

day, suddenly changed: her eyes became fixed, and then a shiver passed

down her broad neck and the corners of her mouth drooped.



"Sonya! What is it? What is the matter?... Oo... Oo... Oo...!" And

Natasha's large mouth widened, making her look quite ugly, and she

began to wail like a baby without knowing why, except that Sonya was

crying. Sonya tried to lift her head to answer but could not, and

hid her face still deeper in the bed. Natasha wept, sitting on the

blue-striped feather bed and hugging her friend. With an effort

Sonya sat up and began wiping her eyes and explaining.



"Nicholas is going away in a week's time, his... papers... have

come... he told me himself... but still I should not cry," and she

showed a paper she held in her hand--with the verses Nicholas had

written, "still, I should not cry, but you can't... no one can

understand... what a soul he has!"



And she began to cry again because he had such a noble soul.



"It's all very well for you... I am not envious... I love you and

Boris also," she went on, gaining a little strength; "he is nice...

there are no difficulties in your way.... But Nicholas is my cousin...

one would have to... the Metropolitan himself... and even then it

can't be done. And besides, if she tells Mamma" (Sonya looked upon the

countess as her mother and called her so) "that I am spoiling

Nicholas' career and am heartless and ungrateful, while truly... God

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is my witness," and she made the sign of the cross, "I love her so

much, and all of you, only Vera... And what for? What have I done to

her? I am so grateful to you that I would willingly sacrifice

everything, only I have nothing...."



Sonya could not continue, and again hid her face in her hands and in

the feather bed. Natasha began consoling her, but her face showed that

she understood all the gravity of her friend's trouble.



"Sonya," she suddenly exclaimed, as if she had guessed the true

reason of her friend's sorrow, "I'm sure Vera has said something to

you since dinner? Hasn't she?"



"Yes, these verses Nicholas wrote himself and I copied some

others, and she found them on my table and said she'd show them to

Mamma, and that I was ungrateful, and that Mamma would never allow him

to marry me, but that he'll marry Julie. You see how he's been with

her all day... Natasha, what have I done to deserve it?..."



And again she began to sob, more bitterly than before. Natasha

lifted her up, hugged her, and, smiling through her tears, began

comforting her.



"Sonya, don't believe her, darling! Don't believe her! Do you

remember how we and Nicholas, all three of us, talked in the sitting

room after supper? Why, we settled how everything was to be. I don't

quite remember how, but don't you remember that it could all be

arranged and how nice it all was? There's Uncle Shinshin's brother has

married his first cousin. And we are only second cousins, you know.

And Boris says it is quite possible. You know I have told him all

about it. And he is so clever and so good!" said Natasha. "Don't you

cry, Sonya, dear love, darling Sonya!" and she kissed her and laughed.

"Vera's spiteful; never mind her! And all will come right and she

won't say anything to Mamma. Nicholas will tell her himself, and he

doesn't care at all for Julie."



Natasha kissed her on the hair.



Sonya sat up. The little kitten brightened, its eyes shone, and it

seemed ready to lift its tail, jump down on its soft paws, and begin

playing with the ball of worsted as a kitten should.



"Do you think so?... Really? Truly?" she said, quickly smoothing her

frock and hair.



"Really, truly!" answered Natasha, pushing in a crisp lock that

had strayed from under her friend's plaits.



Both laughed.



"Well, let's go and sing 'The Brook.'"



"Come along!"



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"Do you know, that fat Pierre who sat opposite me is so funny!" said

Natasha, stopping suddenly. "I feel so happy!"



And she set off at a run along the passage.



Sonya, shaking off some down which clung to her and tucking away the

verses in the bosom of her dress close to her bony little chest, ran

after Natasha down the passage into the sitting room with flushed face

and light, joyous steps. At the visitors' request the young people

sang the quartette, "The Brook," with which everyone was delighted.

Then Nicholas sang a song he had just learned:





At nighttime in the moon's fair glow

How sweet, as fancies wander free,

To feel that in this world there's one

Who still is thinking but of thee!



That while her fingers touch the harp

Wafting sweet music music the lea,

It is for thee thus swells her heart,

Sighing its message out to thee...



A day or two, then bliss unspoilt,

But oh! till then I cannot live!...





He had not finished the last verse before the young people began

to get ready to dance in the large hall, and the sound of the feet and

the coughing of the musicians were heard from the gallery.





Pierre was sitting in the drawing-room where Shinshin had engaged

him, as a man recently returned from abroad, in a political

conversation in which several others joined but which bored Pierre.

When the music began Natasha came in and walking straight up to Pierre

said, laughing and blushing:



"Mamma told me to ask you to join the dancers."



"I am afraid of mixing the figures," Pierre replied; "but if you

will be my teacher..." And lowering his big arm he offered it to the

slender little girl.



While the couples were arranging themselves and the musicians tuning

up, Pierre sat down with his little partner. Natasha was perfectly

happy; she was dancing with a grown-up man, who had been abroad. She

was sitting in a conspicuous place and talking to him like a

grown-up lady. She had a fan in her hand that one of the ladies had

given her to hold. Assuming quite the pose of a society woman

(heaven knows when and where she had learned it) she talked with her

partner, fanning herself and smiling over the fan.



"Dear, dear! Just look at her!" exclaimed the countess as she

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crossed the ballroom, pointing to Natasha.



Natasha blushed and laughed.



"Well, really, Mamma! Why should you? What is there to be

surprised at?"





In the midst of the third ecossaise there was a clatter of chairs

being pushed back in the sitting room where the count and Marya

Dmitrievna had been playing cards with the majority of the more

distinguished and older visitors. They now, stretching themselves

after sitting so long, and replacing their purses and pocketbooks,

entered the ballroom. First came Marya Dmitrievna and the count,

both with merry countenances. The count, with playful ceremony

somewhat in ballet style, offered his bent arm to Marya Dmitrievna. He

drew himself up, a smile of debonair gallantry lit up his face and

as soon as the last figure of the ecossaise was ended, he clapped

his hands to the musicians and shouted up to their gallery, addressing

the first violin:



"Semen! Do you know the Daniel Cooper?"



This was the count's favorite dance, which he had danced in his

youth. (Strictly speaking, Daniel Cooper was one figure of the

anglaise.)



"Look at Papa!" shouted Natasha to the whole company, and quite

forgetting that she was dancing with a grown-up partner she bent her

curly head to her knees and made the whole room ring with her

laughter.



And indeed everybody in the room looked with a smile of pleasure

at the jovial old gentleman, who standing beside his tall and stout

partner, Marya Dmitrievna, curved his arms, beat time, straightened

his shoulders, turned out his toes, tapped gently with his foot,

and, by a smile that broadened his round face more and more,

prepared the onlookers for what was to follow. As soon as the

provocatively gay strains of Daniel Cooper (somewhat resembling

those of a merry peasant dance) began to sound, all the doorways of

the ballroom were suddenly filled by the domestic serfs--the men on

one side and the women on the other--who with beaming faces had come

to see their master making merry.



"Just look at the master! A regular eagle he is!" loudly remarked

the nurse, as she stood in one of the doorways.



The count danced well and knew it. But his partner could not and did

not want to dance well. Her enormous figure stood erect, her

powerful arms hanging down (she had handed her reticule to the

countess), and only her stern but handsome face really joined in the

dance. What was expressed by the whole of the count's plump figure, in

Marya Dmitrievna found expression only in her more and more beaming

face and quivering nose. But if the count, getting more and more

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into the swing of it, charmed the spectators by the unexpectedness

of his adroit maneuvers and the agility with which he capered about on

his light feet, Marya Dmitrievna produced no less impression by slight

exertions--the least effort to move her shoulders or bend her arms

when turning, or stamp her foot--which everyone appreciated in view of

her size and habitual severity. The dance grew livelier and

livelier. The other couples could not attract a moment's attention

to their own evolutions and did not even try to do so. All were

watching the count and Marya Dmitrievna. Natasha kept pulling everyone

by sleeve or dress, urging them to "look at Papa!" though as it was

they never took their eyes off the couple. In the intervals of the

dance the count, breathing deeply, waved and shouted to the

musicians to play faster. Faster, faster, and faster; lightly, more

lightly, and yet more lightly whirled the count, flying round Marya

Dmitrievna, now on his toes, now on his heels; until, turning his

partner round to her seat, he executed the final pas, raising his soft

foot backwards, bowing his perspiring head, smiling and making a

wide sweep with his arm, amid a thunder of applause and laughter led

by Natasha. Both partners stood still, breathing heavily and wiping

their faces with their cambric handkerchiefs.



"That's how we used to dance in our time, ma chere," said the count.



"That was a Daniel Cooper!" exclaimed Marya Dmitrievna, tucking up

her sleeves and puffing heavily.









CHAPTER XXI





While in the Rostovs' ballroom the sixth anglaise was being

danced, to a tune in which the weary musicians blundered, and while

tired footmen and cooks were getting the supper, Count Bezukhov had

a sixth stroke. The doctors pronounced recovery impossible. After a

mute confession, communion was administered to the dying man,

preparations made for the sacrament of unction, and in his house there

was the bustle and thrill of suspense usual at such moments. Outside

the house, beyond the gates, a group of undertakers, who hid

whenever a carriage drove up, waited in expectation of an important

order for an expensive funeral. The Military Governor of Moscow, who

had been assiduous in sending aides-de-camp to inquire after the

count's health, came himself that evening to bid a last farewell to

the celebrated grandee of Catherine's court, Count Bezukhov.



The magnificent reception room was crowded. Everyone stood up

respectfully when the Military Governor, having stayed about half an

hour alone with the dying man, passed out, slightly acknowledging

their bows and trying to escape as quickly as from the glances fixed

on him by the doctors, clergy, and relatives of the family. Prince

Vasili, who had grown thinner and paler during the last few days,

escorted him to the door, repeating something to him several times

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in low tones.



When the Military Governor had gone, Prince Vasili sat down all

alone on a chair in the ballroom, crossing one leg high over the

other, leaning his elbow on his knee and covering his face with his

hand. After sitting so for a while he rose, and, looking about him

with frightened eyes, went with unusually hurried steps down the

long corridor leading to the back of the house, to the room of the

eldest princess.



Those who were in the dimly lit reception room spoke in nervous

whispers, and, whenever anyone went into or came from the dying

man's room, grew silent and gazed with eyes full of curiosity or

expectancy at his door, which creaked slightly when opened.



"The limits of human life... are fixed and may not be o'erpassed,"

said an old priest to a lady who had taken a seat beside him and was

listening naively to his words.



"I wonder, is it not too late to administer unction?" asked the

lady, adding the priest's clerical title, as if she had no opinion

of her own on the subject.



"Ah, madam, it is a great sacrament," replied the priest, passing

his hand over the thin grizzled strands of hair combed back across his

bald head.



"Who was that? The Military Governor himself?" was being asked at

the other side of the room. "How young-looking he is!"



"Yes, and he is over sixty. I hear the count no longer recognizes

anyone. They wished to administer the sacrament of unction."



"I knew someone who received that sacrament seven times."



The second princess had just come from the sickroom with her eyes

red from weeping and sat down beside Dr. Lorrain, who was sitting in a

graceful pose under a portrait of Catherine, leaning his elbow on a

table.



"Beautiful," said the doctor in answer to a remark about the

weather. "The weather is beautiful, Princess; and besides, in Moscow

one feels as if one were in the country."



"Yes, indeed," replied the princess with a sigh. "So he may have

something to drink?"



Lorrain considered.



"Has he taken his medicine?"



"Yes."



The doctor glanced at his watch.

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"Take a glass of boiled water and put a pinch of cream of tartar,"

and he indicated with his delicate fingers what he meant by a pinch.



"Dere has neffer been a gase," a German doctor was saying to an

aide-de-camp, "dat one liffs after de sird stroke."



"And what a well-preserved man he was!" remarked the aide-de-camp.

"And who will inherit his wealth?" he added in a whisper.



"It von't go begging," replied the German with a smile.



Everyone again looked toward the door, which creaked as the second

princess went in with the drink she had prepared according to

Lorrain's instructions. The German doctor went up to Lorrain.



"Do you think he can last till morning?" asked the German,

addressing Lorrain in French which he pronounced badly.



Lorrain, pursing up his lips, waved a severely negative finger

before his nose.



"Tonight, not later," said he in a low voice, and he moved away with

a decorous smile of self-satisfaction at being able clearly to

understand and state the patient's condition.





Meanwhile Prince Vasili had opened the door into the princess' room.



In this room it was almost dark; only two tiny lamps were burning

before the icons and there was a pleasant scent of flowers and burnt

pastilles. The room was crowded with small pieces of furniture,

whatnots, cupboards, and little tables. The quilt of a high, white

feather bed was just visible behind a screen. A small dog began to

bark.



"Ah, is it you, cousin?"



She rose and smoothed her hair, which was as usual so extremely

smooth that it seemed to be made of one piece with her head and

covered with varnish.



"Has anything happened?" she asked. "I am so terrified."



"No, there is no change. I only came to have a talk about

business, Catiche,"* muttered the prince, seating himself wearily on

the chair she had just vacated. "You have made the place warm, I

must say," he remarked. "Well, sit down: let's have a talk."





*Catherine.





"I thought perhaps something had happened," she said with her

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unchanging stonily severe expression; and, sitting down opposite the

prince, she prepared to listen.



"I wished to get a nap, mon cousin, but I can't."



"Well, my dear?" said Prince Vasili, taking her hand and bending

it downwards as was his habit.



It was plain that this "well?" referred to much that they both

understood without naming.



The princess, who had a straight, rigid body, abnormally long for

her legs, looked directly at Prince Vasili with no sign of emotion

in her prominent gray eyes. Then she shook her head and glanced up

at the icons with a sigh. This might have been taken as an

expression of sorrow and devotion, or of weariness and hope of resting

before long. Prince Vasili understood it as an expression of

weariness.



"And I?" he said; "do you think it is easier for me? I am as worn

out as a post horse, but still I must have a talk with you, Catiche, a

very serious talk."



Prince Vasili said no more and his cheeks began to twitch nervously,

now on one side, now on the other, giving his face an unpleasant

expression which was never to be seen on it in a drawing room. His

eyes too seemed strange; at one moment they looked impudently sly

and at the next glanced round in alarm.



The princess, holding her little dog on her lap with her thin bony

hands, looked attentively into Prince Vasili's eyes evidently resolved

not to be the first to break silence, if she had to wait till morning.



"Well, you see, my dear princess and cousin, Catherine Semenovna,"

continued Prince Vasili, returning to his theme, apparently not

without an inner struggle; "at such a moment as this one must think of

everything. One must think of the future, of all of you... I love

you all, like children of my own, as you know."



The princess continued to look at him without moving, and with the

same dull expression.



"And then of course my family has also to be considered," Prince

Vasili went on, testily pushing away a little table without looking at

her. "You know, Catiche, that we--you three sisters, Mamontov, and

my wife--are the count's only direct heirs. I know, I know how hard it

is for you to talk or think of such matters. It is no easier for me;

but, my dear, I am getting on for sixty and must be prepared for

anything. Do you know I have sent for Pierre? The count," pointing

to his portrait, "definitely demanded that he should be called."



Prince Vasili looked questioningly at the princess, but could not

make out whether she was considering what he had just said or

whether she was simply looking at him.

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"There is one thing I constantly pray God to grant, mon cousin," she

replied, "and it is that He would be merciful to him and would allow

his noble soul peacefully to leave this..."



"Yes, yes, of course," interrupted Prince Vasili impatiently,

rubbing his bald head and angrily pulling back toward him the little

table that he had pushed away. "But... in short, the fact is... you

know yourself that last winter the count made a will by which he

left all his property, not to us his direct heirs, but to Pierre."



"He has made wills enough!" quietly remarked the princess. "But he

cannot leave the estate to Pierre. Pierre is illegitimate."



"But, my dear," said Prince Vasili suddenly, clutching the little

table and becoming more animated and talking more rapidly: "what if

a letter has been written to the Emperor in which the count asks for

Pierre's legitimation? Do you understand that in consideration of

the count's services, his request would be granted?..."



The princess smiled as people do who think they know more about

the subject under discussion than those they are talking with.



"I can tell you more," continued Prince Vasili, seizing her hand,

"that letter was written, though it was not sent, and the Emperor knew

of it. The only question is, has it been destroyed or not? If not,

then as soon as all is over," and Prince Vasili sighed to intimate

what he meant by the words all is over, "and the count's papers are

opened, the will and letter will be delivered to the Emperor, and

the petition will certainly be granted. Pierre will get everything

as the legitimate son."



"And our share?" asked the princess smiling ironically, as if

anything might happen, only not that.



"But, my poor Catiche, it is as clear as daylight! He will then be

the legal heir to everything and you won't get anything. You must

know, my dear, whether the will and letter were written, and whether

they have been destroyed or not. And if they have somehow been

overlooked, you ought to know where they are, and must find them,

because..."



"What next?" the princess interrupted, smiling sardonically and

not changing the expression of her eyes. "I am a woman, and you

think we are all stupid; but I know this: an illegitimate son cannot

inherit... un batard!"* she added, as if supposing that this

translation of the word would effectively prove to Prince Vasili the

invalidity of his contention.





*A bastard.





"Well, really, Catiche! Can't you understand! You are so

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intelligent, how is it you don't see that if the count has written a

letter to the Emperor begging him to recognize Pierre as legitimate,

it follows that Pierre will not be Pierre but will become Count

Bezukhov, and will then inherit everything under the will? And if

the will and letter are not destroyed, then you will have nothing

but the consolation of having been dutiful et tout ce qui s'ensuit!*

That's certain."





*And all that follows therefrom.





"I know the will was made, but I also know that it is invalid; and

you, mon cousin, seem to consider me a perfect fool," said the

princess with the expression women assume when they suppose they are

saying something witty and stinging.



"My dear Princess Catherine Semenovna," began Prince Vasili

impatiently, "I came here not to wrangle with you, but to talk about

your interests as with a kinswoman, a good, kind, true relation. And I

tell you for the tenth time that if the letter to the Emperor and

the will in Pierre's favor are among the count's papers, then, my dear

girl, you and your sisters are not heiresses! If you don't believe me,

then believe an expert. I have just been talking to Dmitri Onufrich"

(the family solicitor) "and he says the same."



At this a sudden change evidently took place in the princess' ideas;

her thin lips grew white, though her eyes did not change, and her

voice when she began to speak passed through such transitions as she

herself evidently did not expect.



"That would be a fine thing!" said she. "I never wanted anything and

I don't now."



She pushed the little dog off her lap and smoothed her dress.



"And this is gratitude--this is recognition for those who have

sacrificed everything for his sake!" she cried. "It's splendid!

Fine! I don't want anything, Prince."



"Yes, but you are not the only one. There are your sisters..."

replied Prince Vasili.



But the princess did not listen to him.



"Yes, I knew it long ago but had forgotten. I knew that I could

expect nothing but meanness, deceit, envy, intrigue, and

ingratitude--the blackest ingratitude--in this house..."



"Do you or do you not know where that will is?" insisted Prince

Vasili, his cheeks twitching more than ever.



"Yes, I was a fool! I still believed in people, loved them, and

sacrificed myself. But only the base, the vile succeed! I know who has

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been intriguing!"



The princess wished to rise, but the prince held her by the hand.

She had the air of one who has suddenly lost faith in the whole

human race. She gave her companion an angry glance.



"There is still time, my dear. You must remember, Catiche, that it

was all done casually in a moment of anger, of illness, and was

afterwards forgotten. Our duty, my dear, is to rectify his mistake, to

ease his last moments by not letting him commit this injustice, and

not to let him die feeling that he is rendering unhappy those who..."



"Who sacrificed everything for him," chimed in the princess, who

would again have risen had not the prince still held her fast, "though

he never could appreciate it. No, mon cousin," she added with a

sigh, "I shall always remember that in this world one must expect no

reward, that in this world there is neither honor nor justice. In this

world one has to be cunning and cruel."



"Now come, come! Be reasonable. I know your excellent heart."



"No, I have a wicked heart."



"I know your heart," repeated the prince. "I value your friendship

and wish you to have as good an opinion of me. Don't upset yourself,

and let us talk sensibly while there is still time, be it a day or

be it but an hour.... Tell me all you know about the will, and above

all where it is. You must know. We will take it at once and show it to

the count. He has, no doubt, forgotten it and will wish to destroy it.

You understand that my sole desire is conscientiously to carry out his

wishes; that is my only reason for being here. I came simply to help

him and you."



"Now I see it all! I know who has been intriguing--I know!" cried

the princess.



"That's not the point, my dear."



"It's that protege of yours, that sweet Princess Drubetskaya, that

Anna Mikhaylovna whom I would not take for a housemaid... the

infamous, vile woman!"



"Do not let us lose any time..."



"Ah, don't talk to me! Last winter she wheedled herself in here

and told the count such vile, disgraceful things about us,

especially about Sophie--I can't repeat them--that it made the count

quite ill and he would not see us for a whole fortnight. I know it was

then he wrote this vile, infamous paper, but I thought the thing was

invalid."



"We've got to it at last--why did you not tell me about it sooner?"



"It's in the inlaid portfolio that he keeps under his pillow,"

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said the princess, ignoring his question. "Now I know! Yes; if I

have a sin, a great sin, it is hatred of that vile woman!" almost

shrieked the princess, now quite changed. "And what does she come

worming herself in here for? But I will give her a piece of my mind.

The time will come!"









CHAPTER XXII





While these conversations were going on in the reception room and

the princess' room, a carriage containing Pierre (who had been sent

for) and Anna Mikhaylovna (who found it necessary to accompany him)

was driving into the court of Count Bezukhov's house. As the wheels

rolled softly over the straw beneath the windows, Anna Mikhaylovna,

having turned with words of comfort to her companion, realized that he

was asleep in his corner and woke him up. Rousing himself, Pierre

followed Anna Mikhaylovna out of the carriage, and only then began

to think of the interview with his dying father which awaited him.

He noticed that they had not come to the front entrance but to the

back door. While he was getting down from the carriage steps two

men, who looked like tradespeople, ran hurriedly from the entrance and

hid in the shadow of the wall. Pausing for a moment, Pierre noticed

several other men of the same kind hiding in the shadow of the house

on both sides. But neither Anna Mikhaylovna nor the footman nor the

coachman, who could not help seeing these people, took any notice of

them. "It seems to be all right," Pierre concluded, and followed

Anna Mikhaylovna. She hurriedly ascended the narrow dimly lit stone

staircase, calling to Pierre, who was lagging behind, to follow.

Though he did not see why it was necessary for him to go to the

count at all, still less why he had to go by the back stairs, yet

judging by Anna Mikhaylovna's air of assurance and haste, Pierre

concluded that it was all absolutely necessary. Halfway up the

stairs they were almost knocked over by some men who, carrying

pails, came running downstairs, their boots clattering. These men

pressed close to the wall to let Pierre and Anna Mikhaylovna pass

and did not evince the least surprise at seeing them there.



"Is this the way to the princesses' apartments?" asked Anna

Mikhaylovna of one of them.



"Yes," replied a footman in a bold loud voice, as if anything were

now permissible; "the door to the left, ma'am."



"Perhaps the count did not ask for me," said Pierre when he

reached the landing. "I'd better go to my own room."



Anna Mikhaylovna paused and waited for him to come up.



"Ah, my friend!" she said, touching his arm as she had done her

son's when speaking to him that afternoon, "believe me I suffer no

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less than you do, but be a man!"



"But really, hadn't I better go away?" he asked, looking kindly at

her over his spectacles.



"Ah, my dear friend! Forget the wrongs that may have been done

you. Think that he is your father... perhaps in the agony of death."

She sighed. "I have loved you like a son from the first. Trust

yourself to me, Pierre. I shall not forget your interests."



Pierre did not understand a word, but the conviction that all this

had to be grew stronger, and he meekly followed Anna Mikhaylovna who

was already opening a door.



This door led into a back anteroom. An old man, a servant of the

princesses, sat in a corner knitting a stocking. Pierre had never been

in this part of the house and did not even know of the existence of

these rooms. Anna Mikhaylovna, addressing a maid who was hurrying past

with a decanter on a tray as "my dear" and "my sweet," asked about the

princess' health and then led Pierre along a stone passage. The

first door on the left led into the princesses' apartments. The maid

with the decanter in her haste had not closed the door (everything

in the house was done in haste at that time), and Pierre and Anna

Mikhaylovna in passing instinctively glanced into the room, where

Prince Vasili and the eldest princess were sitting close together

talking. Seeing them pass, Prince Vasili drew back with obvious

impatience, while the princess jumped up and with a gesture of

desperation slammed the door with all her might.



This action was so unlike her usual composure and the fear

depicted on Prince Vasili's face so out of keeping with his dignity

that Pierre stopped and glanced inquiringly over his spectacles at his

guide. Anna Mikhaylovna evinced no surprise, she only smiled faintly

and sighed, as if to say that this was no more than she had expected.



"Be a man, my friend. I will look after your interests," said she in

reply to his look, and went still faster along the passage.



Pierre could not make out what it was all about, and still less what

"watching over his interests" meant, but he decided that all these

things had to be. From the passage they went into a large, dimly lit

room adjoining the count's reception room. It was one of those

sumptuous but cold apartments known to Pierre only from the front

approach, but even in this room there now stood an empty bath, and

water had been spilled on the carpet. They were met by a deacon with a

censer and by a servant who passed out on tiptoe without heeding them.

They went into the reception room familiar to Pierre, with two Italian

windows opening into the conservatory, with its large bust and full

length portrait of Catherine the Great. The same people were still

sitting here in almost the same positions as before, whispering to one

another. All became silent and turned to look at the pale tear-worn

Anna Mikhaylovna as she entered, and at the big stout figure of Pierre

who, hanging his head, meekly followed her.



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Anna Mikhaylovna's face expressed a consciousness that the

decisive moment had arrived. With the air of a practical Petersburg

lady she now, keeping Pierre close beside her, entered the room even

more boldly than that afternoon. She felt that as she brought with her

the person the dying man wished to see, her own admission was assured.

Casting a rapid glance at all those in the room and noticing the

count's confessor there, she glided up to him with a sort of amble,

not exactly bowing yet seeming to grow suddenly smaller, and

respectfully received the blessing first of one and then of another

priest.



"God be thanked that you are in time," said she to one of the

priests; "all we relatives have been in such anxiety. This young man

is the count's son," she added more softly. "What a terrible moment!"



Having said this she went up to the doctor.



"Dear doctor," said she, "this young man is the count's son. Is

there any hope?"



The doctor cast a rapid glance upwards and silently shrugged his

shoulders. Anna Mikhaylovna with just the same movement raised her

shoulders and eyes, almost closing the latter, sighed, and moved

away from the doctor to Pierre. To him, in a particularly respectful

and tenderly sad voice, she said:



"Trust in His mercy!" and pointing out a small sofa for him to sit

and wait for her, she went silently toward the door that everyone

was watching and it creaked very slightly as she disappeared behind

it.



Pierre, having made up his mind to obey his monitress implicitly,

moved toward the sofa she had indicated. As soon as Anna Mikhaylovna

had disappeared he noticed that the eyes of all in the room turned

to him with something more than curiosity and sympathy. He noticed

that they whispered to one another, casting significant looks at him

with a kind of awe and even servility. A deference such as he had

never before received was shown him. A strange lady, the one who had

been talking to the priests, rose and offered him her seat; an

aide-de-camp picked up and returned a glove Pierre had dropped; the

doctors became respectfully silent as he passed by, and moved to

make way for him. At first Pierre wished to take another seat so as

not to trouble the lady, and also to pick up the glove himself and

to pass round the doctors who were not even in his way; but all at

once he felt that this would not do, and that tonight he was a

person obliged to perform some sort of awful rite which everyone

expected of him, and that he was therefore bound to accept their

services. He took the glove in silence from the aide-de-camp, and

sat down in the lady's chair, placing his huge hands symmetrically

on his knees in the naive attitude of an Egyptian statue, and

decided in his own mind that all was as it should be, and that in

order not to lose his head and do foolish things he must not act on

his own ideas tonight, but must yield himself up entirely to the

will of those who were guiding him.

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Not two minutes had passed before Prince Vasili with head erect

majestically entered the room. He was wearing his long coat with three

stars on his breast. He seemed to have grown thinner since the

morning; his eyes seemed larger than usual when he glanced round and

noticed Pierre. He went up to him, took his hand (a thing he never

used to do), and drew it downwards as if wishing to ascertain

whether it was firmly fixed on.



"Courage, courage, my friend! He has asked to see you. That is

well!" and he turned to go.



But Pierre thought it necessary to ask: "How is..." and hesitated,

not knowing whether it would be proper to call the dying man "the

count," yet ashamed to call him "father."



"He had another stroke about half an hour ago. Courage, my

friend..."



Pierre's mind was in such a confused state that the word "stroke"

suggested to him a blow from something. He looked at Prince Vasili

in perplexity, and only later grasped that a stroke was an attack of

illness. Prince Vasili said something to Lorrain in passing and went

through the door on tiptoe. He could not walk well on tiptoe and his

whole body jerked at each step. The eldest princess followed him,

and the priests and deacons and some servants also went in at the

door. Through that door was heard a noise of things being moved about,

and at last Anna Mikhaylovna, still with the same expression, pale but

resolute in the discharge of duty, ran out and touching Pierre lightly

on the arm said:



"The divine mercy is inexhaustible! Unction is about to be

administered. Come."



Pierre went in at the door, stepping on the soft carpet, and noticed

that the strange lady, the aide-de-camp, and some of the servants, all

followed him in, as if there were now no further need for permission

to enter that room.









CHAPTER XXIII





Pierre well knew this large room divided by columns and an arch, its

walls hung round with Persian carpets. The part of the room behind the

columns, with a high silk-curtained mahogany bedstead on one side

and on the other an immense case containing icons, was brightly

illuminated with red light like a Russian church during evening

service. Under the gleaming icons stood a long invalid chair, and in

that chair on snowy-white smooth pillows, evidently freshly changed,

Pierre saw--covered to the waist by a bright green quilt--the

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familiar, majestic figure of his father, Count Bezukhov, with that

gray mane of hair above his broad forehead which reminded one of a

lion, and the deep characteristically noble wrinkles of his

handsome, ruddy face. He lay just under the icons; his large thick

hands outside the quilt. Into the right hand, which was lying palm

downwards, a wax taper had been thrust between forefinger and thumb,

and an old servant, bending over from behind the chair, held it in

position. By the chair stood the priests, their long hair falling over

their magnificent glittering vestments, with lighted tapers in their

hands, slowly and solemnly conducting the service. A little behind

them stood the two younger princesses holding handkerchiefs to their

eyes, and just in front of them their eldest sister, Catiche, with a

vicious and determined look steadily fixed on the icons, as though

declaring to all that she could not answer for herself should she

glance round. Anna Mikhaylovna, with a meek, sorrowful, and

all-forgiving expression on her face, stood by the door near the

strange lady. Prince Vasili in front of the door, near the invalid

chair, a wax taper in his left hand, was leaning his left arm on the

carved back of a velvet chair he had turned round for the purpose, and

was crossing himself with his right hand, turning his eyes upward each

time he touched his forehead. His face wore a calm look of piety and

resignation to the will of God. "If you do not understand these

sentiments," he seemed to be saying, "so much the worse for you!"



Behind him stood the aide-de-camp, the doctors, and the menservants;

the men and women had separated as in church. All were silently

crossing themselves, and the reading of the church service, the

subdued chanting of deep bass voices, and in the intervals sighs and

the shuffling of feet were the only sounds that could be heard. Anna

Mikhaylovna, with an air of importance that showed that she felt she

quite knew what she was about, went across the room to where Pierre

was standing and gave him a taper. He lit it and, distracted by

observing those around him, began crossing himself with the hand

that held the taper.



Sophie, the rosy, laughter-loving, youngest princess with the

mole, watched him. She smiled, hid her face in her handkerchief, and

remained with it hidden for awhile; then looking up and seeing

Pierre she again began to laugh. She evidently felt unable to look

at him without laughing, but could not resist looking at him: so to be

out of temptation she slipped quietly behind one of the columns. In

the midst of the service the voices of the priests suddenly ceased,

they whispered to one another, and the old servant who was holding the

count's hand got up and said something to the ladies. Anna Mikhaylovna

stepped forward and, stooping over the dying man, beckoned to

Lorrain from behind her back. The French doctor held no taper; he

was leaning against one of the columns in a respectful attitude

implying that he, a foreigner, in spite of all differences of faith,

understood the full importance of the rite now being performed and

even approved of it. He now approached the sick man with the noiseless

step of one in full vigor of life, with his delicate white fingers

raised from the green quilt the hand that was free, and turning

sideways felt the pulse and reflected a moment. The sick man was given

something to drink, there was a stir around him, then the people

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resumed their places and the service continued. During this interval

Pierre noticed that Prince Vasili left the chair on which he had

been leaning, and--with air which intimated that he knew what he was

about and if others did not understand him it was so much the worse

for them--did not go up to the dying man, but passed by him, joined

the eldest princess, and moved with her to the side of the room

where stood the high bedstead with its silken hangings. On leaving the

bed both Prince Vasili and the princess passed out by a back door, but

returned to their places one after the other before the service was

concluded. Pierre paid no more attention to this occurrence than to

the rest of what went on, having made up his mind once for all that

what he saw happening around him that evening was in some way

essential.



The chanting of the service ceased, and the voice of the priest

was heard respectfully congratulating the dying man on having received

the sacrament. The dying man lay as lifeless and immovable as

before. Around him everyone began to stir: steps were audible and

whispers, among which Anna Mikhaylovna's was the most distinct.



Pierre heard her say:



"Certainly he must be moved onto the bed; here it will be

impossible..."



The sick man was so surrounded by doctors, princesses, and

servants that Pierre could no longer see the reddish-yellow face

with its gray mane--which, though he saw other faces as well, he had

not lost sight of for a single moment during the whole service. He

judged by the cautious movements of those who crowded round the

invalid chair that they had lifted the dying man and were moving him.



"Catch hold of my arm or you'll drop him!" he heard one of the

servants say in a frightened whisper. "Catch hold from underneath.

Here!" exclaimed different voices; and the heavy breathing of the

bearers and the shuffling of their feet grew more hurried, as if the

weight they were carrying were too much for them.



As the bearers, among whom was Anna Mikhaylovna, passed the young

man he caught a momentary glimpse between their heads and backs of the

dying man's high, stout, uncovered chest and powerful shoulders,

raised by those who were holding him under the armpits, and of his

gray, curly, leonine head. This head, with its remarkably broad brow

and cheekbones, its handsome, sensual mouth, and its cold, majestic

expression, was not disfigured by the approach of death. It was the

same as Pierre remembered it three months before, when the count had

sent him to Petersburg. But now this head was swaying helplessly

with the uneven movements of the bearers, and the cold listless gaze

fixed itself upon nothing.



After a few minutes' bustle beside the high bedstead, those who

had carried the sick man dispersed. Anna Mikhaylovna touched

Pierre's hand and said, "Come." Pierre went with her to the bed on

which the sick man had been laid in a stately pose in keeping with the

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ceremony just completed. He lay with his head propped high on the

pillows. His hands were symmetrically placed on the green silk

quilt, the palms downward. When Pierre came up the count was gazing

straight at him, but with a look the significance of which could not

be understood by mortal man. Either this look meant nothing but that

as long as one has eyes they must look somewhere, or it meant too

much. Pierre hesitated, not knowing what to do, and glanced

inquiringly at his guide. Anna Mikhaylovna made a hurried sign with

her eyes, glancing at the sick man's hand and moving her lips as if to

send it a kiss. Pierre, carefully stretching his neck so as not to

touch the quilt, followed her suggestion and pressed his lips to the

large boned, fleshy hand. Neither the hand nor a single muscle of

the count's face stirred. Once more Pierre looked questioningly at

Anna Mikhaylovna to see what he was to do next. Anna Mikhaylovna

with her eyes indicated a chair that stood beside the bed. Pierre

obediently sat down, his eyes asking if he were doing right. Anna

Mikhaylovna nodded approvingly. Again Pierre fell into the naively

symmetrical pose of an Egyptian statue, evidently distressed that

his stout and clumsy body took up so much room and doing his utmost to

look as small as possible. He looked at the count, who still gazed

at the spot where Pierre's face had been before he sat down. Anna

Mikhaylovna indicated by her attitude her consciousness of the

pathetic importance of these last moments of meeting between the

father and son. This lasted about two minutes, which to Pierre

seemed an hour. Suddenly the broad muscles and lines of the count's

face began to twitch. The twitching increased, the handsome mouth

was drawn to one side (only now did Pierre realize how near death

his father was), and from that distorted mouth issued an indistinct,

hoarse sound. Anna Mikhaylovna looked attentively at the sick man's

eyes, trying to guess what he wanted; she pointed first to Pierre,

then to some drink, then named Prince Vasili in an inquiring

whisper, then pointed to the quilt. The eyes and face of the sick

man showed impatience. He made an effort to look at the servant who

stood constantly at the head of the bed.



"Wants to turn on the other side," whispered the servant, and got up

to turn the count's heavy body toward the wall.



Pierre rose to help him.



While the count was being turned over, one of his arms fell back

helplessly and he made a fruitless effort to pull it forward.

Whether he noticed the look of terror with which Pierre regarded

that lifeless arm, or whether some other thought flitted across his

dying brain, at any rate he glanced at the refractory arm, at Pierre's

terror-stricken face, and again at the arm, and on his face a

feeble, piteous smile appeared, quite out of keeping with his

features, that seemed to deride his own helplessness. At sight of this

smile Pierre felt an unexpected quivering in his breast and a tickling

in his nose, and tears dimmed his eyes. The sick man was turned on

to his side with his face to the wall. He sighed.



"He is dozing," said Anna Mikhaylovna, observing that one of the

princesses was coming to take her turn at watching. "Let us go."

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Pierre went out.









CHAPTER XXIV





There was now no one in the reception room except Prince Vasili

and the eldest princess, who were sitting under the portrait of

Catherine the Great and talking eagerly. As soon as they saw Pierre

and his companion they became silent, and Pierre thought he saw the

princess hide something as she whispered:



"I can't bear the sight of that woman."



"Catiche has had tea served in the small drawing room," said

Prince Vasili to Anna Mikhaylovna. "Go and take something, my poor

Anna Mikhaylovna, or you will not hold out."



To Pierre he said nothing, merely giving his arm a sympathetic

squeeze below the shoulder. Pierre went with Anna Mikhaylovna into the

small drawing room.



"There is nothing so refreshing after a sleepless night as a cup

of this delicious Russian tea," Lorrain was saying with an air of

restrained animation as he stood sipping tea from a delicate Chinese

handleless cup before a table on which tea and a cold supper were laid

in the small circular room. Around the table all who were at Count

Bezukhov's house that night had gathered to fortify themselves. Pierre

well remembered this small circular drawing room with its mirrors

and little tables. During balls given at the house Pierre, who did not

know how to dance, had liked sitting in this room to watch the

ladies who, as they passed through in their ball dresses with diamonds

and pearls on their bare shoulders, looked at themselves in the

brilliantly lighted mirrors which repeated their reflections several

times. Now this same room was dimly lighted by two candles. On one

small table tea things and supper dishes stood in disorder, and in the

middle of the night a motley throng of people sat there, not

merrymaking, but somberly whispering, and betraying by every word

and movement that they none of them forgot what was happening and what

was about to happen in the bedroom. Pierre did not eat anything though

he would very much have liked to. He looked inquiringly at his

monitress and saw that she was again going on tiptoe to the

reception room where they had left Prince Vasili and the eldest

princess. Pierre concluded that this also was essential, and after a

short interval followed her. Anna Mikhaylovna was standing beside

the princess, and they were both speaking in excited whispers.



"Permit me, Princess, to know what is necessary and what is not

necessary," said the younger of the two speakers, evidently in the

same state of excitement as when she had slammed the door of her room.

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"But, my dear princess," answered Anna Mikhaylovna blandly but

impressively, blocking the way to the bedroom and preventing the other

from passing, "won't this be too much for poor Uncle at a moment

when he needs repose? Worldly conversation at a moment when his soul

is already prepared..."



Prince Vasili was seated in an easy chair in his familiar

attitude, with one leg crossed high above the other. His cheeks, which

were so flabby that they looked heavier below, were twitching

violently; but he wore the air of a man little concerned in what the

two ladies were saying.



"Come, my dear Anna Mikhaylovna, let Catiche do as she pleases.

You know how fond the count is of her."



"I don't even know what is in this paper," said the younger of the

two ladies, addressing Prince Vasili and pointing to an inlaid

portfolio she held in her hand. "All I know is that his real will is

in his writing table, and this is a paper he has forgotten...."



She tried to pass Anna Mikhaylovna, but the latter sprang so as to

bar her path.



"I know, my dear, kind princess," said Anna Mikhaylovna, seizing the

portfolio so firmly that it was plain she would not let go easily.

"Dear princess, I beg and implore you, have some pity on him! Je

vous en conjure..."



The princess did not reply. Their efforts in the struggle for the

portfolio were the only sounds audible, but it was evident that if the

princess did speak, her words would not be flattering to Anna

Mikhaylovna. Though the latter held on tenaciously, her voice lost

none of its honeyed firmness and softness.



"Pierre, my dear, come here. I think he will not be out of place

in a family consultation; is it not so, Prince?"



"Why don't you speak, cousin?" suddenly shrieked the princess so

loud that those in the drawing room heard her and were startled.

"Why do you remain silent when heaven knows who permits herself to

interfere, making a scene on the very threshold of a dying man's room?

Intriguer!" she hissed viciously, and tugged with all her might at the

portfolio.



But Anna Mikhaylovna went forward a step or two to keep her hold

on the portfolio, and changed her grip.



Prince Vasili rose. "Oh!" said he with reproach and surprise,

"this is absurd! Come, let go I tell you."



The princess let go.



"And you too!"

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But Anna Mikhaylovna did not obey him.



"Let go, I tell you! I will take the responsibility. I myself will

go and ask him, I!... does that satisfy you?"



"But, Prince," said Anna Mikhaylovna, "after such a solemn

sacrament, allow him a moment's peace! Here, Pierre, tell them your

opinion," said she, turning to the young man who, having come quite

close, was gazing with astonishment at the angry face of the

princess which had lost all dignity, and at the twitching cheeks of

Prince Vasili.



"Remember that you will answer for the consequences," said Prince

Vasili severely. "You don't know what you are doing."



"Vile woman!" shouted the princess, darting unexpectedly at Anna

Mikhaylovna and snatching the portfolio from her.



Prince Vasili bent his head and spread out his hands.



At this moment that terrible door, which Pierre had watched so

long and which had always opened so quietly, burst noisily open and

banged against the wall, and the second of the three sisters rushed

out wringing her hands.



"What are you doing!" she cried vehemently. "He is dying and you

leave me alone with him!"



Her sister dropped the portfolio. Anna Mikhaylovna, stooping,

quickly caught up the object of contention and ran into the bedroom.

The eldest princess and Prince Vasili, recovering themselves, followed

her. A few minutes later the eldest sister came out with a pale hard

face, again biting her underlip. At sight of Pierre her expression

showed an irrepressible hatred.



"Yes, now you may be glad!" said she; "this is what you have been

waiting for." And bursting into tears she hid her face in her

handkerchief and rushed from the room.



Prince Vasili came next. He staggered to the sofa on which Pierre

was sitting and dropped onto it, covering his face with his hand.

Pierre noticed that he was pale and that his jaw quivered and shook as

if in an ague.



"Ah, my friend!" said he, taking Pierre by the elbow; and there

was in his voice a sincerity and weakness Pierre had never observed in

it before. "How often we sin, how much we deceive, and all for what? I

am near sixty, dear friend... I too... All will end in death, all!

Death is awful..." and he burst into tears.



Anna Mikhaylovna came out last. She approached Pierre with slow,

quiet steps.



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"Pierre!" she said.



Pierre gave her an inquiring look. She kissed the young man on his

forehead, wetting him with her tears. Then after a pause she said:



"He is no more...."



Pierre looked at her over his spectacles.



"Come, I will go with you. Try to weep, nothing gives such relief as

tears."



She led him into the dark drawing room and Pierre was glad no one

could see his face. Anna Mikhaylovna left him, and when she returned

he was fast asleep with his head on his arm.



In the morning Anna Mikhaylovna said to Pierre:



"Yes, my dear, this is a great loss for us all, not to speak of you.

But God will support you: you are young, and are now, I hope, in

command of an immense fortune. The will has not yet been opened. I

know you well enough to be sure that this will not turn your head, but

it imposes duties on you, and you must be a man."



Pierre was silent.



"Perhaps later on I may tell you, my dear boy, that if I had not

been there, God only knows what would have happened! You know, Uncle

promised me only the day before yesterday not to forget Boris. But

he had no time. I hope, my dear friend, you will carry out your

father's wish?"



Pierre understood nothing of all this and coloring shyly looked in

silence at Princess Anna Mikhaylovna. After her talk with Pierre, Anna

Mikhaylovna returned to the Rostovs' and went to bed. On waking in the

morning she told the Rostovs and all her acquaintances the details

of Count Bezukhov's death. She said the count had died as she would

herself wish to die, that his end was not only touching but

edifying. As to the last meeting between father and son, it was so

touching that she could not think of it without tears, and did not

know which had behaved better during those awful moments--the father

who so remembered everything and everybody at last and had

spoken such pathetic words to the son, or Pierre, whom it had been

pitiful to see, so stricken was he with grief, though he tried hard to

hide it in order not to sadden his dying father. "It is painful, but

it does one good. It uplifts the soul to see such men as the old count

and his worthy son," said she. Of the behavior of the eldest

princess and Prince Vasili she spoke disapprovingly, but in whispers

and as a great secret.









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CHAPTER XXV





At Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Andreevich Bolkonski's estate, the

arrival of young Prince Andrew and his wife was daily expected, but

this expectation did not upset the regular routine of life in the

old prince's household. General in Chief Prince Nicholas Andreevich

(nicknamed in society, "the King of Prussia") ever since the Emperor

Paul had exiled him to his country estate had lived there continuously

with his daughter, Princess Mary, and her companion, Mademoiselle

Bourienne. Though in the new reign he was free to return to the

capitals, he still continued to live in the country, remarking that

anyone who wanted to see him could come the hundred miles from

Moscow to Bald Hills, while he himself needed no one and nothing. He

used to say that there are only two sources of human vice--idleness

and superstition, and only two virtues--activity and intelligence.

He himself undertook his daughter's education, and to develop these

two cardinal virtues in her gave her lessons in algebra and geometry

till she was twenty, and arranged her life so that her whole time

was occupied. He was himself always occupied: writing his memoirs,

solving problems in higher mathematics, turning snuffboxes on a lathe,

working in the garden, or superintending the building that was

always going on at his estate. As regularity is a prime condition

facilitating activity, regularity in his household was carried to

the highest point of exactitude. He always came to table under

precisely the same conditions, and not only at the same hour but at

the same minute. With those about him, from his daughter to his serfs,

the prince was sharp and invariably exacting, so that without being

a hardhearted man he inspired such fear and respect as few hardhearted

men would have aroused. Although he was in retirement and had now no

influence in political affairs, every high official appointed to the

province in which the prince's estate lay considered it his duty to

visit him and waited in the lofty antechamber ante chamber just as the

architect, gardener, or Princess Mary did, till the prince appeared

punctually to the appointed hour. Everyone sitting in this antechamber

experienced the same feeling of respect and even fear when the

enormously high study door opened and showed the figure of a rather

small old man, with powdered wig, small withered hands, and bushy gray

eyebrows which, when he frowned, sometimes hid the gleam of his

shrewd, youthfully glittering eyes.



On the morning of the day that the young couple were to arrive,

Princess Mary entered the antechamber as usual at the time appointed

for the morning greeting, crossing herself with trepidation and

repeating a silent prayer. Every morning she came in like that, and

every morning prayed that the daily interview might pass off well.



An old powdered manservant who was sitting in the antechamber rose

quietly and said in a whisper: "Please walk in."



Through the door came the regular hum of a lathe. The princess

timidly opened the door which moved noiselessly and easily. She paused

at the entrance. The prince was working at the lathe and after

glancing round continued his work.

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The enormous study was full of things evidently in constant use. The

large table covered with books and plans, the tall glass-fronted

bookcases with keys in the locks, the high desk for writing while

standing up, on which lay an open exercise book, and the lathe with

tools laid ready to hand and shavings scattered around--all

indicated continuous, varied, and orderly activity. The motion of

the small foot shod in a Tartar boot embroidered with silver, and

the firm pressure of the lean sinewy hand, showed that the prince

still possessed the tenacious endurance and vigor of hardy old age.

After a few more turns of the lathe he removed his foot from the

pedal, wiped his chisel, dropped it into a leather pouch attached to

the lathe, and, approaching the table, summoned his daughter. He never

gave his children a blessing, so he simply held out his bristly

cheek (as yet unshaven) and, regarding her tenderly and attentively,

said severely:



"Quite well? All right then, sit down." He took the exercise book

containing lessons in geometry written by himself and drew up a

chair with his foot.



"For tomorrow!" said he, quickly finding the page and making a

scratch from one paragraph to another with his hard nail.



The princess bent over the exercise book on the table.



"Wait a bit, here's a letter for you," said the old man suddenly,

taking a letter addressed in a woman's hand from a bag hanging above

the table, onto which he threw it.



At the sight of the letter red patches showed themselves on the

princess' face. She took it quickly and bent her head over it.



"From Heloise?" asked the prince with a cold smile that showed his

still sound, yellowish teeth.



"Yes, it's from Julie," replied the princess with a timid glance and

a timid smile.



"I'll let two more letters pass, but the third I'll read," said

the prince sternly; "I'm afraid you write much nonsense. I'll read the

third!"



"Read this if you like, Father," said the princess, blushing still

more and holding out the letter.



"The third, I said the third!" cried the prince abruptly, pushing

the letter away, and leaning his elbows on the table he drew toward

him the exercise book containing geometrical figures.



"Well, madam," he began, stooping over the book close to his

daughter and placing an arm on the back of the chair on which she sat,

so that she felt herself surrounded on all sides by the acrid scent of

old age and tobacco, which she had known so long. "Now, madam, these

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triangles are equal; please note that the angle ABC..."



The princess looked in a scared way at her father's eyes

glittering close to her; the red patches on her face came and went,

and it was plain that she understood nothing and was so frightened

that her fear would prevent her understanding any of her father's

further explanations, however clear they might be. Whether it was

the teacher's fault or the pupil's, this same thing happened every

day: the princess' eyes grew dim, she could not see and could not hear

anything, but was only conscious of her stern father's withered face

close to her, of his breath and the smell of him, and could think only

of how to get away quickly to her own room to make out the problem

in peace. The old man was beside himself: moved the chair on which

he was sitting noisily backward and forward, made efforts to control

himself and not become vehement, but almost always did become

vehement, scolded, and sometimes flung the exercise book away.



The princess gave a wrong answer.



"Well now, isn't she a fool!" shouted the prince, pushing the book

aside and turning sharply away; but rising immediately, he paced up

and down, lightly touched his daughter's hair and sat down again.



He drew up his chair, and continued to explain.



"This won't do, Princess; it won't do," said he, when Princess Mary,

having taken and closed the exercise book with the next day's

lesson, was about to leave: "Mathematics are most important, madam!

I don't want to have you like our silly ladies. Get used to it and

you'll like it," and he patted her cheek. "It will drive all the

nonsense out of your head."



She turned to go, but he stopped her with a gesture and took an

uncut book from the high desk.



"Here is some sort of Key to the Mysteries that your Heloise has

sent you. Religious! I don't interfere with anyone's belief... I

have looked at it. Take it. Well, now go. Go."



He patted her on the shoulder and himself closed the door after her.



Princess Mary went back to her room with the sad, scared

expression that rarely left her and which made her plain, sickly

face yet plainer. She sat down at her writing table, on which stood

miniature portraits and which was littered with books and papers.

The princess was as untidy as her father was tidy. She put down the

geometry book and eagerly broke the seal of her letter. It was from

her most intimate friend from childhood; that same Julie Karagina

who had been at the Rostovs' name-day party.



Julie wrote in French:





Dear and precious Friend, How terrible and frightful a thing is

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separation! Though I tell myself that half my life and half my

happiness are wrapped up in you, and that in spite of the distance

separating us our hearts are united by indissoluble bonds, my heart

rebels against fate and in spite of the pleasures and distractions

around me I cannot overcome a certain secret sorrow that has been in

my heart ever since we parted. Why are we not together as we were last

summer, in your big study, on the blue sofa, the confidential sofa?

Why cannot I now, as three months ago, draw fresh moral strength

from your look, so gentle, calm, and penetrating, a look I loved so

well and seem to see before me as I write?





Having read thus far, Princess Mary sighed and glanced into the

mirror which stood on her right. It reflected a weak, ungraceful

figure and thin face. Her eyes, always sad, now looked with particular

hopelessness at her reflection in the glass. "She flatters me,"

thought the princess, turning away and continuing to read. But Julie

did not flatter her friend, the princess' eyes--large, deep and

luminous (it seemed as if at times there radiated from them shafts

of warm light)--were so beautiful that very often in spite of the

plainness of her face they gave her an attraction more powerful than

that of beauty. But the princess never saw the beautiful expression of

her own eyes--the look they had when she was not thinking of

herself. As with everyone, her face assumed a forced unnatural

expression as soon as she looked in a glass. She went on reading:





All Moscow talks of nothing but war. One of my two brothers is

already abroad, the other is with the Guards, who are starting on

their march to the frontier. Our dear Emperor has left Petersburg

and it is thought intends to expose his precious person to the chances

of war. God grant that the Corsican monster who is destroying the

peace of Europe may be overthrown by the angel whom it has pleased the

Almighty, in His goodness, to give us as sovereign! To say nothing

of my brothers, this war has deprived me of one of the associations

nearest my heart. I mean young Nicholas Rostov, who with his

enthusiasm could not bear to remain inactive and has left the

university to join the army. I will confess to you, dear Mary, that in

spite of his extreme youth his departure for the army was a great

grief to me. This young man, of whom I spoke to you last summer, is so

noble-minded and full of that real youthfulness which one seldom finds

nowadays among our old men of twenty and, particularly, he is so frank

and has so much heart. He is so pure and poetic that my relations with

him, transient as they were, have been one of the sweetest comforts to

my poor heart, which has already suffered so much. Someday I will tell

you about our parting and all that was said then. That is still too

fresh. Ah, dear friend, you are happy not to know these poignant

joys and sorrows. You are fortunate, for the latter are generally

the stronger! I know very well that Count Nicholas is too young ever

to be more to me than a friend, but this sweet friendship, this poetic

and pure intimacy, were what my heart needed. But enough of this!

The chief news, about which all Moscow gossips, is the death of old

Count Bezukhov, and his inheritance. Fancy! The three princesses

have received very little, Prince Vasili nothing, and it is Monsieur

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Pierre who has inherited all the property and has besides been

recognized as legitimate; so that he is now Count Bezukhov and

possessor of the finest fortune in Russia. It is rumored that Prince

Vasili played a very despicable part in this affair and that he

returned to Petersburg quite crestfallen.



I confess I understand very little about all these matters of

wills and inheritance; but I do know that since this young man, whom

we all used to know as plain Monsieur Pierre, has become Count

Bezukhov and the owner of one of the largest fortunes in Russia, I

am much amused to watch the change in the tone and manners of the

mammas burdened by marriageable daughters, and of the young ladies

themselves, toward him, though, between you and me, he always seemed

to me a poor sort of fellow. As for the past two years people have

amused themselves by finding husbands for me (most of whom I don't

even know), the matchmaking chronicles of Moscow now speak of me as

the future Countess Bezukhova. But you will understand that I have

no desire for the post. A propos of marriages: do you know that a

while ago that universal auntie Anna Mikhaylovna told me, under the

seal of strict secrecy, of a plan of marriage for you. It is neither

more nor less than with Prince Vasili's son Anatole, whom they wish to

reform by marrying him to someone rich and distinguee, and it is on

you that his relations' choice has fallen. I don't know what you

will think of it, but I consider it my duty to let you know of it.

He is said to be very handsome and a terrible scapegrace. That is

all I have been able to find out about him.



But enough of gossip. I am at the end of my second sheet of paper,

and Mamma has sent for me to go and dine at the Apraksins'. Read the

mystical book I am sending you; it has an enormous success here.

Though there are things in it difficult for the feeble human mind to

grasp, it is an admirable book which calms and elevates the soul.

Adieu! Give my respects to monsieur your father and my compliments

to Mademoiselle Bourienne. I embrace you as I love you.



JULIE



P.S. Let me have news of your brother and his charming little wife.





The princess pondered awhile with a thoughtful smile and her

luminous eyes lit up so that her face was entirely transformed. Then

she suddenly rose and with her heavy tread went up to the table. She

took a sheet of paper and her hand moved rapidly over it. This is

the reply she wrote, also in French:





Dear and precious Friend, Your letter of the 13th has given me great

delight. So you still love me, my romantic Julie? Separation, of which

you say so much that is bad, does not seem to have had its usual

effect on you. You complain of our separation. What then should I say,

if I dared complain, I who am deprived of all who are dear to me?

Ah, if we had not religion to console us life would be very sad. Why

do you suppose that I should look severely on your affection for

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that young man? On such matters I am only severe with myself. I

understand such feelings in others, and if never having felt them I

cannot approve of them, neither do I condemn them. Only it seems to me

that Christian love, love of one's neighbor, love of one's enemy, is

worthier, sweeter, and better than the feelings which the beautiful

eyes of a young man can inspire in a romantic and loving young girl

like yourself.



The news of Count Bezukhov's death reached us before your letter and

my father was much affected by it. He says the count was the last

representative but one of the great century, and that it is his own

turn now, but that he will do all he can to let his turn come as

late as possible. God preserve us from that terrible misfortune!



I cannot agree with you about Pierre, whom I knew as a child. He

always seemed to me to have an excellent heart, and that is the

quality I value most in people. As to his inheritance and the part

played by Prince Vasili, it is very sad for both. Ah, my dear

friend, our divine Saviour's words, that it is easier for a camel to

go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the

Kingdom of God, are terribly true. I pity Prince Vasili but am still

more sorry for Pierre. So young, and burdened with such riches--to

what temptations he will be exposed! If I were asked what I desire

most on earth, it would be to be poorer than the poorest beggar. A

thousand thanks, dear friend, for the volume you have sent me and

which has such success in Moscow. Yet since you tell me that among

some good things it contains others which our weak human understanding

cannot grasp, it seems to me rather useless to spend time in reading

what is unintelligible and can therefore bear no fruit. I never

could understand the fondness some people have for confusing their

minds by dwelling on mystical books that merely awaken their doubts

and excite their imagination, giving them a bent for exaggeration

quite contrary to Christian simplicity. Let us rather read the

Epistles and Gospels. Let us not seek to penetrate what mysteries they

contain; for how can we, miserable sinners that we are, know the

terrible and holy secrets of Providence while we remain in this

flesh which forms an impenetrable veil between us and the Eternal? Let

us rather confine ourselves to studying those sublime rules which

our divine Saviour has left for our guidance here below. Let us try to

conform to them and follow them, and let us be persuaded that the less

we let our feeble human minds roam, the better we shall please God,

who rejects all knowledge that does not come from Him; and the less we

seek to fathom what He has been pleased to conceal from us, the sooner

will He vouchsafe its revelation to us through His divine Spirit.



My father has not spoken to me of a suitor, but has only told me

that he has received a letter and is expecting a visit from Prince

Vasili. In regard to this project of marriage for me, I will tell you,

dear sweet friend, that I look on marriage as a divine institution

to which we must conform. However painful it may be to me, should

the Almighty lay the duties of wife and mother upon me I

shall try to perform them as faithfully as I can, without

disquieting myself by examining my feelings toward him whom He may

give me for husband.

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I have had a letter from my brother, who announces his speedy

arrival at Bald Hills with his wife. This pleasure will be but a brief

one, however, for he will leave, us again to take part in this unhappy

war into which we have been drawn, God knows how or why. Not only

where you are--at the heart of affairs and of the world--is the talk

all of war, even here amid fieldwork and the calm of nature--which

townsfolk consider characteristic of the country--rumors of war are

heard and painfully felt. My father talks of nothing but marches and

countermarches, things of which I understand nothing; and the day

before yesterday during my daily walk through the village I

witnessed a heartrending scene.... It was a convoy of conscripts

enrolled from our people and starting to join the army. You should

have seen the state of the mothers, wives, and children of the men who

were going and should have heard the sobs. It seems as though

mankind has forgotten the laws of its divine Saviour, Who preached

love and forgiveness of injuries--and that men attribute the

greatest merit to skill in killing one another.



Adieu, dear and kind friend; may our divine Saviour and His most

Holy Mother keep you in their holy and all-powerful care!



MARY





"Ah, you are sending off a letter, Princess? I have already

dispatched mine. I have written to my poor mother," said the smiling

Mademoiselle Bourienne rapidly, in her pleasant mellow tones and

with guttural r's. She brought into Princess Mary's strenuous,

mournful, and gloomy world a quite different atmosphere, careless,

lighthearted, and self-satisfied.



"Princess, I must warn you," she added, lowering her voice and

evidently listening to herself with pleasure, and speaking with

exaggerated grasseyement, "the prince has been scolding Michael

Ivanovich. He is in a very bad humor, very morose. Be prepared."



"Ah, dear friend," replied Princess Mary, "I have asked you never to

warn me of the humor my father is in. I do not allow myself to judge

him and would not have others do so."



The princess glanced at her watch and, seeing that she was five

minutes late in starting her practice on the clavichord, went into the

sitting room with a look of alarm. Between twelve and two o'clock,

as the day was mapped out, the prince rested and the princess played

the clavichord.









CHAPTER XXVI





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The gray-haired valet was sitting drowsily listening to the

snoring of the prince, who was in his large study. From the far side

of the house through the closed doors came the sound of difficult

passages--twenty times repeated--of a sonata by Dussek.



Just then a closed carriage and another with a hood drove up to

the porch. Prince Andrew got out of the carriage, helped his little

wife to alight, and let her pass into the house before him. Old

Tikhon, wearing a wig, put his head out of the door of the

antechamber, reported in a whisper that the prince was sleeping, and

hastily closed the door. Tikhon knew that neither the son's arrival

nor any other unusual event must be allowed to disturb the appointed

order of the day. Prince Andrew apparently knew this as well as

Tikhon; he looked at his watch as if to ascertain whether his father's

habits had changed since he was at home last, and, having assured

himself that they had not, he turned to his wife.



"He will get up in twenty minutes. Let us go across to Mary's room,"

he said.



The little princess had grown stouter during this time, but her eyes

and her short, downy, smiling lip lifted when she began to speak

just as merrily and prettily as ever.



"Why, this is a palace!" she said to her husband, looking around

with the expression with which people compliment their host at a ball.

"Let's come, quick, quick!" And with a glance round, she smiled at

Tikhon, at her husband, and at the footman who accompanied them.



"Is that Mary practicing? Let's go quietly and take her by

surprise."



Prince Andrew followed her with a courteous but sad expression.



"You've grown older, Tikhon," he said in passing to the old man, who

kissed his hand.



Before they reached the room from which the sounds of the clavichord

came, the pretty, fair haired Frenchwoman, Mademoiselle Bourienne,

rushed out apparently beside herself with delight.



"Ah! what joy for the princess!" exclaimed she: "At last! I must let

her know."



"No, no, please not... You are Mademoiselle Bourienne," said the

little princess, kissing her. "I know you already through my

sister-in-law's friendship for you. She was not expecting us?"



They went up to the door of the sitting room from which came the

sound of the oft-repeated passage of the sonata. Prince Andrew stopped

and made a grimace, as if expecting something unpleasant.



The little princess entered the room. The passage broke off in the

middle, a cry was heard, then Princess Mary's heavy tread and the

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sound of kissing. When Prince Andrew went in the two princesses, who

had only met once before for a short time at his wedding, were in each

other's arms warmly pressing their lips to whatever place they

happened to touch. Mademoiselle Bourienne stood near them pressing her

hand to her heart, with a beatific smile and obviously equally ready

to cry or to laugh. Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders and

frowned, as lovers of music do when they hear a false note. The two

women let go of one another, and then, as if afraid of being too late,

seized each other's hands, kissing them and pulling them away, and

again began kissing each other on the face, and then to Prince

Andrew's surprise both began to cry and kissed again. Mademoiselle

Bourienne also began to cry. Prince Andrew evidently felt ill at ease,

but to the two women it seemed quite natural that they should cry, and

apparently it never entered their heads that it could have been

otherwise at this meeting.



"Ah! my dear!... Ah! Mary!" they suddenly exclaimed, and then

laughed. "I dreamed last night..."--"You were not expecting us?..."-

"Ah! Mary, you have got thinner?..." "And you have grown stouter!..."



"I knew the princess at once," put in Mademoiselle Bourienne.



"And I had no idea!..." exclaimed Princess Mary. "Ah, Andrew, I

did not see you."



Prince Andrew and his sister, hand in hand, kissed one another,

and he told her she was still the same crybaby as ever. Princess

Mary had turned toward her brother, and through her tears the

loving, warm, gentle look of her large luminous eyes, very beautiful

at that moment, rested on Prince Andrew's face.



The little princess talked incessantly, her short, downy upper lip

continually and rapidly touching her rosy nether lip when necessary

and drawing up again next moment when her face broke into a smile of

glittering teeth and sparkling eyes. She told of an accident they

had had on the Spasski Hill which might have been serious for her in

her condition, and immediately after that informed them that she had

left all her clothes in Petersburg and that heaven knew what she would

have to dress in here; and that Andrew had quite changed, and that

Kitty Odyntsova had married an old man, and that there was a suitor

for Mary, a real one, but that they would talk of that later. Princess

Mary was still looking silently at her brother and her beautiful

eyes were full of love and sadness. It was plain that she was

following a train of thought independent of her sister-in-law's words.

In the midst of a description of the last Petersburg fete she

addressed her brother:



"So you are really going to the war, Andrew?" she said sighing.



Lise sighed too.



"Yes, and even tomorrow," replied her brother.



"He is leaving me here, God knows why, when he might have had

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promotion..."



Princess Mary did not listen to the end, but continuing her train of

thought turned to her sister-in-law with a tender glance at her

figure.



"Is it certain?" she said.



The face of the little princess changed. She sighed and said:

"Yes, quite certain. Ah! it is very dreadful..."



Her lip descended. She brought her face close to her sister-in-law's

and unexpectedly again began to cry.



"She needs rest," said Prince Andrew with a frown. "Don't you, Lise?

Take her to your room and I'll go to Father. How is he? Just the

same?"



"Yes, just the same. Though I don't know what your opinion will be,"

answered the princess joyfully.



"And are the hours the same? And the walks in the avenues? And the

lathe?" asked Prince Andrew with a scarcely perceptible smile which

showed that, in spite of all his love and respect for his father, he

was aware of his weaknesses.



"The hours are the same, and the lathe, and also the mathematics and

my geometry lessons," said Princess Mary gleefully, as if her

lessons in geometry were among the greatest delights of her life.



When the twenty minutes had elapsed and the time had come for the

old prince to get up, Tikhon came to call the young prince to his

father. The old man made a departure from his usual routine in honor

of his son's arrival: he gave orders to admit him to his apartments

while he dressed for dinner. The old prince always dressed in

old-fashioned style, wearing an antique coat and powdered hair; and

when Prince Andrew entered his father's dressing room (not with the

contemptuous look and manner he wore in drawing rooms, but with the

animated face with which he talked to Pierre), the old man was sitting

on a large leather-covered chair, wrapped in a powdering mantle,

entrusting his head to Tikhon.



"Ah! here's the warrior! Wants to vanquish Buonaparte?" said the old

man, shaking his powdered head as much as the tail, which Tikhon was

holding fast to plait, would allow.



"You at least must tackle him properly, or else if he goes on like

this he'll soon have us, too, for his subjects! How are you?" And he

held out his cheek.



The old man was in a good temper after his nap before dinner. (He

used to say that a nap "after dinner was silver--before dinner,

golden.") He cast happy, sidelong glances at his son from under his

thick, bushy eyebrows. Prince Andrew went up and kissed his father

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on the spot indicated to him. He made no reply on his father's

favorite topic--making fun of the military men of the day, and more

particularly of Bonaparte.



"Yes, Father, I have come come to you and brought my wife who is

pregnant," said Prince Andrew, following every movement of his

father's face with an eager and respectful look. "How is your health?"



"Only fools and rakes fall ill, my boy. You know me: I am busy

from morning till night and abstemious, so of course I am well."



"Thank God," said his son smiling.



"God has nothing to do with it! Well, go on," he continued,

returning to his hobby; "tell me how the Germans have taught you to

fight Bonaparte by this new science you call 'strategy.'"



Prince Andrew smiled.



"Give me time to collect my wits, Father," said he, with a smile

that showed that his father's foibles did not prevent his son from

loving and honoring him. "Why, I have not yet had time to settle

down!"



"Nonsense, nonsense!" cried the old man, shaking his pigtail to

see whether it was firmly plaited, and grasping his by the hand.

"The house for your wife is ready. Princess Mary will take her there

and show her over, and they'll talk nineteen to the dozen. That's

their woman's way! I am glad to have her. Sit down and talk. About

Mikhelson's army I understand--Tolstoy's too... a simultaneous

expedition.... But what's the southern army to do? Prussia is

neutral... I know that. What about Austria?" said he, rising from

his chair and pacing up and down the room followed by Tikhon, who

ran after him, handing him different articles of clothing. "What of

Sweden? How will they cross Pomerania?"



Prince Andrew, seeing that his father insisted, began--at first

reluctantly, but gradually with more and more animation, and from

habit changing unconsciously from Russian to French as he went on-

to explain the plan of operation for the coming campaign. He explained

how an army, ninety thousand strong, was to threaten Prussia so as

to bring her out of her neutrality and draw her into the war; how part

of that army was to join some Swedish forces at Stralsund; how two

hundred and twenty thousand Austrians, with a hundred thousand

Russians, were to operate in Italy and on the Rhine; how fifty

thousand Russians and as many English were to land at Naples, and

how a total force of five hundred thousand men was to attack the

French from different sides. The old prince did not evince the least

interest during this explanation, but as if he were not listening to

it continued to dress while walking about, and three times

unexpectedly interrupted. Once he stopped it by shouting: "The white

one, the white one!"



This meant that Tikhon was not handing him the waistcoat he

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wanted. Another time he interrupted, saying:



"And will she soon be confined?" and shaking his head

reproachfully said: "That's bad! Go on, go on."



The third interruption came when Prince Andrew was finishing his

description. The old man began to sing, in the cracked voice of old

age: "Malbrook s'en va-t-en guerre. Dieu sait quand reviendra."*





*"Marlborough is going to the wars; God knows when he'll return."





His son only smiled.



"I don't say it's a plan I approve of," said the son; "I am only

telling you what it is. Napoleon has also formed his plan by now,

not worse than this one."



"Well, you've told me nothing new," and the old man repeated,

meditatively and rapidly:



"Dieu sait quand reviendra. Go to the dining room."









CHAPTER XXVII





At the appointed hour the prince, powdered and shaven, entered the

dining room where his daughter-in-law, Princess Mary, and Mademoiselle

Bourienne were already awaiting him together with his architect, who

by a strange caprice of his employer's was admitted to table though

the position of that insignificant individual was such as could

certainly not have caused him to expect that honor. The prince, who

generally kept very strictly to social distinctions and rarely

admitted even important government officials to his table, had

unexpectedly selected Michael Ivanovich (who always went into a corner

to blow his nose on his checked handkerchief) to illustrate the theory

that all men are equals, and had more than once impressed on his

daughter that Michael Ivanovich was "not a whit worse than you or

I." At dinner the prince usually spoke to the taciturn Michael

Ivanovich more often than to anyone else.



In the dining room, which like all the rooms in the house was

exceedingly lofty, the members of the household and the footmen--one

behind each chair--stood waiting for the prince to enter. The head

butler, napkin on arm, was scanning the setting of the table, making

signs to the footmen, and anxiously glancing from the clock to the

door by which the prince was to enter. Prince Andrew was looking at

a large gilt frame, new to him, containing the genealogical tree of

the Princes Bolkonski, opposite which hung another such frame with a

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badly painted portrait (evidently by the hand of the artist

belonging to the estate) of a ruling prince, in a crown--an alleged

descendant of Rurik and ancestor of the Bolkonskis. Prince Andrew,

looking again at that genealogical tree, shook his head, laughing as a

man laughs who looks at a portrait so characteristic of the original

as to be amusing.



"How thoroughly like him that is!" he said to Princess Mary, who had

come up to him.



Princess Mary looked at her brother in surprise. She did not

understand what he was laughing at. Everything her father did inspired

her with reverence and was beyond question.



"Everyone has his Achilles' heel," continued Prince Andrew.

"Fancy, with his powerful mind, indulging in such nonsense!"



Princess Mary could not understand the boldness of her brother's

criticism and was about to reply, when the expected footsteps were

heard coming from the study. The prince walked in quickly and jauntily

as was his wont, as if intentionally contrasting the briskness of

his manners with the strict formality of his house. At that moment the

great clock struck two and another with a shrill tone joined in from

the drawing room. The prince stood still; his lively glittering eyes

from under their thick, bushy eyebrows sternly scanned all present and

rested on the little princess. She felt, as courtiers do when the Tsar

enters, the sensation of fear and respect which the old man inspired

in all around him. He stroked her hair and then patted her awkwardly

on the back of her neck.



"I'm glad, glad, to see you," he said, looking attentively into

her eyes, and then quickly went to his place and sat down. "Sit

down, sit down! Sit down, Michael Ianovich!"



He indicated a place beside him to his daughter-in-law. A footman

moved the chair for her.



"Ho, ho!" said the old man, casting his eyes on her rounded

figure. "You've been in a hurry. That's bad!"



He laughed in his usual dry, cold, unpleasant way, with his lips

only and not with his eyes.



"You must walk, walk as much as possible, as much as possible," he

said.



The little princess did not, or did not wish to, hear his words. She

was silent and seemed confused. The prince asked her about her father,

and she began to smile and talk. He asked about mutual

acquaintances, and she became still more animated and chattered away

giving him greetings from various people and retailing the town

gossip.



"Countess Apraksina, poor thing, has lost her husband and she has

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cried her eyes out," she said, growing more and more lively.



As she became animated the prince looked at her more and more

sternly, and suddenly, as if he had studied her sufficiently and had

formed a definite idea of her, he turned away and addressed Michael

Ivanovich.



"Well, Michael Ivanovich, our Bonaparte will be having a bad time of

it. Prince Andrew" (he always spoke thus of his son) "has been telling

me what forces are being collected against him! While you and I

never thought much of him."



Michael Ivanovich did not at all know when "you and I" had said such

things about Bonaparte, but understanding that he was wanted as a

peg on which to hang the prince's favorite topic, he looked

inquiringly at the young prince, wondering what would follow.



"He is a great tactician!" said the prince to his son, pointing to

the architect.



And the conversation again turned on the war, on Bonaparte, and

the generals and statesmen of the day. The old prince seemed convinced

not only that all the men of the day were mere babies who did not know

the A B C of war or of politics, and that Bonaparte was an

insignificant little Frenchy, successful only because there were no

longer any Potemkins or Suvorovs left to oppose him; but he was also

convinced that there were no political difficulties in Europe and no

real war, but only a sort of puppet show at which the men of the day

were playing, pretending to do something real. Prince Andrew gaily

bore with his father's ridicule of the new men, and drew him on and

listened to him with evident pleasure.



"The past always seems good," said he, "but did not Suvorov

himself fall into a trap Moreau set him, and from which he did not

know how to escape?"



"Who told you that? Who?" cried the prince. "Suvorov!" And he jerked

away his plate, which Tikhon briskly caught. "Suvorov!... Consider,

Prince Andrew. Two... Frederick and Suvorov; Moreau!... Moreau would

have been a prisoner if Suvorov had had a free hand; but he had the

Hofs-kriegs-wurst-schnapps-Rath on his hands. It would have puzzled

the devil himself! When you get there you'll find out what those

Hofs-kriegs-wurst-Raths are! Suvorov couldn't manage them so what

chance has Michael Kutuzov? No, my dear boy," he continued, "you and

your generals won't get on against Buonaparte; you'll have to call

in the French, so that birds of a feather may fight together. The

German, Pahlen, has been sent to New York in America, to fetch the

Frenchman, Moreau," he said, alluding to the invitation made that year

to Moreau to enter the Russian service.... "Wonderful!... Were the

Potemkins, Suvorovs, and Orlovs Germans? No, lad, either you fellows

have all lost your wits, or I have outlived mine. May God help you,

but we'll see what will happen. Buonaparte has become a great

commander among them! Hm!..."



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"I don't at all say that all the plans are good," said Prince

Andrew, "I am only surprised at your opinion of Bonaparte. You may

laugh as much as you like, but all the same Bonaparte is a great

general!"



"Michael Ivanovich!" cried the old prince to the architect who, busy

with his roast meat, hoped he had been forgotten: "Didn't I tell you

Buonaparte was a great tactician? Here, he says the same thing."



"To be sure, your excellency." replied the architect.



The prince again laughed his frigid laugh.



"Buonaparte was born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He has got

splendid soldiers. Besides he began by attacking Germans. And only

idlers have failed to beat the Germans. Since the world began

everybody has beaten the Germans. They beat no one--except one

another. He made his reputation fighting them."



And the prince began explaining all the blunders which, according to

him, Bonaparte had made in his campaigns and even in politics. His son

made no rejoinder, but it was evident that whatever arguments were

presented he was as little able as his father to change his opinion.

He listened, refraining from a reply, and involuntarily wondered how

this old man, living alone in the country for so many years, could

know and discuss so minutely and acutely all the recent European

military and political events.



"You think I'm an old man and don't understand the present state

of affairs?" concluded his father. "But it troubles me. I don't

sleep at night. Come now, where has this great commander of yours

shown his skill?" he concluded.



"That would take too long to tell," answered the son.



"Well, then go to your Buonaparte! Mademoiselle Bourienne, here's

another admirer of that powder-monkey emperor of yours," he

exclaimed in excellent French.



"You know, Prince, I am not a Bonapartist!"



"Dieu sait quand reviendra..." hummed the prince out of tune and,

with a laugh still more so, he quitted the table.



The little princess during the whole discussion and the rest of

the dinner sat silent, glancing with a frightened look now at her

father-in-law and now at Princess Mary. When they left the table she

took her sister-in-law's arm and drew her into another room.



"What a clever man your father is," said she; "perhaps that is why I

am afraid of him."



"Oh, he is so kind!" answered Princess Mary.



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CHAPTER XXVIII





Prince Andrew was to leave next evening. The old prince, not

altering his routine, retired as usual after dinner. The little

princess was in her sister-in-law's room. Prince Andrew in a traveling

coat without epaulettes had been packing with his valet in the rooms

assigned to him. After inspecting the carriage himself and seeing

the trunks put in, he ordered the horses to be harnessed. Only those

things he always kept with him remained in his room; a small box, a

large canteen fitted with silver plate, two Turkish pistols and a

saber--a present from his father who had brought it from the siege

of Ochakov. All these traveling effects of Prince Andrew's were in

very good order: new, clean, and in cloth covers carefully tied with

tapes.



When starting on a journey or changing their mode of life, men

capable of reflection are generally in a serious frame of mind. At

such moments one reviews the past and plans for the future. Prince

Andrew's face looked very thoughtful and tender. With his hands behind

him he paced briskly from corner to corner of the room, looking

straight before him and thoughtfully shaking his head. Did he fear

going to the war, or was he sad at leaving his wife?--perhaps both,

but evidently he did not wish to be seen in that mood, for hearing

footsteps in the passage he hurriedly unclasped his hands, stopped

at a table as if tying the cover of the small box, and assumed his

usual tranquil and impenetrable expression. It was the heavy tread

of Princess Mary that he heard.



"I hear you have given orders to harness," she cried, panting (she

had apparently been running), "and I did so wish to have another

talk with you alone! God knows how long we may again be parted. You

are not angry with me for coming? You have changed so, Andrusha,"

she added, as if to explain such a question.



She smiled as she uttered his pet name, "Andrusha." It was obviously

strange to her to think that this stern handsome man should be

Andrusha--the slender mischievous boy who had been her playfellow in

childhood.



"And where is Lise?" he asked, answering her question only by a

smile.



"She was so tired that she has fallen asleep on the sofa in my room.

Oh, Andrew! What a treasure of a wife you have," said she, sitting

down on the sofa, facing her brother. "She is quite a child: such a

dear, merry child. I have grown so fond of her."



Prince Andrew was silent, but the princess noticed the ironical

and contemptuous look that showed itself on his face.

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"One must be indulgent to little weaknesses; who is free from

them, Andrew? Don't forget that she has grown up and been educated

in society, and so her position now is not a rosy one. We should enter

into everyone's situation. Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner.*

Think it must be for her, poor thing, after what she has been used to,

to be parted from her husband and be left alone in the country, in her

condition! It's very hard."





*To understand all is to forgive all.





Prince Andrew smiled as he looked at his sister, as we smile at

those we think we thoroughly understand.



"You live in the country and don't think the life terrible," he

replied.



"I... that's different. Why speak of me? I don't want any other

life, and can't, for I know no other. But think, Andrew: for a young

society woman to be buried in the country during the best years of her

life, all alone--for Papa is always busy, and I... well, you know what

poor resources I have for entertaining a woman used to the best

society. There is only Mademoiselle Bourienne...."



"I don't like your Mademoiselle Bourienne at all," said Prince

Andrew.



"No? She is very nice and kind and, above all, she's much to be

pitied. She has no one, no one. To tell the truth, I don't need her,

and she's even in my way. You know I always was a savage, and now am

even more so. I like being alone.... Father likes her very much. She

and Michael Ivanovich are the two people to whom he is always gentle

and kind, because he has been a benefactor to them both. As Sterne

says: 'We don't love people so much for the good they have done us, as

for the good we have done them.' Father took her when she was homeless

after losing her own father. She is very good-natured, and my father

likes her way of reading. She reads to him in the evenings and reads

splendidly."



"To be quite frank, Mary, I expect Father's character sometimes

makes things trying for you, doesn't it?" Prince Andrew asked

suddenly.



Princess Mary was first surprised and then aghast at this question.



"For me? For me?... Trying for me!..." said she.



"He always was rather harsh; and now I should think he's getting

very trying," said Prince Andrew, apparently speaking lightly of their

father in order to puzzle or test his sister.



"You are good in every way, Andrew, but you have a kind of

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intellectual pride," said the princess, following the train of her own

thoughts rather than the trend of the conversation--"and that's a

great sin. How can one judge Father? But even if one might, what

feeling except veneration could such a man as my father evoke? And I

am so contented and happy with him. I only wish you were all as

happy as I am."



Her brother shook his head incredulously.



"The only thing that is hard for me... I will tell you the truth,

Andrew... is Father's way of treating religious subjects. I don't

understand how a man of his immense intellect can fail to see what

is as clear as day, and can go so far astray. That is the only thing

that makes me unhappy. But even in this I can see lately a shade of

improvement. His satire has been less bitter of late, and there was

a monk he received and had a long talk with."



"Ah! my dear, I am afraid you and your monk are wasting your

powder," said Prince Andrew banteringly yet tenderly.



"Ah! mon ami, I only pray, and hope that God will hear me.

Andrew..." she said timidly after a moment's silence, "I have a

great favor to ask of you."



"What is it, dear?"



"No--promise that you will not refuse! It will give you no trouble

and is nothing unworthy of you, but it will comfort me. Promise,

Andrusha!..." said she, putting her hand in her reticule but not yet

taking out what she was holding inside it, as if what she held were

the subject of her request and must not be shown before the request

was granted.



She looked timidly at her brother.



"Even if it were a great deal of trouble..." answered Prince Andrew,

as if guessing what it was about.



"Think what you please! I know you are just like Father. Think as

you please, but do this for my sake! Please do! Father's father, our

grandfather, wore it in all his wars." (She still did not take out

what she was holding in her reticule.) "So you promise?"



"Of course. What is it?"



"Andrew, I bless you with this icon and you must promise me you will

never take it off. Do you promise?"



"If it does not weigh a hundredweight and won't break my neck...

To please you..." said Prince Andrew. But immediately, noticing the

pained expression his joke had brought to his sister's face, he

repented and added: "I am glad; really, dear, I am very glad."



"Against your will He will save and have mercy on you and bring

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you to Himself, for in Him alone is truth and peace," said she in a

voice trembling with emotion, solemnly holding up in both hands before

her brother a small, oval, antique, dark-faced icon of the Saviour

in a gold setting, on a finely wrought silver chain.



She crossed herself, kissed the icon, and handed it to Andrew.



"Please, Andrew, for my sake!..."



Rays of gentle light shone from her large, timid eyes. Those eyes

lit up the whole of her thin, sickly face and made it beautiful. Her

brother would have taken the icon, but she stopped him. Andrew

understood, crossed himself and kissed the icon. There was a look of

tenderness, for he was touched, but also a gleam of irony on his face.



"Thank you, my dear." She kissed him on the forehead and sat down

again on the sofa. They were silent for a while.



"As I was saying to you, Andrew, be kind and generous as you

always used to be. Don't judge Lise harshly," she began. "She is so

sweet, so good-natured, and her position now is a very hard one."



"I do not think I have complained of my wife to you, Masha, or

blamed her. Why do you say all this to me?"



Red patches appeared on Princess Mary's face and she was silent as

if she felt guilty.



"I have said nothing to you, but you have already been talked to.

And I am sorry for that," he went on.



The patches grew deeper on her forehead, neck, and cheeks. She tried

to say something but could not. Her brother had guessed right: the

little princess had been crying after dinner and had spoken of her

forebodings about her confinement, and how she dreaded it, and had

complained of her fate, her father-in-law, and her husband. After

crying she had fallen asleep. Prince Andrew felt sorry for his sister.



"Know this, Masha: I can't reproach, have not reproached, and

never shall reproach my wife with anything, and I cannot reproach

myself with anything in regard to her; and that always will be so in

whatever circumstances I may be placed. But if you want to know the

truth... if you want to know whether I am happy? No! Is she happy? No!

But why this is so I don't know..."



As he said this he rose, went to his sister, and, stooping, kissed

her forehead. His fine eyes lit up with a thoughtful, kindly, and

unaccustomed brightness, but he was looking not at his sister but over

her head toward the darkness of the open doorway.



"Let us go to her, I must say good-by. Or--go and wake and I'll come

in a moment. Petrushka!" he called to his valet: "Come here, take

these away. Put this on the seat and this to the right."



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Princess Mary rose and moved to the door, then stopped and said:

"Andrew, if you had faith you would have turned to God and asked Him

to give you the love you do not feel, and your prayer would have

been answered."



"Well, may be!" said Prince Andrew. "Go, Masha; I'll come

immediately."



On the way to his sister's room, in the passage which connected

one wing with the other, Prince Andrew met Mademoiselle Bourienne

smiling sweetly. It was the third time that day that, with an ecstatic

and artless smile, she had met him in secluded passages.



"Oh! I thought you were in your room," she said, for some reason

blushing and dropping her eyes.



Prince Andrew looked sternly at her and an expression of anger

suddenly came over his face. He said nothing to her but looked at

her forehead and hair, without looking at her eyes, with such contempt

that the Frenchwoman blushed and went away without a word. When he

reached his sister's room his wife was already awake and her merry

voice, hurrying one word after another, came through the open door.

She was speaking as usual in French, and as if after long

self-restraint she wished to make up for lost time.



"No, but imagine the old Countess Zubova, with false curls and her

mouth full of false teeth, as if she were trying to cheat old

age.... Ha, ha, ha! Mary!"



This very sentence about Countess Zubova and this same laugh

Prince Andrew had already heard from his wife in the presence of

others some five times. He entered the room softly. The little

princess, plump and rosy, was sitting in an easy chair with her work

in her hands, talking incessantly, repeating Petersburg

reminiscences and even phrases. Prince Andrew came up, stroked her

hair, and asked if she felt rested after their journey. She answered

him and continued her chatter.



The coach with six horses was waiting at the porch. It was an autumn

night, so dark that the coachman could not see the carriage pole.

Servants with lanterns were bustling about in the porch. The immense

house was brilliant with lights shining through its lofty windows. The

domestic serfs were crowding in the hall, waiting to bid good-by to

the young prince. The members of the household were all gathered in

the reception hall: Michael Ivanovich, Mademoiselle Bourienne,

Princess Mary, and the little princess. Prince Andrew had been

called to his father's study as the latter wished to say good-by to

him alone. All were waiting for them to come out.



When Prince Andrew entered the study the old man in his old-age

spectacles and white dressing gown, in which he received no one but

his son, sat at the table writing. He glanced round.



"Going?" And he went on writing.

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"I've come to say good-by."



"Kiss me here," and he touched his cheek: "Thanks, thanks!"



"What do you thank me for?"



"For not dilly-dallying and not hanging to a woman's apron

strings. The Service before everything. Thanks, thanks!" And he went

on writing, so that his quill spluttered and squeaked. "If you have

anything to say, say it. These two things can be done together," he

added.



"About my wife... I am ashamed as it is to leave her on your

hands..."



"Why talk nonsense? Say what you want."



"When her confinement is due, send to Moscow for an accoucheur....

Let him be here...."



The old prince stopped writing and, as if not understanding, fixed

his stern eyes on his son.



"I know that no one can help if nature does not do her work," said

Prince Andrew, evidently confused. "I know that out of a million cases

only one goes wrong, but it is her fancy and mine. They have been

telling her things. She has had a dream and is frightened."



"Hm... Hm..." muttered the old prince to himself, finishing what

he was writing. "I'll do it."



He signed with a flourish and suddenly turning to his son began to

laugh.



"It's a bad business, eh?"



"What is bad, Father?"



"The wife!" said the old prince, briefly and significantly.



"I don't understand!" said Prince Andrew.



"No, it can't be helped, lad," said the prince. "They're all like

that; one can't unmarry. Don't be afraid; I won't tell anyone, but you

know it yourself."



He seized his son by the hand with small bony fingers, shook it,

looked straight into his son's face with keen eyes which seemed to see

through him, and again laughed his frigid laugh.



The son sighed, thus admitting that his father had understood him.

The old man continued to fold and seal his letter, snatching up and

throwing down the wax, the seal, and the paper, with his accustomed

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rapidity.



"What's to be done? She's pretty! I will do everything. Make your

mind easy," said he in abrupt sentences while sealing his letter.



Andrew did not speak; he was both pleased and displeased that his

father understood him. The old man got up and gave the letter to his

son.



"Listen!" said he; "don't worry about your wife: what can be done

shall be. Now listen! Give this letter to Michael Ilarionovich.* I

have written that he should make use of you in proper places and not

keep you long as an adjutant: a bad position! Tell him I remember

and like him. Write and tell me how he receives you. If he is all

right--serve him. Nicholas Bolkonski's son need not serve under anyone

if he is in disfavor. Now come here."





*Kutuzov.





He spoke so rapidly that he did not finish half his words, but his

son was accustomed to understand him. He led him to the desk, raised

the lid, drew out a drawer, and took out an exercise book filled

with his bold, tall, close handwriting.



"I shall probably die before you. So remember, these are my memoirs;

hand them to the Emperor after my death. Now here is a Lombard bond

and a letter; it is a premium for the man who writes a history of

Suvorov's wars. Send it to the Academy. Here are some jottings for you

to read when I am gone. You will find them useful."



Andrew did not tell his father that he would no doubt live a long

time yet. He felt that he must not say it.



"I will do it all, Father," he said.



"Well, now, good-by!" He gave his son his hand to kiss, and embraced

him. "Remember this, Prince Andrew, if they kill you it will hurt

me, your old father..." he paused unexpectedly, and then in a

querulous voice suddenly shrieked: "but if I hear that you have not

behaved like a son of Nicholas Bolkonski, I shall be ashamed!"



"You need not have said that to me, Father," said the son with a

smile.



The old man was silent.



"I also wanted to ask you," continued Prince Andrew, "if I'm

killed and if I have a son, do not let him be taken away from you-

as I said yesterday... let him grow up with you.... Please."



"Not let the wife have him?" said the old man, and laughed.



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They stood silent, facing one another. The old man's sharp eyes were

fixed straight on his son's. Something twitched in the lower part of

the old prince's face.



"We've said good-by. Go!" he suddenly shouted in a loud, angry

voice, opening his door.



"What is it? What?" asked both princesses when they saw for a moment

at the door Prince Andrew and the figure of the old man in a white

dressing gown, spectacled and wigless, shouting in an angry voice.



Prince Andrew sighed and made no reply.



"Well!" he said, turning to his wife.



And this "Well!" sounded coldly ironic, as if he were saying,:

"Now go through your performance."



"Andrew, already!" said the little princess, turning pale and

looking with dismay at her husband.



He embraced her. She screamed and fell unconscious on his shoulder.



He cautiously released the shoulder she leaned on, looked into her

face, and carefully placed her in an easy chair.



"Adieu, Mary," said he gently to his sister, taking her by the

hand and kissing her, and then he left the room with rapid steps.



The little princess lay in the armchair, Mademoiselle Bourienne

chafing her temples. Princess Mary, supporting her sister-in-law,

still looked with her beautiful eyes full of tears at the door through

which Prince Andrew had gone and made the sign of the cross in his

direction. From the study, like pistol shots, came the frequent

sound of the old man angrily blowing his nose. Hardly had Prince

Andrew gone when the study door opened quickly and the stern figure of

the old man in the white dressing gown looked out.



"Gone? That's all right!" said he; and looking angrily at the

unconscious little princess, he shook his head reprovingly and slammed

the door.









BOOK TWO: 1805









CHAPTER I



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In October, 1805, a Russian army was occupying the villages and

towns of the Archduchy of Austria, and yet other regiments freshly

arriving from Russia were settling near the fortress of Braunau and

burdening the inhabitants on whom they were quartered. Braunau was the

headquarters of the commander-in-chief, Kutuzov.



On October 11, 1805, one of the infantry regiments that had just

reached Braunau had halted half a mile from the town, waiting to be

inspected by the commander in chief. Despite the un-Russian appearance

of the locality and surroundings--fruit gardens, stone fences, tiled

roofs, and hills in the distance--and despite the fact that the

inhabitants (who gazed with curiosity at the soldiers) were not

Russians, the regiment had just the appearance of any Russian regiment

preparing for an inspection anywhere in the heart of Russia.



On the evening of the last day's march an order had been received

that the commander in chief would inspect the regiment on the march.

Though the words of the order were not clear to the regimental

commander, and the question arose whether the troops were to be in

marching order or not, it was decided at a consultation between the

battalion commanders to present the regiment in parade order, on the

principle that it is always better to "bow too low than not bow low

enough." So the soldiers, after a twenty-mile march, were kept mending

and cleaning all night long without closing their eyes, while the

adjutants and company commanders calculated and reckoned, and by

morning the regiment--instead of the straggling, disorderly crowd it

had been on its last march the day before--presented a well-ordered

array of two thousand men each of whom knew his place and his duty,

had every button and every strap in place, and shone with cleanliness.

And not only externally was all in order, but had it pleased the

commander in chief to look under the uniforms he would have found on

every man a clean shirt, and in every knapsack the appointed number of

articles, "awl, soap, and all," as the soldiers say. There was only

one circumstance concerning which no one could be at ease. It was

the state of the soldiers' boots. More than half the men's boots

were in holes. But this defect was not due to any fault of the

regimental commander, for in spite of repeated demands boots had not

been issued by the Austrian commissariat, and the regiment had marched

some seven hundred miles.



The commander of the regiment was an elderly, choleric, stout, and

thick-set general with grizzled eyebrows and whiskers, and wider

from chest to back than across the shoulders. He had on a brand-new

uniform showing the creases where it had been folded and thick gold

epaulettes which seemed to stand rather than lie down on his massive

shoulders. He had the air of a man happily performing one of the

most solemn duties of his life. He walked about in front of the line

and at every step pulled himself up, slightly arching his back. It was

plain that the commander admired his regiment, rejoiced in it, and

that his whole mind was engrossed by it, yet his strut seemed to

indicate that, besides military matters, social interests and the fair

sex occupied no small part of his thoughts.



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"Well, Michael Mitrich, sir?" he said, addressing one of the

battalion commanders who smilingly pressed forward (it was plain

that they both felt happy). "We had our hands full last night.

However, I think the regiment is not a bad one, eh?"



The battalion commander perceived the jovial irony and laughed.



"It would not be turned off the field even on the Tsaritsin Meadow."



"What?" asked the commander.



At that moment, on the road from the town on which signalers had

been posted, two men appeared on horse back. They were an

aide-de-camp followed by a Cossack.



The aide-de-camp was sent to confirm the order which had not been

clearly worded the day before, namely, that the commander in chief

wished to see the regiment just in the state in which it had been on

the march: in their greatcoats, and packs, and without any preparation

whatever.



A member of the Hofkriegsrath from Vienna had come to Kutuzov the

day before with proposals and demands for him to join up with the army

of the Archduke Ferdinand and Mack, and Kutuzov, not considering

this junction advisable, meant, among other arguments in support of

his view, to show the Austrian general the wretched state in which the

troops arrived from Russia. With this object he intended to meet the

regiment; so the worse the condition it was in, the better pleased the

commander in chief would be. Though the aide-de-camp did not know

these circumstances, he nevertheless delivered the definite order that

the men should be in their greatcoats and in marching order, and

that the commander in chief would otherwise be dissatisfied. On

hearing this the regimental commander hung his head, silently shrugged

his shoulders, and spread out his arms with a choleric gesture.



"A fine mess we've made of it!" he remarked.



"There now! Didn't I tell you, Michael Mitrich, that if it was

said 'on the march' it meant in greatcoats?" said he reproachfully

to the battalion commander. "Oh, my God!" he added, stepping

resolutely forward. "Company commanders!" he shouted in a voice

accustomed to command. "Sergeants major!... How soon will he be here?"

he asked the aide-de-camp with a respectful politeness evidently

relating to the personage he was referring to.



"In an hour's time, I should say."



"Shall we have time to change clothes?"



"I don't know, General...."



The regimental commander, going up to the line himself, ordered

the soldiers to change into their greatcoats. The company commanders

ran off to their companies, the sergeants major began bustling (the

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greatcoats were not in very good condition), and instantly the squares

that had up to then been in regular order and silent began to sway and

stretch and hum with voices. On all sides soldiers were running to and

fro, throwing up their knapsacks with a jerk of their shoulders and

pulling the straps over their heads, unstrapping their overcoats and

drawing the sleeves on with upraised arms.



In half an hour all was again in order, only the squares had

become gray instead of black. The regimental commander walked with his

jerky steps to the front of the regiment and examined it from a

distance.



"Whatever is this? This!" he shouted and stood still. "Commander

of the third company!"



"Commander of the third company wanted by the general!...

commander to the general... third company to the commander." The words

passed along the lines and an adjutant ran to look for the missing

officer.



When the eager but misrepeated words had reached their destination

in a cry of: "The general to the third company," the missing officer

appeared from behind his company and, though he was a middle-aged

man and not in the habit of running, trotted awkwardly stumbling on

his toes toward the general. The captain's face showed the

uneasiness of a schoolboy who is told to repeat a lesson he has not

learned. Spots appeared on his nose, the redness of which was

evidently due to intemperance, and his mouth twitched nervously. The

general looked the captain up and down as he came up panting,

slackening his pace as he approached.



"You will soon be dressing your men in petticoats! What is this?"

shouted the regimental commander, thrusting forward his jaw and

pointing at a soldier in the ranks of the third company in a greatcoat

of bluish cloth, which contrasted with the others. "What have you been

after? The commander in chief is expected and you leave your place?

Eh? I'll teach you to dress the men in fancy coats for a parade....

Eh...?"



The commander of the company, with his eyes fixed on his superior,

pressed two fingers more and more rigidly to his cap, as if in this

pressure lay his only hope of salvation.



"Well, why don't you speak? Whom have you got there dressed up as

a Hungarian?" said the commander with an austere gibe.



"Your excellency..."



"Well, your excellency, what? Your excellency! But what about your

excellency?... nobody knows."



"Your excellency, it's the officer Dolokhov, who has been reduced to

the ranks," said the captain softly.



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"Well? Has he been degraded into a field marshal, or into a soldier?

If a soldier, he should be dressed in regulation uniform like the

others."



"Your excellency, you gave him leave yourself, on the march."



"Gave him leave? Leave? That's just like you young men," said the

regimental commander cooling down a little. "Leave indeed.... One says

a word to you and you... What?" he added with renewed irritation, "I

beg you to dress your men decently."



And the commander, turning to look at the adjutant, directed his

jerky steps down the line. He was evidently pleased at his own display

of anger and walking up to the regiment wished to find a further

excuse for wrath. Having snapped at an officer for an unpolished

badge, at another because his line was not straight, he reached the

third company.



"H-o-o-w are you standing? Where's your leg? Your leg?" shouted

the commander with a tone of suffering in his voice, while there

were still five men between him and Dolokhov with his bluish-gray

uniform.



Dolokhov slowly straightened his bent knee, looking straight with

his clear, insolent eyes in the general's face.



"Why a blue coat? Off with it... Sergeant major! Change his

coat... the ras..." he did not finish.



"General, I must obey orders, but I am not bound to endure..."

Dolokhov hurriedly interrupted.



"No talking in the ranks!... No talking, no talking!"



"Not bound to endure insults," Dolokhov concluded in loud, ringing

tones.



The eyes of the general and the soldier met. The general became

silent, angrily pulling down his tight scarf.



"I request you to have the goodness to change your coat," he said as

he turned away.









CHAPTER II





"He's coming!" shouted the signaler at that moment.



The regimental commander, flushing, ran to his horse, seized the

stirrup with trembling hands, threw his body across the saddle,

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righted himself, drew his saber, and with a happy and resolute

countenance, opening his mouth awry, prepared to shout. The regiment

fluttered like a bird preening its plumage and became motionless.



"Att-ention!" shouted the regimental commander in a soul-shaking

voice which expressed joy for himself, severity for the regiment,

and welcome for the approaching chief.



Along the broad country road, edged on both sides by trees, came a

high, light blue Viennese caleche, slightly creaking on its springs

and drawn by six horses at a smart trot. Behind the caleche galloped

the suite and a convoy of Croats. Beside Kutuzov sat an Austrian

general, in a white uniform that looked strange among the Russian

black ones. The caleche stopped in front of the regiment. Kutuzov

and the Austrian general were talking in low voices and Kutuzov smiled

slightly as treading heavily he stepped down from the carriage just as

if those two thousand men breathlessly gazing at him and the

regimental commander did not exist.



The word of command rang out, and again the regiment quivered, as

with a jingling sound it presented arms. Then amidst a dead silence

the feeble voice of the commander in chief was heard. The regiment

roared, "Health to your ex... len... len... lency!" and again all

became silent. At first Kutuzov stood still while the regiment

moved; then he and the general in white, accompanied by the suite,

walked between the ranks.



From the way the regimental commander saluted the commander in chief

and devoured him with his eyes, drawing himself up obsequiously, and

from the way he walked through the ranks behind the generals,

bending forward and hardly able to restrain his jerky movements, and

from the way he darted forward at every word or gesture of the

commander in chief, it was evident that he performed his duty as a

subordinate with even greater zeal than his duty as a commander.

Thanks to the strictness and assiduity of its commander the

regiment, in comparison with others that had reached Braunau at the

same time, was in splendid condition. There were only 217 sick and

stragglers. Everything was in good order except the boots.



Kutuzov walked through the ranks, sometimes stopping to say a few

friendly words to officers he had known in the Turkish war,

sometimes also to the soldiers. Looking at their boots he several

times shook his head sadly, pointing them out to the Austrian

general with an expression which seemed to say that he was not blaming

anyone, but could not help noticing what a bad state of things it was.

The regimental commander ran forward on each such occasion, fearing to

miss a single word of the commander in chief's regarding the regiment.

Behind Kutuzov, at a distance that allowed every softly spoken word to

be heard, followed some twenty men of his suite. These gentlemen

talked among themselves and sometimes laughed. Nearest of all to the

commander in chief walked a handsome adjutant. This was Prince

Bolkonski. Beside him was his comrade Nesvitski, a tall staff officer,

extremely stout, with a kindly, smiling, handsome face and moist eyes.

Nesvitski could hardly keep from laughter provoked by a swarthy hussar

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officer who walked beside him. This hussar, with a grave face and

without a smile or a change in the expression of his fixed eyes,

watched the regimental commander's back and mimicked his every

movement. Each time the commander started and bent forward, the hussar

started and bent forward in exactly the same manner. Nesvitski laughed

and nudged the others to make them look at the wag.



Kutuzov walked slowly and languidly past thousands of eyes which

were starting from their sockets to watch their chief. On reaching the

third company he suddenly stopped. His suite, not having expected

this, involuntarily came closer to him.



"Ah, Timokhin!" said he, recognizing the red-nosed captain who had

been reprimanded on account of the blue greatcoat.



One would have thought it impossible for a man to stretch himself

more than Timokhin had done when he was reprimanded by the

regimental commander, but now that the commander in chief addressed

him he drew himself up to such an extent that it seemed he could not

have sustained it had the commander in chief continued to look at him,

and so Kutuzov, who evidently understood his case and wished him

nothing but good, quickly turned away, a scarcely perceptible smile

flitting over his scarred and puffy face.



"Another Ismail comrade," said he. "A brave officer! Are you

satisfied with him?" he asked the regimental commander.



And the latter--unconscious that he was being reflected in the

hussar officer as in a looking glass--started, moved forward, and

answered: "Highly satisfied, your excellency!"



"We all have our weaknesses," said Kutuzov smiling and walking

away from him. "He used to have a predilection for Bacchus."



The regimental commander was afraid he might be blamed for this

and did not answer. The hussar at that moment noticed the face of

the red-nosed captain and his drawn-in stomach, and mimicked his

expression and pose with such exactitude that Nesvitski could not help

laughing. Kutuzov turned round. The officer evidently had complete

control of his face, and while Kutuzov was turning managed to make a

grimace and then assume a most serious, deferential, and innocent

expression.



The third company was the last, and Kutuzov pondered, apparently

trying to recollect something. Prince Andrew stepped forward from

among the suite and said in French:



"You told me to remind you of the officer Dolokhov, reduced to the

ranks in this regiment."



"Where is Dolokhov?" asked Kutuzov.



Dolokhov, who had already changed into a soldier's gray greatcoat,

did not wait to be called. The shapely figure of the fair-haired

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soldier, with his clear blue eyes, stepped forward from the ranks,

went up to the commander in chief, and presented arms.



"Have you a complaint to make?" Kutuzov asked with a slight frown.



"This is Dolokhov," said Prince Andrew.



"Ah!" said Kutuzov. "I hope this will be a lesson to you. Do your

duty. The Emperor is gracious, and I shan't forget you if you

deserve well."



The clear blue eyes looked at the commander in chief just as

boldly as they had looked at the regimental commander, seeming by

their expression to tear open the veil of convention that separates

a commander in chief so widely from a private.



"One thing I ask of your excellency," Dolokhov said in his firm,

ringing, deliberate voice. "I ask an opportunity to atone for my fault

and prove my devotion to His Majesty the Emperor and to Russia!"



Kutuzov turned away. The same smile of the eyes with which he had

turned from Captain Timokhin again flitted over his face. He turned

away with a grimace as if to say that everything Dolokhov had said

to him and everything he could say had long been known to him, that he

was weary of it and it was not at all what he wanted. He turned away

and went to the carriage.



The regiment broke up into companies, which went to their

appointed quarters near Braunau, where they hoped to receive boots and

clothes and to rest after their hard marches.



"You won't bear me a grudge, Prokhor Ignatych?" said the

regimental commander, overtaking the third company on its way to its

quarters and riding up to Captain Timokhin who was walking in front.

(The regimental commander's face now that the inspection was happily

over beamed with irrepressible delight.) "It's in the Emperor's

service... it can't be helped... one is sometimes a bit hasty on

parade... I am the first to apologize, you know me!... He was very

pleased!" And he held out his hand to the captain.



"Don't mention it, General, as if I'd be so bold!" replied the

captain, his nose growing redder as he gave a smile which showed where

two front teeth were missing that had been knocked out by the butt end

of a gun at Ismail.



"And tell Mr. Dolokhov that I won't forget him--he may be quite

easy. And tell me, please--I've been meaning to ask--how is to ask-

how is he behaving himself, and in general..."



"As far as the service goes he is quite punctilious, your

excellency; but his character..." said Timokhin.



"And what about his character?" asked the regimental commander.



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"It's different on different days," answered the captain. "One day

he is sensible, well educated, and good-natured, and the next he's a

wild beast.... In Poland, if you please, he nearly killed a Jew."



"Oh, well, well!" remarked the regimental commander. "Still, one

must have pity on a young man in misfortune. You know he has important

connections... Well, then, you just..."



"I will, your excellency," said Timokhin, showing by his smile

that he understood his commander's wish.



"Well, of course, of course!"



The regimental commander sought out Dolokhov in the ranks and,

reining in his horse, said to him:



"After the next affair... epaulettes."



Dolokhov looked round but did not say anything, nor did the

mocking smile on his lips change.



"Well, that's all right," continued the regimental commander. "A cup

of vodka for the men from me," he added so that the soldiers could

hear. "I thank you all! God be praised!" and he rode past that company

and overtook the next one.



"Well, he's really a good fellow, one can serve under him," said

Timokhin to the subaltern beside him.



"In a word, a hearty one..." said the subaltern, laughing (the

regimental commander was nicknamed King of Hearts).



The cheerful mood of their officers after the inspection infected

the soldiers. The company marched on gaily. The soldiers' voices could

be heard on every side.



"And they said Kutuzov was blind of one eye?"



"And so he is! Quite blind!"



"No, friend, he is sharper-eyed than you are. Boots and leg bands...

he noticed everything..."



"When he looked at my feet, friend... well, thinks I..."



"And that other one with him, the Austrian, looked as if he were

smeared with chalk--as white as flour! I suppose they polish him up as

they do the guns."



"I say, Fedeshon!... Did he say when the battles are to begin? You

were near him. Everybody said that Buonaparte himself was at Braunau."



"Buonaparte himself!... Just listen to the fool, what he doesn't

know! The Prussians are up in arms now. The Austrians, you see, are

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putting them down. When they've been put down, the war with Buonaparte

will begin. And he says Buonaparte is in Braunau! Shows you're a fool.

You'd better listen more carefully!"



"What devils these quartermasters are! See, the fifth company is

turning into the village already... they will have their buckwheat

cooked before we reach our quarters."



"Give me a biscuit, you devil!"



"And did you give me tobacco yesterday? That's just it, friend!

Ah, well, never mind, here you are."



"They might call a halt here or we'll have to do another four

miles without eating."



"Wasn't it fine when those Germans gave us lifts! You just sit still

and are drawn along."



"And here, friend, the people are quite beggarly. There they all

seemed to be Poles--all under the Russian crown--but here they're

all regular Germans."



"Singers to the front " came the captain's order.



And from the different ranks some twenty men ran to the front. A

drummer, their leader, turned round facing the singers, and

flourishing his arm, began a long-drawn-out soldiers' song, commencing

with the words: "Morning dawned, the sun was rising," and

concluding: "On then, brothers, on to glory, led by Father

Kamenski." This song had been composed in the Turkish campaign and now

being sung in Austria, the only change being that the words "Father

Kamenski" were replaced by "Father Kutuzov."



Having jerked out these last words as soldiers do and waved his arms

as if flinging something to the ground, the drummer--a lean,

handsome soldier of forty--looked sternly at the singers and screwed

up his eyes. Then having satisfied himself that all eyes were fixed on

him, he raised both arms as if carefully lifting some invisible but

precious object above his head and, holding it there for some seconds,

suddenly flung it down and began:



"Oh, my bower, oh, my bower...!"



"Oh, my bower new...!" chimed in twenty voices, and the castanet

player, in spite of the burden of his equipment, rushed out to the

front and, walking backwards before the company, jerked his

shoulders and flourished his castanets as if threatening someone.

The soldiers, swinging their arms and keeping time spontaneously,

marched with long steps. Behind the company the sound of wheels, the

creaking of springs, and the tramp of horses' hoofs were heard.

Kutuzov and his suite were returning to the town. The commander in

chief made a sign that the men should continue to march at ease, and

he and all his suite showed pleasure at the sound of the singing and

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the sight of the dancing soldier and the gay and smartly marching men.

In the second file from the right flank, beside which the carriage

passed the company, a blue-eyed soldier involuntarily attracted

notice. It was Dolokhov marching with particular grace and boldness in

time to the song and looking at those driving past as if he pitied all

who were not at that moment marching with the company. The hussar

cornet of Kutuzov's suite who had mimicked the regimental commander,

fell back from the carriage and rode up to Dolokhov.



Hussar cornet Zherkov had at one time, in Petersburg, belonged to

the wild set led by Dolokhov. Zherkov had met Dolokhov abroad as a

private and had not seen fit to recognize him. But now that Kutuzov

had spoken to the gentleman ranker, he addressed him with the

cordiality of an old friend.



"My dear fellow, how are you?" said he through the singing, making

his horse keep pace with the company.



"How am I?" Dolokhov answered coldly. "I am as you see."



The lively song gave a special flavor to the tone of free and easy

gaiety with which Zherkov spoke, and to the intentional coldness of

Dolokhov's reply.



"And how do you get on with the officers?" inquired Zherkov.



"All right. They are good fellows. And how have you wriggled onto

the staff?"



"I was attached; I'm on duty."



Both were silent.



"She let the hawk fly upward from her wide right sleeve," went the

song, arousing an involuntary sensation of courage and cheerfulness.

Their conversation would probably have been different but for the

effect of that song.



"Is it true that Austrians have been beaten?" asked Dolokhov.



"The devil only knows! They say so."



"I'm glad," answered Dolokhov briefly and clearly, as the song

demanded.



"I say, come round some evening and we'll have a game of faro!" said

Zherkov.



"Why, have you too much money?"



"Do come."



"I can't. I've sworn not to. I won't drink and won't play till I get

reinstated."

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"Well, that's only till the first engagement."



"We shall see."



They were again silent.



"Come if you need anything. One can at least be of use on the

staff..."



Dolokhov smiled. "Don't trouble. If I want anything, I won't beg-

I'll take it!"



"Well, never mind; I only..."



"And I only..."



"Good-by."



"Good health..."



"It's a long, long way.

To my native land..."





Zherkov touched his horse with the spurs; it pranced excitedly

from foot to foot uncertain with which to start, then settled down,

galloped past the company, and overtook the carriage, still keeping

time to the song.









CHAPTER III





On returning from the review, Kutuzov took the Austrian general into

his private room and, calling his adjutant, asked for some papers

relating to the condition of the troops on their arrival, and the

letters that had come from the Archduke Ferdinand, who was in

command of the advanced army. Prince Andrew Bolkonski came into the

room with the required papers. Kutuzov and the Austrian member of

the Hofkriegsrath were sitting at the table on which a plan was spread

out.



"Ah!..." said Kutuzov glancing at Bolkonski as if by this

exclamation he was asking the adjutant to wait, and he went on with

the conversation in French.



"All I can say, General," said he with a pleasant elegance of

expression and intonation that obliged one to listen to each

deliberately spoken word. It was evident that Kutuzov himself listened

with pleasure to his own voice. "All I can say, General, is that if

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the matter depended on my personal wishes, the will of His Majesty the

Emperor Francis would have been fulfilled long ago. I should long

ago have joined the archduke. And believe me on my honour that to me

personally it would be a pleasure to hand over the supreme command

of the army into the hands of a better informed and more skillful

general--of whom Austria has so many--and to lay down all this heavy

responsibility. But circumstances are sometimes too strong for us,

General."



And Kutuzov smiled in a way that seemed to say, "You are quite at

liberty not to believe me and I don't even care whether you do or not,

but you have no grounds for telling me so. And that is the whole

point."



The Austrian general looked dissatisfied, but had no option but to

reply in the same tone.



"On the contrary," he said, in a querulous and angry tone that

contrasted with his flattering words, "on the contrary, your

excellency's participation in the common action is highly valued by

His Majesty; but we think the present delay is depriving the

splendid Russian troops and their commander of the laurels they have

been accustomed to win in their battles," he concluded his evidently

prearranged sentence.



Kutuzov bowed with the same smile.



"But that is my conviction, and judging by the last letter with

which His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand has honored me, I imagine

that the Austrian troops, under the direction of so skillful a

leader as General Mack, have by now already gained a decisive

victory and no longer need our aid," said Kutuzov.



The general frowned. Though there was no definite news of an

Austrian defeat, there were many circumstances confirming the

unfavorable rumors that were afloat, and so Kutuzov's suggestion of an

Austrian victory sounded much like irony. But Kutuzov went on

blandly smiling with the same expression, which seemed to say that

he had a right to suppose so. And, in fact, the last letter he had

received from Mack's army informed him of a victory and stated

strategically the position of the army was very favorable.



"Give me that letter," said Kutuzov turning to Prince Andrew.

"Please have a look at it"--and Kutuzov with an ironical smile about

the corners of his mouth read to the Austrian general the following

passage, in German, from the Archduke Ferdinand's letter:





We have fully concentrated forces of nearly seventy thousand men

with which to attack and defeat the enemy should he cross the Lech.

Also, as we are masters of Ulm, we cannot be deprived of the advantage

of commanding both sides of the Danube, so that should the enemy not

cross the Lech, we can cross the Danube, throw ourselves on his line

of communications, recross the river lower down, and frustrate his

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intention should he try to direct his whole force against our faithful

ally. We shall therefore confidently await the moment when the

Imperial Russian army will be fully equipped, and shall then, in

conjunction with it, easily find a way to prepare for the enemy the

fate he deserves.





Kutuzov sighed deeply on finishing this paragraph and looked at

the member of the Hofkriegsrath mildly and attentively.



"But you know the wise maxim your excellency, advising one to expect

the worst," said the Austrian general, evidently wishing to have

done with jests and to come to business. He involuntarily looked round

at the aide-de-camp.



"Excuse me, General," interrupted Kutuzov, also turning to Prince

Andrew. "Look here, my dear fellow, get from Kozlovski all the reports

from our scouts. Here are two letters from Count Nostitz and here is

one from His Highness the Archduke Ferdinand and here are these," he

said, handing him several papers, "make a neat memorandum in French

out of all this, showing all the news we have had of the movements

of the Austrian army, and then give it to his excellency."



Prince Andrew bowed his head in token of having understood from

the first not only what had been said but also what Kutuzov would have

liked to tell him. He gathered up the papers and with a bow to both,

stepped softly over the carpet and went out into the waiting room.



Though not much time had passed since Prince Andrew had left Russia,

he had changed greatly during that period. In the expression of his

face, in his movements, in his walk, scarcely a trace was left of

his former affected languor and indolence. He now looked like a man

who has time to think of the impression he makes on others, but is

occupied with agreeable and interesting work. His face expressed

more satisfaction with himself and those around him, his smile and

glance were brighter and more attractive.



Kutuzov, whom he had overtaken in Poland, had received him very

kindly, promised not to forget him, distinguished him above the

other adjutants, and had taken him to Vienna and given him the more

serious commissions. From Vienna Kutuzov wrote to his old comrade,

Prince Andrew's father.





Your son bids fair to become an officer distinguished by his

industry, firmness, and expedition. I consider myself fortunate to

have such a subordinate by me.





On Kutuzov's staff, among his fellow officers and in the army

generally, Prince Andrew had, as he had had in Petersburg society, two

quite opposite reputations. Some, a minority, acknowledged him to be

different from themselves and from everyone else, expected great

things of him, listened to him, admired, and imitated him, and with

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them Prince Andrew was natural and pleasant. Others, the majority,

disliked him and considered him conceited, cold, and disagreeable. But

among these people Prince Andrew knew how to take his stand so that

they respected and even feared him.



Coming out of Kutuzov's room into the waiting room with the papers

in his hand Prince Andrew came up to his comrade, the aide-de-camp

on duty, Kozlovski, who was sitting at the window with a book.



"Well, Prince?" asked Kozlovski.



"I am ordered to write a memorandum explaining why we are not

advancing."



"And why is it?"



Prince Andrew shrugged his shoulders.



"Any news from Mack?"



"No."



"If it were true that he has been beaten, news would have come."



"Probably," said Prince Andrew moving toward the outer door.



But at that instant a tall Austrian general in a greatcoat, with the

order of Maria Theresa on his neck and a black bandage round his head,

who had evidently just arrived, entered quickly, slamming the door.

Prince Andrew stopped short.



"Commander in Chief Kutuzov?" said the newly arrived general

speaking quickly with a harsh German accent, looking to both sides and

advancing straight toward the inner door.



"The commander in chief is engaged," said Kozlovski, going hurriedly

up to the unknown general and blocking his way to the door. "Whom

shall I announce?"



The unknown general looked disdainfully down at Kozlovski, who was

rather short, as if surprised that anyone should not know him.



"The commander in chief is engaged," repeated Kozlovski calmly.



The general's face clouded, his lips quivered and trembled. He

took out a notebook, hurriedly scribbled something in pencil, tore out

the leaf, gave it to Kozlovski, stepped quickly to the window, and

threw himself into a chair, gazing at those in the room as if

asking, "Why do they look at me?" Then he lifted his head, stretched

his neck as if he intended to say something, but immediately, with

affected indifference, began to hum to himself, producing a queer

sound which immediately broke off. The door of the private room opened

and Kutuzov appeared in the doorway. The general with the bandaged

head bent forward as though running away from some danger, and, making

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long, quick strides with his thin legs, went up to Kutuzov.



"Vous voyez le malheureux Mack," he uttered in a broken voice.



Kutuzov's face as he stood in the open doorway remained perfectly

immobile for a few moments. Then wrinkles ran over his face like a

wave and his forehead became smooth again, he bowed his head

respectfully, closed his eyes, silently let Mack enter his room before

him, and closed the door himself behind him.



The report which had been circulated that the Austrians had been

beaten and that the whole army had surrendered at Ulm proved to be

correct. Within half an hour adjutants had been sent in various

directions with orders which showed that the Russian troops, who had

hitherto been inactive, would also soon have to meet the enemy.



Prince Andrew was one of those rare staff officers whose chief

interest lay in the general progress of the war. When he saw Mack

and heard the details of his disaster he understood that half the

campaign was lost, understood all the difficulties of the Russian

army's position, and vividly imagined what awaited it and the part

he would have to play. Involuntarily he felt a joyful agitation at the

thought of the humiliation of arrogant Austria and that in a week's

time he might, perhaps, see and take part in the first Russian

encounter with the French since Suvorov met them. He feared that

Bonaparte's genius might outweigh all the courage of the Russian

troops, and at the same time could not admit the idea of his hero

being disgraced.



Excited and irritated by these thoughts Prince Andrew went toward

his room to write to his father, to whom he wrote every day. In the

corridor he met Nesvitski, with whom he shared a room, and the wag

Zherkov; they were as usual laughing.



"Why are you so glum?" asked Nesvitski noticing Prince Andrew's pale

face and glittering eyes.



"There's nothing to be gay about," answered Bolkonski.



Just as Prince Andrew met Nesvitski and Zherkov, there came toward

them from the other end of the corridor, Strauch, an Austrian

general who on Kutuzov's staff in charge of the provisioning of the

Russian army, and the member of the Hofkriegsrath who had arrived

the previous evening. There was room enough in the wide corridor for

the generals to pass the three officers quite easily, but Zherkov,

pushing Nesvitski aside with his arm, said in a breathless voice,



"They're coming!... they're coming!... Stand aside, make way, please

make way!"



The generals were passing by, looking as if they wished to avoid

embarrassing attentions. On the face of the wag Zherkov there suddenly

appeared a stupid smile of glee which he seemed unable to suppress.



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"Your excellency," said he in German, stepping forward and

addressing the Austrian general, "I have the honor to congratulate

you."



He bowed his head and scraped first with one foot and then with

the other, awkwardly, like a child at a dancing lesson.



The member of the Hofkriegsrath looked at him severely but, seeing

the seriousness of his stupid smile, could not but give him a moment's

attention. He screwed up his eyes showing that he was listening.



"I have the honor to congratulate you. General Mack has arrived,

quite well, only a little bruised just here," he added, pointing

with a beaming smile to his head.



The general frowned, turned away, and went on.



"Gott, wie naiv!"* said he angrily, after he had gone a few steps.



*"Good God, what simplicity!"





Nesvitski with a laugh threw his arms round Prince Andrew, but

Bolkonski, turning still paler, pushed him away with an angry look and

turned to Zherkov. The nervous irritation aroused by the appearance of

Mack, the news of his defeat, and the thought of what lay before the

Russian army found vent in anger at Zherkov's untimely jest.



"If you, sir, choose to make a buffoon of yourself," he said

sharply, with a slight trembling of the lower jaw, "I can't prevent

your doing so; but I warn you that if you dare to play the fool in

my presence, I will teach you to behave yourself."



Nesvitski and Zherkov were so surprised by this outburst that they

gazed at Bolkonski silently with wide-open eyes.



"What's the matter? I only congratulated them," said Zherkov.



"I am not jesting with you; please be silent!" cried Bolkonski,

and taking Nesvitski's arm he left Zherkov, who did not know what to

say.



"Come, what's the matter, old fellow?" said Nesvitski trying to

soothe him.



"What's the matter?" exclaimed Prince Andrew standing still in his

excitement. "Don't you understand that either we are officers

serving our Tsar and our country, rejoicing in the successes and

grieving at the misfortunes of our common cause, or we are merely

lackeys who care nothing for their master's business. Quarante mille

hommes massacres et l'armee de nos allies detruite, et vous trouvez la

le mot pour rire,"* he said, as if strengthening his views by this

French sentence. "C'est bien pour un garcon de rein comme cet

individu dont vous avez fait un ami, mais pas pour vous, pas pour

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vous.*[2] Only a hobbledehoy could amuse himself in this way," he

added in Russian--but pronouncing the word with a French accent-

having noticed that Zherkov could still hear him.





*"Forty thousand men massacred and the army of our allies destroyed,

and you find that a cause for jesting!"



*[2] "It is all very well for that good-for-nothing fellow of whom

you have made a friend, but not for you, not for you."





He waited a moment to see whether the cornet would answer, but he

turned and went out of the corridor.









CHAPTER IV





The Pavlograd Hussars were stationed two miles from Braunau. The

squadron in which Nicholas Rostov served as a cadet was quartered in

the German village of Salzeneck. The best quarters in the village were

assigned to cavalry-captain Denisov, the squadron commander, known

throughout the whole cavalry division as Vaska Denisov. Cadet

Rostov, ever since he had overtaken the regiment in Poland, had

lived with the squadron commander.



On October 11, the day when all was astir at headquarters over the

news of Mack's defeat, the camp life of the officers of this

squadron was proceeding as usual. Denisov, who had been losing at

cards all night, had not yet come home when Rostov rode back early

in the morning from a foraging expedition. Rostov in his cadet

uniform, with a jerk to his horse, rode up to the porch, swung his leg

over the saddle with a supple youthful movement, stood for a moment in

the stirrup as if loathe to part from his horse, and at last sprang

down and called to his orderly.



"Ah, Bondarenko, dear friend!" said he to the hussar who rushed up

headlong to the horse. "Walk him up and down, my dear fellow," he

continued, with that gay brotherly cordiality which goodhearted

young people show to everyone when they are happy.



"Yes, your excellency," answered the Ukrainian gaily, tossing his

head.



"Mind, walk him up and down well!"



Another hussar also rushed toward the horse, but Bondarenko had

already thrown the reins of the snaffle bridle over the horse's

head. It was evident that the cadet was liberal with his tips and that

it paid to serve him. Rostov patted the horse's neck and then his

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flank, and lingered for a moment.



"Splendid! What a horse he will be!" he thought with a smile, and

holding up his saber, his spurs jingling, he ran up the steps of the

porch. His landlord, who in a waistcoat and a pointed cap, pitchfork

in hand, was clearing manure from the cowhouse, looked out, and his

face immediately brightened on seeing Rostov. "Schon gut Morgen! Schon

gut Morgen!"* he said winking with a merry smile, evidently pleased to

greet the young man.





*"A very good morning! A very good morning!"





"Schon fleissig?"* said Rostov with the same gay brotherly smile

which did not leave his eager face. "Hoch Oestreicher! Hoch Russen!

Kaiser Alexander hoch!"*[2] said he, quoting words often repeated by

the German landlord.





*"Busy already?"



*[2] "Hurrah for the Austrians! Hurrah for the Russians! Hurrah

for Emperor Alexander!"





The German laughed, came out of the cowshed, pulled off his cap, and

waving it above his head cried:



"Und die ganze Welt hoch!"*





*"And hurrah for the whole world!"





Rostov waved his cap above his head like the German and cried

laughing, "Und vivat die ganze Welt!" Though neither the German

cleaning his cowshed nor Rostov back with his platoon from foraging

for hay had any reason for rejoicing, they looked at each other with

joyful delight and brotherly love, wagged their heads in token of

their mutual affection, and parted smiling, the German returning to

his cowshed and Rostov going to the cottage he occupied with Denisov.



"What about your master?" he asked Lavrushka, Denisov's orderly,

whom all the regiment knew for a rogue.



"Hasn't been in since the evening. Must have been losing,"

answered Lavrushka. "I know by now, if he wins he comes back early

to brag about it, but if he stays out till morning it means he's

lost and will come back in a rage. Will you have coffee?"



"Yes, bring some."



Ten minutes later Lavrushka brought the coffee. "He's coming!"

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said he. "Now for trouble!" Rostov looked out of the window and saw

Denisov coming home. Denisov was a small man with a red face,

sparkling black eyes, and black tousled mustache and hair. He wore

an unfastened cloak, wide breeches hanging down in creases, and a

crumpled shako on the back of his head. He came up to the porch

gloomily, hanging his head.



"Lavwuska!" he shouted loudly and angrily, "take it off, blockhead!"



"Well, I am taking it off," replied Lavrushka's voice.



"Ah, you're up already," said Denisov, entering the room.



"Long ago," answered Rostov, "I have already been for the hay, and

have seen Fraulein Mathilde."



"Weally! And I've been losing, bwother. I lost yesterday like a

damned fool!" cried Denisov, not pronouncing his r's. "Such ill

luck! Such ill luck. As soon as you left, it began and went on.

Hullo there! Tea!"



Puckering up his face though smiling, and showing his short strong

teeth, he began with stubby fingers of both hands to ruffle up his

thick tangled black hair.



"And what devil made me go to that wat?" (an officer nicknamed

"the rat") he said, rubbing his forehead and whole face with both

hands. "Just fancy, he didn't let me win a single cahd, not one cahd."



He took the lighted pipe that was offered to him, gripped it in

his fist, and tapped it on the floor, making the sparks fly, while

he continued to shout.



"He lets one win the singles and collahs it as soon as one doubles

it; gives the singles and snatches the doubles!"



He scattered the burning tobacco, smashed the pipe, and threw it

away. Then he remained silent for a while, and all at once looked

cheerfully with his glittering, black eyes at Rostov.



"If at least we had some women here; but there's nothing foh one

to do but dwink. If we could only get to fighting soon. Hullo, who's

there?" he said, turning to the door as he heard a tread of heavy

boots and the clinking of spurs that came to a stop, and a

respectful cough.



"The squadron quartermaster!" said Lavrushka.



Denisov's face puckered still more.



"Wetched!" he muttered, throwing down a purse with some gold in

it. "Wostov, deah fellow, just see how much there is left and shove

the purse undah the pillow," he said, and went out to the

quartermaster.

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Rostov took the money and, mechanically arranging the old and new

coins in separate piles, began counting them.



"Ah! Telyanin! How d'ye do? They plucked me last night," came

Denisov's voice from the next room.



"Where? At Bykov's, at the rat's... I knew it," replied a piping

voice, and Lieutenant Telyanin, a small officer of the same

squadron, entered the room.



Rostov thrust the purse under the pillow and shook the damp little

hand which was offered him. Telyanin for some reason had been

transferred from the Guards just before this campaign. He behaved very

well in the regiment but was not liked; Rostov especially detested him

and was unable to overcome or conceal his groundless antipathy to

the man.



"Well, young cavalryman, how is my Rook behaving?" he asked. (Rook

was a young horse Telyanin had sold to Rostov.)



The lieutenant never looked the man he was speaking to straight in

the face; his eyes continually wandered from one object to another.



"I saw you riding this morning..." he added.



"Oh, he's all right, a good horse," answered Rostov, though the

horse for which he had paid seven hundred rubbles was not worth half

that sum. "He's begun to go a little lame on the left foreleg," he

added.



"The hoof's cracked! That's nothing. I'll teach you what to do and

show you what kind of rivet to use."



"Yes, please do," said Rostov.



"I'll show you, I'll show you! It's not a secret. And it's a horse

you'll thank me for."



"Then I'll have it brought round," said Rostov wishing to avoid

Telyanin, and he went out to give the order.



In the passage Denisov, with a pipe, was squatting on the

threshold facing the quartermaster who was reporting to him. On seeing

Rostov, Denisov screwed up his face and pointing over his shoulder

with his thumb to the room where Telyanin was sitting, he frowned

and gave a shudder of disgust.



"Ugh! I don't like that fellow," he said, regardless of the

quartermaster's presence.



Rostov shrugged his shoulders as much as to say: "Nor do I, but

what's one to do?" and, having given his order, he returned to

Telyanin.

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Telyanin was sitting in the same indolent pose in which Rostov had

left him, rubbing his small white hands.



"Well there certainly are disgusting people," thought Rostov as he

entered.



"Have you told them to bring the horse?" asked Telyanin, getting

up and looking carelessly about him.



"I have."



"Let us go ourselves. I only came round to ask Denisov about

yesterday's order. Have you got it, Denisov?"



"Not yet. But where are you off to?"



"I want to teach this young man how to shoe a horse," said Telyanin.



They went through the porch and into the stable. The lieutenant

explained how to rivet the hoof and went away to his own quarters.



When Rostov went back there was a bottle of vodka and a sausage on

the table. Denisov was sitting there scratching with his pen on a

sheet of paper. He looked gloomily in Rostov's face and said: "I am

witing to her."



He leaned his elbows on the table with his pen in his hand and,

evidently glad of a chance to say quicker in words what he wanted to

write, told Rostov the contents of his letter.



"You see, my fwiend," he said, "we sleep when we don't love. We

are childwen of the dust... but one falls in love and one is a God,

one is pua' as on the first day of cweation... Who's that now? Send

him to the devil, I'm busy!" he shouted to Lavrushka, who went up to

him not in the least abashed.



"Who should it be? You yourself told him to come. It's the

quartermaster for the money."



Denisov frowned and was about to shout some reply but stopped.



"Wetched business," he muttered to himself. "How much is left in the

puhse?" he asked, turning to Rostov.



"Seven new and three old imperials."



"Oh, it's wetched! Well, what are you standing there for, you

sca'cwow? Call the quahtehmasteh," he shouted to Lavrushka.



"Please, Denisov, let me lend you some: I have some, you know," said

Rostov, blushing.



"Don't like bowwowing from my own fellows, I don't," growled

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Denisov.



"But if you won't accept money from me like a comrade, you will

offend me. Really I have some," Rostov repeated.



"No, I tell you."



And Denisov went to the bed to get the purse from under the pillow.



"Where have you put it, Wostov?"



"Under the lower pillow."



"It's not there."



Denisov threw both pillows on the floor. The purse was not there.



"That's a miwacle."



"Wait, haven't you dropped it?" said Rostov, picking up the

pillows one at a time and shaking them.



He pulled off the quilt and shook it. The purse was not there.



"Dear me, can I have forgotten? No, I remember thinking that you

kept it under your head like a treasure," said Rostov. "I put it

just here. Where is it?" he asked, turning to Lavrushka.



"I haven't been in the room. It must be where you put it."



"But it isn't?..."



"You're always like that; you thwow a thing down anywhere and forget

it. Feel in your pockets."



"No, if I hadn't thought of it being a treasure," said Rostov,

"but I remember putting it there."



Lavrushka turned all the bedding over, looked under the bed and

under the table, searched everywhere, and stood still in the middle of

the room. Denisov silently watched Lavrushka's movements, and when the

latter threw up his arms in surprise saying it was nowhere to be found

Denisov glanced at Rostov.



"Wostov, you've not been playing schoolboy twicks..."



Rostov felt Denisov's gaze fixed on him, raised his eyes, and

instantly dropped them again. All the blood which had seemed congested

somewhere below his throat rushed to his face and eyes. He could not

draw breath.



"And there hasn't been anyone in the room except the lieutenant

and yourselves. It must be here somewhere," said Lavrushka.



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"Now then, you devil's puppet, look alive and hunt for it!"

shouted Denisov, suddenly, turning purple and rushing at the man

with a threatening gesture. "If the purse isn't found I'll flog you,

I'll flog you all."



Rostov, his eyes avoiding Denisov, began buttoning his coat, buckled

on his saber, and put on his cap.



"I must have that purse, I tell you," shouted Denisov, shaking his

orderly by the shoulders and knocking him against the wall.



"Denisov, let him alone, I know who has taken it," said Rostov,

going toward the door without raising his eyes. Denisov paused,

thought a moment, and, evidently understanding what Rostov hinted

at, seized his arm.



"Nonsense!" he cried, and the veins on his forehead and neck stood

out like cords. "You are mad, I tell you. I won't allow it. The

purse is here! I'll flay this scoundwel alive, and it will be found."



"I know who has taken it," repeated Rostov in an unsteady voice, and

went to the door.



"And I tell you, don't you dahe to do it!" shouted Denisov,

rushing at the cadet to restrain him.



But Rostov pulled away his arm and, with as much anger as though

Denisov were his worst enemy, firmly fixed his eyes directly on his

face.



"Do you understand what you're saying?" he said in a trembling

voice. "There was no one else in the room except myself. So that if it

is not so, then..."



He could not finish, and ran out of the room.



"Ah, may the devil take you and evewybody," were the last words

Rostov heard.



Rostov went to Telyanin's quarters.



"The master is not in, he's gone to headquarters," said Telyanin's

orderly. "Has something happened?" he added, surprised at the

cadet's troubled face.



"No, nothing."



"You've only just missed him," said the orderly.



The headquarters were situated two miles away from Salzeneck, and

Rostov, without returning home, took a horse and rode there. There was

an inn in the village which the officers frequented. Rostov rode up to

it and saw Telyanin's horse at the porch.



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In the second room of the inn the lieutenant was sitting over a dish

of sausages and a bottle of wine.



"Ah, you've come here too, young man!" he said, smiling and

raising his eyebrows.



"Yes," said Rostov as if it cost him a great deal to utter the word;

and he sat down at the nearest table.



Both were silent. There were two Germans and a Russian officer in

the room. No one spoke and the only sounds heard were the clatter of

knives and the munching of the lieutenant.



When Telyanin had finished his lunch he took out of his pocket a

double purse and, drawing its rings aside with his small, white,

turned-up fingers, drew out a gold imperial, and lifting his

eyebrows gave it to the waiter.



"Please be quick," he said.



The coin was a new one. Rostov rose and went up to Telyanin.



"Allow me to look at your purse," he said in a low, almost

inaudible, voice.



With shifting eyes but eyebrows still raised, Telyanin handed him

the purse.



"Yes, it's a nice purse. Yes, yes," he said, growing suddenly

pale, and added, "Look at it, young man."



Rostov took the purse in his hand, examined it and the money in

it, and looked at Telyanin. The lieutenant was looking about in his

usual way and suddenly seemed to grow very merry.



"If we get to Vienna I'll get rid of it there but in these

wretched little towns there's nowhere to spend it," said he. "Well,

let me have it, young man, I'm going."



Rostov did not speak.



"And you? Are you going to have lunch too? They feed you quite

decently here," continued Telyanin. "Now then, let me have it."



He stretched out his hand to take hold of the purse. Rostov let go

of it. Telyanin took the purse and began carelessly slipping it into

the pocket of his riding breeches, with his eyebrows lifted and his

mouth slightly open, as if to say, "Yes, yes, I am putting my purse in

my pocket and that's quite simple and is no else's business."



"Well, young man?" he said with a sigh, and from under his lifted

brows he glanced into Rostov's eyes.



Some flash as of an electric spark shot from Telyanin's eyes to

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Rostov's and back, and back again and again in an instant.



"Come here," said Rostov, catching hold of Telyanin's arm and almost

dragging him to the window. "That money is Denisov's; you took

it..." he whispered just above Telyanin's ear.



"What? What? How dare you? What?" said Telyanin.



But these words came like a piteous, despairing cry and an

entreaty for pardon. As soon as Rostov heard them, an enormous load of

doubt fell from him. He was glad, and at the same instant began to

pity the miserable man who stood before him, but the task he had begun

had to be completed.



"Heaven only knows what the people here may imagine," muttered

Telyanin, taking up his cap and moving toward a small empty room.

"We must have an explanation..."



"I know it and shall prove it," said Rostov.



"I..."



Every muscle of Telyanin's pale, terrified face began to quiver, his

eyes still shifted from side to side but with a downward look not

rising to Rostov's face, and his sobs were audible.



"Count!... Don't ruin a young fellow... here is this wretched money,

take it..." He threw it on the table. "I have an old father and

mother!..."



Rostov took the money, avoiding Telyanin's eyes, and went out of the

room without a word. But at the door he stopped and then retraced

his steps. "O God," he said with tears in his eyes, "how could you

do it?"



"Count..." said Telyanin drawing nearer to him.



"Don't touch me," said Rostov, drawing back. "If you need it, take

the money," and he threw the purse to him and ran out of the inn.









CHAPTER V





That same evening there was an animated discussion among the

squadron's officers in Denisov's quarters.



"And I tell you, Rostov, that you must apologize to the colonel!"

said a tall, grizzly-haired staff captain, with enormous mustaches and

many wrinkles on his large features, to Rostov who was crimson with

excitement.

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The staff captain, Kirsten, had twice been reduced to the ranks

for affairs of honor and had twice regained his commission.



"I will allow no one to call me a liar!" cried Rostov. "He told me I

lied, and I told him he lied. And there it rests. He may keep me on

duty every day, or may place me under arrest, but no one can make me

apologize, because if he, as commander of this regiment, thinks it

beneath his dignity to give me satisfaction, then..."



"You just wait a moment, my dear fellow, and listen," interrupted

the staff captain in his deep bass, calmly stroking his long mustache.

"You tell the colonel in the presence of other officers that an

officer has stolen..."



"I'm not to blame that the conversation began in the presence of

other officers. Perhaps I ought not to have spoken before them, but

I am not a diplomatist. That's why I joined the hussars, thinking that

here one would not need finesse; and he tells me that I am lying--so

let him give me satisfaction..."



"That's all right. No one thinks you a coward, but that's not the

point. Ask Denisov whether it is not out of the question for a cadet

to demand satisfaction of his regimental commander?"



Denisov sat gloomily biting his mustache and listening to the

conversation, evidently with no wish to take part in it. He answered

the staff captain's question by a disapproving shake of his head.



"You speak to the colonel about this nasty business before other

officers," continued the staff captain, "and Bogdanich" (the colonel

was called Bogdanich) "shuts you up."



"He did not shut me up, he said I was telling an untruth."



"Well, have it so, and you talked a lot of nonsense to him and

must apologize."



"Not on any account!" exclaimed Rostov.



"I did not expect this of you," said the staff captain seriously and

severely. "You don't wish to apologize, but, man, it's not only to him

but to the whole regiment--all of us--you're to blame all round. The

case is this: you ought to have thought the matter over and taken

advice; but no, you go and blurt it all straight out before the

officers. Now what was the colonel to do? Have the officer tried and

disgrace the whole regiment? Disgrace the whole regiment because of

one scoundrel? Is that how you look at it? We don't see it like

that. And Bogdanich was a brick: he told you you were saying what

was not true. It's not pleasant, but what's to be done, my dear

fellow? You landed yourself in it. And now, when one wants to smooth

the thing over, some conceit prevents your apologizing, and you wish

to make the whole affair public. You are offended at being put on duty

a bit, but why not apologize to an old and honorable officer? Whatever

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Bogdanich may be, anyway he is an honorable and brave old colonel!

You're quick at taking offense, but you don't mind disgracing the

whole regiment!" The staff captain's voice began to tremble. "You have

been in the regiment next to no time, my lad, you're here today and

tomorrow you'll be appointed adjutant somewhere and can snap your

fingers when it is said 'There are thieves among the Pavlograd

officers!' But it's not all the same to us! Am I not right, Denisov?

It's not the same!"



Denisov remained silent and did not move, but occasionally looked

with his glittering black eyes at Rostov.



"You value your own pride and don't wish to apologize," continued

the staff captain, "but we old fellows, who have grown up in and,

God willing, are going to die in the regiment, we prize the honor of

the regiment, and Bogdanich knows it. Oh, we do prize it, old

fellow! And all this is not right, it's not right! You may take

offense or not but I always stick to mother truth. It's not right!"



And the staff captain rose and turned away from Rostov.



"That's twue, devil take it!" shouted Denisov, jumping up. "Now then,

Wostov, now then!"



Rostov, growing red and pale alternately, looked first at one

officer and then at the other.



"No, gentlemen, no... you mustn't think... I quite understand.

You're wrong to think that of me... I... for me... for the honor of

the regiment I'd... Ah well, I'll show that in action, and for me

the honor of the flag... Well, never mind, it's true I'm to blame,

to blame all round. Well, what else do you want?..."



"Come, that's right, Count!" cried the staff captain, turning

round and clapping Rostov on the shoulder with his big hand.



"I tell you," shouted Denisov, "he's a fine fellow."



"That's better, Count," said the staff captain, beginning to address

Rostov by his title, as if in recognition of his confession. "Go and

apologize, your excellency. Yes, go!"



"Gentlemen, I'll do anything. No one shall hear a word from me,"

said Rostov in an imploring voice, "but I can't apologize, by God I

can't, do what you will! How can I go and apologize like a little

boy asking forgiveness?"



Denisov began to laugh.



"It'll be worse for you. Bogdanich is vindictive and you'll pay

for your obstinacy," said Kirsten.



"No, on my word it's not obstinacy! I can't describe the feeling.

I can't..."

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"Well, it's as you like," said the staff captain. "And what has

become of that scoundrel?" he asked Denisov.



"He has weported himself sick, he's to be stwuck off the list

tomowwow," muttered Denisov.



"It is an illness, there's no other way of explaining it," said

the staff captain.



"Illness or not, he'd better not cwoss my path. I'd kill him!"

shouted Denisov in a bloodthirsty tone.



Just then Zherkov entered the room.



"What brings you here?" cried the officers turning to the newcomer.



"We're to go into action, gentlemen! Mack has surrendered with his

whole army."



"It's not true!"



"I've seen him myself!"



"What? Saw the real Mack? With hands and feet?"



"Into action! Into action! Bring him a bottle for such news! But how

did you come here?"



"I've been sent back to the regiment all on account of that devil,

Mack. An Austrian general complained of me. I congratulated him on

Mack's arrival... What's the matter, Rostov? You look as if you'd just

come out of a hot bath."



"Oh, my dear fellow, we're in such a stew here these last two days."



The regimental adjutant came in and confirmed the news brought by

Zherkov. They were under orders to advance next day.



"We're going into action, gentlemen!"



"Well, thank God! We've been sitting here too long!"









CHAPTER VI





Kutuzov fell back toward Vienna, destroying behind him the bridges

over the rivers Inn (at Braunau) and Traun (near Linz). On October

23 the Russian troops were crossing the river Enns. At midday the

Russian baggage train, the artillery, and columns of troops were

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defiling through the town of Enns on both sides of the bridge.



It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out

before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the

bridge was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain,

and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects

could be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down

below, the little town could be seen with its white, red-roofed

houses, its cathedral, and its bridge, on both sides of which streamed

jostling masses of Russian troops. At the bend of the Danube, vessels,

an island, and a castle with a park surrounded by the waters of the

confluence of the Enns and the Danube became visible, and the rocky

left bank of the Danube covered with pine forests, with a mystic

background of green treetops and bluish gorges. The turrets of a

convent stood out beyond a wild virgin pine forest, and far away on

the other side of the Enns the enemy's horse patrols could be

discerned.



Among the field guns on the brow of the hill the general in

command of the rearguard stood with a staff officer, scanning the

country through his fieldglass. A little behind them Nesvitski, who

had been sent to the rearguard by the commander in chief, was

sitting on the trail of a gun carriage. A Cossack who accompanied

him had handed him a knapsack and a flask, and Nesvitski was

treating some officers to pies and real doppelkummel. The officers

gladly gathered round him, some on their knees, some squatting Turkish

fashion on the wet grass.



"Yes, the Austrian prince who built that castle was no fool. It's

a fine place! Why are you not eating anything, gentlemen?" Nesvitski

was saying.



"Thank you very much, Prince," answered one of the officers, pleased

to be talking to a staff officer of such importance. "It's a lovely

place! We passed close to the park and saw two deer... and what a

splendid house!"



"Look, Prince," said another, who would have dearly liked to take

another pie but felt shy, and therefore pretended to be examining

the countryside--"See, our infantrymen have already got there. Look

there in the meadow behind the village, three of them are dragging

something. They'll ransack that castle," he remarked with evident

approval.



"So they will," said Nesvitski. "No, but what I should like,"

added he, munching a pie in his moist-lipped handsome mouth, "would be

to slip in over there."



He pointed with a smile to a turreted nunnery, and his eyes narrowed

and gleamed.



"That would be fine, gentlemen!"



The officers laughed.

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"Just to flutter the nuns a bit. They say there are Italian girls

among them. On my word I'd give five years of my life for it!"



"They must be feeling dull, too," said one of the bolder officers,

laughing.



Meanwhile the staff officer standing in front pointed out

something to the general, who looked through his field glass.



"Yes, so it is, so it is," said the general angrily, lowering the

field glass and shrugging his shoulders, "so it is! They'll be fired

on at the crossing. And why are they dawdling there?"



On the opposite side the enemy could be seen by the naked eye, and

from their battery a milk-white cloud arose. Then came the distant

report of a shot, and our troops could be seen hurrying to the

crossing.



Nesvitski rose, puffing, and went up to the general, smiling.



"Would not your excellency like a little refreshment?" he said.



"It's a bad business," said the general without answering him,

"our men have been wasting time."



"Hadn't I better ride over, your excellency?" asked Nesvitski.



"Yes, please do," answered the general, and he repeated the order

that had already once been given in detail: "and tell the hussars that

they are to cross last and to fire the bridge as I ordered; and the

inflammable material on the bridge must be reinspected."



"Very good," answered Nesvitski.



He called the Cossack with his horse, told him to put away the

knapsack and flask, and swung his heavy person easily into the saddle.



"I'll really call in on the nuns," he said to the officers who

watched him smilingly, and he rode off by the winding path down the

hill.



"Now then, let's see how far it will carry, Captain. Just try!" said

the general, turning to an artillery officer. "Have a little fun to

pass the time."



"Crew, to your guns!" commanded the officer.



In a moment the men came running gaily from their campfires and

began loading.



"One!" came the command.



Number one jumped briskly aside. The gun rang out with a deafening

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metallic roar, and a whistling grenade flew above the heads of our

troops below the hill and fell far short of the enemy, a little

smoke showing the spot where it burst.



The faces of officers and men brightened up at the sound. Everyone

got up and began watching the movements of our troops below, as

plainly visible as if but a stone's throw away, and the movements of

the approaching enemy farther off. At the same instant the sun came

fully out from behind the clouds, and the clear sound of the

solitary shot and the brilliance of the bright sunshine merged in a

single joyous and spirited impression.









CHAPTER VII





Two of the enemy's shots had already flown across the bridge,

where there was a crush. Halfway across stood Prince Nesvitski, who

had alighted from his horse and whose big body was jammed

against the railings. He looked back laughing to the Cossack who stood

a few steps behind him holding two horses by their bridles. Each

time Prince Nesvitski tried to move on, soldiers and carts pushed

him back again and pressed him against the railings, and all he

could do was to smile.



"What a fine fellow you are, friend!" said the Cossack to a convoy

soldier with a wagon, who was pressing onto the infantrymen who were

crowded together close to his wheels and his horses. "What a fellow!

You can't wait a moment! Don't you see the general wants to pass?"



But the convoyman took no notice of the word "general" and shouted

at the soldiers who were blocking his way. "Hi there, boys! Keep to

the left! Wait a bit." But the soldiers, crowded together shoulder

to shoulder, their bayonets interlocking, moved over the bridge in a

dense mass. Looking down over the rails Prince Nesvitski saw the

rapid, noisy little waves of the Enns, which rippling and eddying

round the piles of the bridge chased each other along. Looking on

the bridge he saw equally uniform living waves of soldiers, shoulder

straps, covered shakos, knapsacks, bayonets, long muskets, and,

under the shakos, faces with broad cheekbones, sunken cheeks, and

listless tired expressions, and feet that moved through the sticky mud

that covered the planks of the bridge. Sometimes through the

monotonous waves of men, like a fleck of white foam on the waves of

the Enns, an officer, in a cloak and with a type of face different

from that of the men, squeezed his way along; sometimes like a chip of

wood whirling in the river, an hussar on foot, an orderly, or a

townsman was carried through the waves of infantry; and sometimes like

a log floating down the river, an officers' or company's baggage

wagon, piled high, leather covered, and hemmed in on all sides,

moved across the bridge.



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"It's as if a dam had burst," said the Cossack hopelessly. "Are

there many more of you to come?"



"A million all but one!" replied a waggish soldier in a torn coat,

with a wink, and passed on followed by another, an old man.



"If he" (he meant the enemy) "begins popping at the bridge now,"

said the old soldier dismally to a comrade, "you'll forget to

scratch yourself."



That soldier passed on, and after him came another sitting on a

cart.



"Where the devil have the leg bands been shoved to?" said an

orderly, running behind the cart and fumbling in the back of it.



And he also passed on with the wagon. Then came some merry

soldiers who had evidently been drinking.



"And then, old fellow, he gives him one in the teeth with the butt

end of his gun..." a soldier whose greatcoat was well tucked up said

gaily, with a wide swing of his arm.



"Yes, the ham was just delicious..." answered another with a loud

laugh. And they, too, passed on, so that Nesvitski did not learn who

had been struck on the teeth, or what the ham had to do with it.



"Bah! How they scurry. He just sends a ball and they think they'll

all be killed," a sergeant was saying angrily and reproachfully.



"As it flies past me, Daddy, the ball I mean," said a young

soldier with an enormous mouth, hardly refraining from laughing, "I

felt like dying of fright. I did, 'pon my word, I got that

frightened!" said he, as if bragging of having been frightened.



That one also passed. Then followed a cart unlike any that had

gone before. It was a German cart with a pair of horses led by a

German, and seemed loaded with a whole houseful of effects. A fine

brindled cow with a large udder was attached to the cart behind. A

woman with an unweaned baby, an old woman, and a healthy German girl

with bright red cheeks were sitting on some feather beds. Evidently

these fugitives were allowed to pass by special permission. The eyes

of all the soldiers turned toward the women, and while the vehicle was

passing at foot pace all the soldiers' remarks related to the two

young ones. Every face bore almost the same smile, expressing unseemly

thoughts about the women.



"Just see, the German sausage is making tracks, too!"



"Sell me the missis," said another soldier, addressing the German,

who, angry and frightened, strode energetically along with downcast

eyes.



"See how smart she's made herself! Oh, the devils!"

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"There, Fedotov, you should be quartered on them!"



"I have seen as much before now, mate!"



"Where are you going?" asked an infantry officer who was eating an

apple, also half smiling as he looked at the handsome girl.



The German closed his eyes, signifying that he did not understand.



"Take it if you like," said the officer, giving the girl an apple.



The girl smiled and took it. Nesvitski like the rest of the men on

the bridge did not take his eyes off the women till they had passed.

When they had gone by, the same stream of soldiers followed, with

the same kind of talk, and at last all stopped. As often happens,

the horses of a convoy wagon became restive at the end of the

bridge, and the whole crowd had to wait.



"And why are they stopping? There's no proper order!" said the

soldiers. "Where are you shoving to? Devil take you! Can't you wait?

It'll be worse if he fires the bridge. See, here's an officer jammed

in too"--different voices were saying in the crowd, as the men

looked at one another, and all pressed toward the exit from the

bridge.



Looking down at the waters of the Enns under the bridge, Nesvitski

suddenly heard a sound new to him, of something swiftly approaching...

something big, that splashed into the water.



"Just see where it carries to!" a soldier near by said sternly,

looking round at the sound.



"Encouraging us to get along quicker," said another uneasily.



The crowd moved on again. Nesvitski realized that it was a cannon

ball.



"Hey, Cossack, my horse!" he said. "Now, then, you there! get out of

the way! Make way!"



With great difficulty he managed to get to his horse, and shouting

continually he moved on. The soldiers squeezed themselves to make

way for him, but again pressed on him so that they jammed his leg, and

those nearest him were not to blame for they were themselves pressed

still harder from behind.



"Nesvitski, Nesvitski! you numskull!" came a hoarse voice from

behind him.



Nesvitski looked round and saw, some fifteen paces away but

separated by the living mass of moving infantry, Vaska Denisov, red

and shaggy, with his cap on the back of his black head and a cloak

hanging jauntily over his shoulder.

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"Tell these devils, these fiends, to let me pass!" shouted Denisov

evidently in a fit of rage, his coal-black eyes with their bloodshot

whites glittering and rolling as he waved his sheathed saber in a

small bare hand as red as his face.



"Ah, Vaska!" joyfully replied Nesvitski. "What's up with you?"



"The squadwon can't pass," shouted Vaska Denisov, showing his

white teeth fiercely and spurring his black thoroughbred Arab, which

twitched its ears as the bayonets touched it, and snorted, spurting

white foam from his bit, tramping the planks of the bridge with his

hoofs, and apparently ready to jump over the railings had his rider

let him. "What is this? They're like sheep! Just like sheep! Out of

the way!... Let us pass!... Stop there, you devil with the cart!

I'll hack you with my saber!" he shouted, actually drawing his saber

from its scabbard and flourishing it.



The soldiers crowded against one another with terrified faces, and

Denisov joined Nesvitski.



"How's it you're not drunk today?" said Nesvitski when the other had

ridden up to him.



"They don't even give one time to dwink!" answered Vaska Denisov.

"They keep dwagging the wegiment to and fwo all day. If they mean to

fight, let's fight. But the devil knows what this is."



"What a dandy you are today!" said Nesvitski, looking at Denisov's

new cloak and saddlecloth.



Denisov smiled, took out of his sabretache a handkerchief that

diffused a smell of perfume, and put it to Nesvitski's nose.



"Of course. I'm going into action! I've shaved, bwushed my teeth,

and scented myself."



The imposing figure of Nesvitski followed by his Cossack, and the

determination of Denisov who flourished his sword and shouted

frantically, had such an effect that they managed to squeeze through

to the farther side of the bridge and stopped the infantry. Beside the

bridge Nesvitski found the colonel to whom he had to deliver the

order, and having done this he rode back.



Having cleared the way Denisov stopped at the end of the bridge.

Carelessly holding in his stallion that was neighing and pawing the

ground, eager to rejoin its fellows, he watched his squadron draw

nearer. Then the clang of hoofs, as of several horses galloping,

resounded on the planks of the bridge, and the squadron, officers in

front and men four abreast, spread across the bridge and began to

emerge on his side of it.



The infantry who had been stopped crowded near the bridge in the

trampled mud and gazed with that particular feeling of ill-will,

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estrangement, and ridicule with which troops of different arms usually

encounter one another at the clean, smart hussars who moved past

them in regular order.



"Smart lads! Only fit for a fair!" said one.



"What good are they? They're led about just for show!" remarked

another.



"Don't kick up the dust, you infantry!" jested an hussar whose

prancing horse had splashed mud over some foot soldiers.



"I'd like to put you on a two days' march with a knapsack! Your fine

cords would soon get a bit rubbed," said an infantryman, wiping the

mud off his face with his sleeve. "Perched up there, you're more

like a bird than a man."



"There now, Zikin, they ought to put you on a horse. You'd look

fine," said a corporal, chaffing a thin little soldier who bent

under the weight of his knapsack.



"Take a stick between your legs, that'll suit you for a horse!"

the hussar shouted back.









CHAPTER VIII





The last of the infantry hurriedly crossed the bridge, squeezing

together as they approached it as if passing through a funnel. At last

the baggage wagons had all crossed, the crush was less, and the last

battalion came onto the bridge. Only Denisov's squadron of hussars

remained on the farther side of the bridge facing the enemy, who could

be seen from the hill on the opposite bank but was not yet visible

from the bridge, for the horizon as seen from the valley through which

the river flowed was formed by the rising ground only half a mile

away. At the foot of the hill lay wasteland over which a few groups of

our Cossack scouts were moving. Suddenly on the road at the top of the

high ground, artillery and troops in blue uniform were seen. These

were the French. A group of Cossack scouts retired down the hill at

a trot. All the officers and men of Denisov's squadron, though they

tried to talk of other things and to look in other directions, thought

only of what was there on the hilltop, and kept constantly looking

at the patches appearing on the skyline, which they knew to be the

enemy's troops. The weather had cleared again since noon and the sun

was descending brightly upon the Danube and the dark hills around

it. It was calm, and at intervals the bugle calls and the shouts of

the enemy could be heard from the hill. There was no one now between

the squadron and the enemy except a few scattered skirmishers. An

empty space of some seven hundred yards was all that separated them.

The enemy ceased firing, and that stern, threatening, inaccessible,

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and intangible line which separates two hostile armies was all the

more clearly felt.



"One step beyond that boundary line which resembles the line

dividing the living from the dead lies uncertainty, suffering, and

death. And what is there? Who is there?--there beyond that field, that

tree, that roof lit up by the sun? No one knows, but one wants to

know. You fear and yet long to cross that line, and know that sooner

or later it must be crossed and you will have to find out what is

there, just as you will inevitably have to learn what lies the other

side of death. But you are strong, healthy, cheerful, and excited, and

are surrounded by other such excitedly animated and healthy men." So

thinks, or at any rate feels, anyone who comes in sight of the

enemy, and that feeling gives a particular glamour and glad keenness

of impression to everything that takes place at such moments.



On the high ground where the enemy was, the smoke of a cannon

rose, and a ball flew whistling over the heads of the hussar squadron.

The officers who had been standing together rode off to their

places. The hussars began carefully aligning their horses. Silence

fell on the whole squadron. All were looking at the enemy in front and

at the squadron commander, awaiting the word of command. A second

and a third cannon ball flew past. Evidently they were firing at the

hussars, but the balls with rapid rhythmic whistle flew over the heads

of the horsemen and fell somewhere beyond them. The hussars did not

look round, but at the sound of each shot, as at the word of

command, the whole squadron with its rows of faces so alike yet so

different, holding its breath while the ball flew past, rose in the

stirrups and sank back again. The soldiers without turning their heads

glanced at one another, curious to see their comrades' impression.

Every face, from Denisov's to that of the bugler, showed one common

expression of conflict, irritation, and excitement, around chin and

mouth. The quartermaster frowned, looking at the soldiers as if

threatening to punish them. Cadet Mironov ducked every time a ball

flew past. Rostov on the left flank, mounted on his Rook--a handsome

horse despite its game leg--had the happy air of a schoolboy called up

before a large audience for an examination in which he feels sure he

will distinguish himself. He was glancing at everyone with a clear,

bright expression, as if asking them to notice how calmly he sat under

fire. But despite himself, on his face too that same indication of

something new and stern showed round the mouth.



"Who's that curtseying there? Cadet Miwonov! That's not wight!

Look at me," cried Denisov who, unable to keep still on one spot, kept

turning his horse in front of the squadron.



The black, hairy, snub-nosed face of Vaska Denisov, and his whole

short sturdy figure with the sinewy hairy hand and stumpy fingers in

which he held the hilt of his naked saber, looked just as it usually

did, especially toward evening when he had emptied his second

bottle; he was only redder than usual. With his shaggy head thrown

back like birds when they drink, pressing his spurs mercilessly into

the sides of his good horse, Bedouin, and sitting as though falling

backwards in the saddle, he galloped to the other flank of the

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squadron and shouted in a hoarse voice to the men to look to their

pistols. He rode up to Kirsten. The staff captain on his broad-backed,

steady mare came at a walk to meet him. His face with its long

mustache was serious as always, only his eyes were brighter than

usual.



"Well, what about it?" said he to Denisov. "It won't come to a

fight. You'll see--we shall retire."



"The devil only knows what they're about!" muttered Denisov. "Ah,

Wostov," he cried noticing the cadet's bright face, "you've got it

at last."



And he smiled approvingly, evidently pleased with the cadet.

Rostov felt perfectly happy. Just then the commander appeared on the

bridge. Denisov galloped up to him.



"Your excellency! Let us attack them! I'll dwive them off."



"Attack indeed!" said the colonel in a bored voice, puckering up his

face as if driving off a troublesome fly. "And why are you stopping

here? Don't you see the skirmishers are retreating? Lead the

squadron back."



The squadron crossed the bridge and drew out of range of fire

without having lost a single man. The second squadron that had been in

the front line followed them across and the last Cossacks quitted

the farther side of the river.



The two Pavlograd squadrons, having crossed the bridge, retired up

the hill one after the other. Their colonel, Karl Bogdanich

Schubert, came up to Denisov's squadron and rode at a footpace not far

from Rostov, without taking any notice of him although they were now

meeting for the first time since their encounter concerning

Telyanin. Rostov, feeling that he was at the front and in the power of

a man toward whom he now admitted that he had been to blame, did not

lift his eyes from the colonel's athletic back, his nape covered

with light hair, and his red neck. It seemed to Rostov that

Bogdanich was only pretending not to notice him, and that his whole

aim now was to test the cadet's courage, so he drew himself up and

looked around him merrily; then it seemed to him that Bogdanich rode

so near in order to show him his courage. Next he thought that his

enemy would send the squadron on a desperate attack just to punish

him--Rostov. Then he imagined how, after the attack, Bogdanich would

come up to him as he lay wounded and would magnanimously extend the

hand of reconciliation.



The high-shouldered figure of Zherkov, familiar to the Pavlograds as

he had but recently left their regiment, rode up to the colonel. After

his dismissal from headquarters Zherkov had not remained in the

regiment, saying he was not such a fool as to slave at the front

when he could get more rewards by doing nothing on the staff, and

had succeeded in attaching himself as an orderly officer to Prince

Bagration. He now came to his former chief with an order from the

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commander of the rear guard.



"Colonel," he said, addressing Rostov's enemy with an air of

gloomy gravity and glancing round at his comrades, "there is an

order to stop and fire the bridge."



"An order to who?" asked the colonel morosely.



"I don't myself know 'to who,'" replied the cornet in a serious

tone, "but the prince told me to 'go and tell the colonel that the

hussars must return quickly and fire the bridge.'"



Zherkov was followed by an officer of the suite who rode up to the

colonel of hussars with the same order. After him the stout

Nesvitski came galloping up on a Cossack horse that could scarcely

carry his weight.



"How's this, Colonel?" he shouted as he approached. "I told you to

fire the bridge, and now someone has gone and blundered; they are

all beside themselves over there and one can't make anything out."



The colonel deliberately stopped the regiment and turned to

Nesvitski.



"You spoke to me of inflammable material," said he, "but you said

nothing about firing it."



"But, my dear sir," said Nesvitski as he drew up, taking off his cap

and smoothing his hair wet with perspiration with his plump hand,

"wasn't I telling you to fire the bridge, when inflammable material

had been put in position?"



"I am not your 'dear sir,' Mr. Staff Officer, and you did not tell

me to burn the bridge! I know the service, and it is my habit orders

strictly to obey. You said the bridge would be burned, but who would

it burn, I could not know by the holy spirit!"



"Ah, that's always the way!" said Nesvitski with a wave of the hand.

"How did you get here?" said he, turning to Zherkov.



"On the same business. But you are damp! Let me wring you out!"



"You were saying, Mr. Staff Officer..." continued the colonel in

an offended tone.



"Colonel," interrupted the officer of the suite, "You must be

quick or the enemy will bring up his guns to use grapeshot."



The colonel looked silently at the officer of the suite, at the

stout staff officer, and at Zherkov, and he frowned.



"I will the bridge fire," he said in a solemn tone as if to announce

that in spite of all the unpleasantness he had to endure he would

still do the right thing.

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Striking his horse with his long muscular legs as if it were to

blame for everything, the colonel moved forward and ordered the second

squadron, that in which Rostov was serving under Denisov, to return to

the bridge.



"There, it's just as I thought," said Rostov to himself. "He

wishes to test me!" His heart contracted and the blood rushed to his

face. "Let him see whether I am a coward!" he thought.



Again on all the bright faces of the squadron the serious expression

appeared that they had worn when under fire. Rostov watched his enemy,

the colonel, closely--to find in his face confirmation of his own

conjecture, but the colonel did not once glance at Rostov, and

looked as he always did when at the front, solemn and stern. Then came

the word of command.



"Look sharp! Look sharp!" several voices repeated around him.



Their sabers catching in the bridles and their spurs jingling, the

hussars hastily dismounted, not knowing what they were to do. The

men were crossing themselves. Rostov no longer looked at the

colonel, he had no time. He was afraid of falling behind the

hussars, so much afraid that his heart stood still. His hand

trembled as he gave his horse into an orderly's charge, and he felt

the blood rush to his heart with a thud. Denisov rode past him,

leaning back and shouting something. Rostov saw nothing but the

hussars running all around him, their spurs catching and their

sabers clattering.



"Stretchers!" shouted someone behind him.



Rostov did not think what this call for stretchers meant; he ran on,

trying only to be ahead of the others; but just at the bridge, not

looking at the ground, he came on some sticky, trodden mud,

stumbled, and fell on his hands. The others outstripped him.



"At boss zides, Captain," he heard the voice of the colonel, who,

having ridden ahead, had pulled up his horse near the bridge, with a

triumphant, cheerful face.



Rostov wiping his muddy hands on his breeches looked at his enemy

and was about to run on, thinking that the farther he went to the

front the better. But Bogdanich, without looking at or recognizing

Rostov, shouted to him:



"Who's that running on the middle of the bridge? To the right!

Come back, Cadet!" he cried angrily; and turning to Denisov, who,

showing off his courage, had ridden on to the planks of the bridge:



"Why run risks, Captain? You should dismount," he said.



"Oh, every bullet has its billet," answered Vaska Denisov, turning

in his saddle.

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Meanwhile Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer of the suite were

standing together out of range of the shots, watching, now the small

group of men with yellow shakos, dark-green jackets braided with cord,

and blue riding breeches, who were swarming near the bridge, and

then at what was approaching in the distance from the opposite side-

the blue uniforms and groups with horses, easily recognizable as

artillery.



"Will they burn the bridge or not? Who'll get there first? Will they

get there and fire the bridge or will the French get within

grapeshot range and wipe them out?" These were the questions each

man of the troops on the high ground above the bridge involuntarily

asked himself with a sinking heart--watching the bridge and the

hussars in the bright evening light and the blue tunics advancing from

the other side with their bayonets and guns.



"Ugh. The hussars will get it hot!" said Nesvitski; "they are within

grapeshot range now."



"He shouldn't have taken so many men," said the officer of the

suite.



"True enough," answered Nesvitski; "two smart fellows could have

done the job just as well."



"Ah, your excellency," put in Zherkov, his eyes fixed on the

hussars, but still with that naive air that made it impossible to know

whether he was speaking in jest or in earnest. "Ah, your excellency!

How you look at things! Send two men? And who then would give us the

Vladimir medal and ribbon? But now, even if they do get peppered,

the squadron may be recommended for honors and he may get a ribbon.

Our Bogdanich knows how things are done."



"There now!" said the officer of the suite, "that's grapeshot."



He pointed to the French guns, the limbers of which were being

detached and hurriedly removed.



On the French side, amid the groups with cannon, a cloud of smoke

appeared, then a second and a third almost simultaneously, and at

the moment when the first report was heard a fourth was seen. Then two

reports one after another, and a third.



"Oh! Oh!" groaned Nesvitski as if in fierce pain, seizing the

officer of the suite by the arm. "Look! A man has fallen! Fallen,

fallen!"



"Two, I think."



"If I were Tsar I would never go to war," said Nesvitski, turning

away.



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The French guns were hastily reloaded. The infantry in their blue

uniforms advanced toward the bridge at a run. Smoke appeared again but

at irregular intervals, and grapeshot cracked and rattled onto the

bridge. But this time Nesvitski could not see what was happening

there, as a dense cloud of smoke arose from it. The hussars had

succeeded in setting it on fire and the French batteries were now

firing at them, no longer to hinder them but because the guns were

trained and there was someone to fire at.



The French had time to fire three rounds of grapeshot before the

hussars got back to their horses. Two were misdirected and the shot

went too high, but the last round fell in the midst of a group of

hussars and knocked three of them over.



Rostov, absorbed by his relations with Bogdanich, had paused on

the bridge not knowing what to do. There was no one to hew down (as he

had always imagined battles to himself), nor could he help to fire the

bridge because he had not brought any burning straw with him like

the other soldiers. He stood looking about him, when suddenly he heard

a rattle on the bridge as if nuts were being spilt, and the hussar

nearest to him fell against the rails with a groan. Rostov ran up to

him with the others. Again someone shouted, "Stretchers!" Four men

seized the hussar and began lifting him.



"Oooh! For Christ's sake let me alone!" cried the wounded man, but

still he was lifted and laid on the stretcher.



Nicholas Rostov turned away and, as if searching for something,

gazed into the distance, at the waters of the Danube, at the sky,

and at the sun. How beautiful the sky looked; how blue, how calm,

and how deep! How bright and glorious was the setting sun! With what

soft glitter the waters of the distant Danube shone. And fairer

still were the faraway blue mountains beyond the river, the nunnery,

the mysterious gorges, and the pine forests veiled in the mist of

their summits... There was peace and happiness... "I should wishing

for nothing else, nothing, if only I were there," thought Rostov.

"In myself alone and in that sunshine there is so much happiness;

but here... groans, suffering, fear, and this uncertainty and hurry...

There--they are shouting again, and again are all running back

somewhere, and I shall run with them, and it, death, is here above

me and around... Another instant and I shall never again see the

sun, this water, that gorge!..."



At that instant the sun began to hide behind the clouds, and other

stretchers came into view before Rostov. And the fear of death and

of the stretchers, and love of the sun and of life, all merged into

one feeling of sickening agitation.



"O Lord God! Thou who art in that heaven, save, forgive, and protect

me!" Rostov whispered.



The hussars ran back to the men who held their horses; their

voices sounded louder and calmer, the stretchers disappeared from

sight.

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"Well, fwiend? So you've smelt powdah!" shouted Vaska Denisov just

above his ear.



"It's all over; but I am a coward--yes, a coward!" thought Rostov,

and sighing deeply he took Rook, his horse, which stood resting one

foot, from the orderly and began to mount.



"Was that grapeshot?" he asked Denisov.



"Yes and no mistake!" cried Denisov. "You worked like wegular bwicks

and it's nasty work! An attack's pleasant work! Hacking away at the

dogs! But this sort of thing is the very devil, with them shooting

at you like a target."



And Denisov rode up to a group that had stopped near Rostov,

composed of the colonel, Nesvitski, Zherkov, and the officer from

the suite.



"Well, it seems that no one has noticed," thought Rostov. And this

was true. No one had taken any notice, for everyone knew the sensation

which the cadet under fire for the first time had experienced.



"Here's something for you to report," said Zherkov. "See if I

don't get promoted to a sublieutenancy."



"Inform the prince that I the bridge fired!" said the colonel

triumphantly and gaily.



"And if he asks about the losses?"



"A trifle," said the colonel in his bass voice: "two hussars

wounded, and one knocked out," he added, unable to restrain a happy

smile, and pronouncing the phrase "knocked out" with ringing

distinctness.









CHAPTER IX





Pursued by the French army of a hundred thousand men under the

command of Bonaparte, encountering a population that was unfriendly to

it, losing confidence in its allies, suffering from shortness of

supplies, and compelled to act under conditions of war unlike anything

that had been foreseen, the Russian army of thirty-five thousand men

commanded by Kutuzov was hurriedly retreating along the Danube,

stopping where overtaken by the enemy and fighting rearguard actions

only as far as necessary to enable it to retreat without losing its

heavy equipment. There had been actions at Lambach, Amstetten, and

Melk; but despite the courage and endurance--acknowledged even by

the enemy--with which the Russians fought, the only consequence of

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these actions was a yet more rapid retreat. Austrian troops that had

escaped capture at Ulm and had joined Kutuzov at Braunau now separated

from the Russian army, and Kutuzov was left with only his own weak and

exhausted forces. The defense of Vienna was no longer to be thought

of. Instead of an offensive, the plan of which, carefully prepared

in accord with the modern science of strategics, had been handed to

Kutuzov when he was in Vienna by the Austrian Hofkriegsrath, the

sole and almost unattainable aim remaining for him was to effect a

junction with the forces that were advancing from Russia, without

losing his army as Mack had done at Ulm.



On the twenty-eighth of October Kutuzov with his army crossed to the

left bank of the Danube and took up a position for the first time with

the river between himself and the main body of the French. On the

thirtieth he attacked Mortier's division, which was on the left

bank, and broke it up. In this action for the first time trophies were

taken: banners, cannon, and two enemy generals. For the first time,

after a fortnight's retreat, the Russian troops had halted and after a

fight had not only held the field but had repulsed the French.

Though the troops were ill-clad, exhausted, and had lost a third of

their number in killed, wounded, sick, and stragglers; though a number

of sick and wounded had been abandoned on the other side of the Danube

with a letter in which Kutuzov entrusted them to the humanity of the

enemy; and though the big hospitals and the houses in Krems

converted into military hospitals could no longer accommodate all

the sick and wounded, yet the stand made at Krems and the victory over

Mortier raised the spirits of the army considerably. Throughout the

whole army and at headquarters most joyful though erroneous rumors

were rife of the imaginary approach of columns from Russia, of some

victory gained by the Austrians, and of the retreat of the

frightened Bonaparte.



Prince Andrew during the battle had been in attendance on the

Austrian General Schmidt, who was killed in the action. His horse

had been wounded under him and his own arm slightly grazed by a

bullet. As a mark of the commander in chief's special favor he was

sent with the news of this victory to the Austrian court, now no

longer at Vienna (which was threatened by the French) but at Brunn.

Despite his apparently delicate build Prince Andrew could endure

physical fatigue far better than many very muscular men, and on the

night of the battle, having arrived at Krems excited but not weary,

with dispatches from Dokhturov to Kutuzov, he was sent immediately

with a special dispatch to Brunn. To be so sent meant not only a

reward but an important step toward promotion.



The night was dark but starry, the road showed black in the snow

that had fallen the previous day--the day of the battle. Reviewing his

impressions of the recent battle, picturing pleasantly to himself

the impression his news of a victory would create, or recalling the

send-off given him by the commander in chief and his fellow

officers, Prince Andrew was galloping along in a post chaise

enjoying the feelings of a man who has at length begun to attain a

long-desired happiness. As soon as he closed his eyes his ears

seemed filled with the rattle of the wheels and the sensation of

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victory. Then he began to imagine that the Russians were running

away and that he himself was killed, but he quickly roused himself

with a feeling of joy, as if learning afresh that this was not so

but that on the contrary the French had run away. He again recalled

all the details of the victory and his own calm courage during the

battle, and feeling reassured he dozed off.... The dark starry night

was followed by a bright cheerful morning. The snow was thawing in the

sunshine, the horses galloped quickly, and on both sides of the road

were forests of different kinds, fields, and villages.



At one of the post stations he overtook a convoy of Russian wounded.

The Russian officer in charge of the transport lolled back in the

front cart, shouting and scolding a soldier with coarse abuse. In each

of the long German carts six or more pale, dirty, bandaged men were

being jolted over the stony road. Some of them were talking (he

heard Russian words), others were eating bread; the more severely

wounded looked silently, with the languid interest of sick children,

at the envoy hurrying past them.



Prince Andrew told his driver to stop, and asked a soldier in what

action they had been wounded. "Day before yesterday, on the Danube,"

answered the soldier. Prince Andrew took out his purse and gave the

soldier three gold pieces.



"That's for them all," he said to the officer who came up.



"Get well soon, lads!" he continued, turning to the soldiers.

"There's plenty to do still."



"What news, sir?" asked the officer, evidently anxious to start a

conversation.



"Good news!... Go on!" he shouted to the driver, and they galloped

on.



It was already quite dark when Prince Andrew rattled over the

paved streets of Brunn and found himself surrounded by high buildings,

the lights of shops, houses, and street lamps, fine carriages, and all

that atmosphere of a large and active town which is always so

attractive to a soldier after camp life. Despite his rapid journey and

sleepless night, Prince Andrew when he drove up to the palace felt

even more vigorous and alert than he had done the day before. Only his

eyes gleamed feverishly and his thoughts followed one another with

extraordinary clearness and rapidity. He again vividly recalled the

details of the battle, no longer dim, but definite and in the

concise form in which he imagined himself stating them to

the Emperor Francis. He vividly imagined the casual questions that

might be put to him and the answers he would give. He expected to be

at once presented to the Emperor. At the chief entrance to the palace,

however, an official came running out to meet him, and learning that

he was a special messenger led him to another entrance.



"To the right from the corridor, Euer Hochgeboren! There you will

find the adjutant on duty," said the official. "He will conduct you to

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the Minister of War."



The adjutant on duty, meeting Prince Andrew, asked him to wait,

and went in to the Minister of War. Five minutes later he returned and

bowing with particular courtesy ushered Prince Andrew before him along

a corridor to the cabinet where the Minister of War was at work. The

adjutant by his elaborate courtesy appeared to wish to ward off any

attempt at familiarity on the part of the Russian messenger.



Prince Andrew's joyous feeling was considerably weakened as he

approached the door of the minister's room. He felt offended, and

without his noticing it the feeling of offense immediately turned into

one of disdain which was quite uncalled for. His fertile mind

instantly suggested to him a point of view which gave him a right to

despise the adjutant and the minister. "Away from the smell of powder,

they probably think it easy to gain victories!" he thought. His eyes

narrowed disdainfully, he entered the room of the Minister of War with

peculiarly deliberate steps. This feeling of disdain was heightened

when he saw the minister seated at a large table reading some papers

and making pencil notes on them, and for the first two or three

minutes taking no notice of his arrival. A wax candle stood at each

side of the minister's bent bald head with its gray temples. He went

on reading to the end, without raising his eyes at the opening of

the door and the sound of footsteps.



"Take this and deliver it," said he to his adjutant, handing him the

papers and still taking no notice of the special messenger.



Prince Andrew felt that either the actions of Kutuzov's army

interested the Minister of War less than any of the other matters he

was concerned with, or he wanted to give the Russian special messenger

that impression. "But that is a matter of perfect indifference to me,"

he thought. The minister drew the remaining papers together,

arranged them evenly, and then raised his head. He had an intellectual

and distinctive head, but the instant he turned to Prince Andrew the

firm, intelligent expression on his face changed in a way evidently

deliberate and habitual to him. His face took on the stupid artificial

smile (which does not even attempt to hide its artificiality) of a man

who is continually receiving many petitioners one after another.



"From General Field Marshal Kutuzov?" he asked. "I hope it is good

news? There has been an encounter with Mortier? A victory? It was high

time!"



He took the dispatch which was addressed to him and began to read it

with a mournful expression.



"Oh, my God! My God! Schmidt!" he exclaimed in German. "What a

calamity! What a calamity!"



Having glanced through the dispatch he laid it on the table and

looked at Prince Andrew, evidently considering something.



"Ah what a calamity! You say the affair was decisive? But Mortier is

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not captured." Again he pondered. "I am very glad you have brought

good news, though Schmidt's death is a heavy price to pay for the

victory. His Majesty will no doubt wish to see you, but not today. I

thank you! You must have a rest. Be at the levee tomorrow after the

parade. However, I will let you know."



The stupid smile, which had left his face while he was speaking,

reappeared.



"Au revoir! Thank you very much. His Majesty will probably desire to

see you," he added, bowing his head.



When Prince Andrew left the palace he felt that all the interest and

happiness the victory had afforded him had been now left in the

indifferent hands of the Minister of War and the polite adjutant.

The whole tenor of his thoughts instantaneously changed; the battle

seemed the memory of a remote event long past.









CHAPTER X





Prince Andrew stayed at Brunn with Bilibin, a Russian acquaintance

of his in the diplomatic service.



"Ah, my dear prince! I could not have a more welcome visitor,"

said Bilibin as he came out to meet Prince Andrew. "Franz, put the

prince's things in my bedroom," said he to the servant who was

ushering Bolkonski in. "So you're a messenger of victory, eh?

Splendid! And I am sitting here ill, as you see."



After washing and dressing, Prince Andrew came into the diplomat's

luxurious study and sat down to the dinner prepared for him. Bilibin

settled down comfortably beside the fire.



After his journey and the campaign during which he had been deprived

of all the comforts of cleanliness and all the refinements of life,

Prince Andrew felt a pleasant sense of repose among luxurious

surroundings such as he had been accustomed to from childhood. Besides

it was pleasant, after his reception by the Austrians, to speak if not

in Russian (for they were speaking French) at least with a Russian who

would, he supposed, share the general Russian antipathy to the

Austrians which was then particularly strong.



Bilibin was a man of thirty-five, a bachelor, and of the same circle

as Prince Andrew. They had known each other previously in

Petersburg, but had become more intimate when Prince Andrew was in

Vienna with Kutuzov. Just as Prince Andrew was a young man who gave

promise of rising high in the military profession, so to an even

greater extent Bilibin gave promise of rising in his diplomatic

career. He still a young man but no longer a young diplomat, as he had

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entered the service at the age of sixteen, had been in Paris and

Copenhagen, and now held a rather important post in Vienna. Both the

foreign minister and our ambassador in Vienna knew him and valued him.

He was not one of those many diplomats who are esteemed because they

have certain negative qualities, avoid doing certain things, and speak

French. He was one of those, who, liking work, knew how to do it,

and despite his indolence would sometimes spend a whole night at his

writing table. He worked well whatever the import of his work. It

was not the question "What for?" but the question "How?" that

interested him. What the diplomatic matter might be he did not care,

but it gave him great pleasure to prepare a circular, memorandum, or

report, skillfully, pointedly, and elegantly. Bilibin's services

were valued not only for what he wrote, but also for his skill in

dealing and conversing with those in the highest spheres.



Bilibin liked conversation as he liked work, only when it could be

made elegantly witty. In society he always awaited an opportunity to

say something striking and took part in a conversation only when

that was possible. His conversation was always sprinkled with

wittily original, finished phrases of general interest. These

sayings were prepared in the inner laboratory of his mind in a

portable form as if intentionally, so that insignificant society

people might carry them from drawing room to drawing room. And, in

fact, Bilibin's witticisms were hawked about in the Viennese drawing

rooms and often had an influence on matters considered important.



His thin, worn, sallow face was covered with deep wrinkles, which

always looked as clean and well washed as the tips of one's fingers

after a Russian bath. The movement of these wrinkles formed the

principal play of expression on his face. Now his forehead would

pucker into deep folds and his eyebrows were lifted, then his eyebrows

would descend and deep wrinkles would crease his cheeks. His small,

deep-set eyes always twinkled and looked out straight.



"Well, now tell me about your exploits," said he.



Bolkonski, very modestly without once mentioning himself,

described the engagement and his reception by the Minister of War.



"They received me and my news as one receives a dog in a game of

skittles," said he in conclusion.



Bilibin smiled and the wrinkles on his face disappeared.



"Cependant, mon cher," he remarked, examining his nails from a

distance and puckering the skin above his left eye, "malgre la haute

estime que je professe pour the Orthodox Russian army, j'avoue que

votre victoire n'est pas des plus victorieuses."*





*"But my dear fellow, with all my respect for the Orthodox Russian

army, I must say that your victory was not particularly victorious."





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He went on talking in this way in French, uttering only those

words in Russian on which he wished to put a contemptuous emphasis.



"Come now! You with all your forces fall on the unfortunate

Mortier and his one division, and even then Mortier slips through your

fingers! Where's the victory?"



"But seriously," said Prince Andrew, "we can at any rate say without

boasting that it was a little better than at Ulm..."



"Why didn't you capture one, just one, marshal for us?"



"Because not everything happens as one expects or with the

smoothness of a parade. We had expected, as I told you, to get at

their rear by seven in the morning but had not reached it by five in

the afternoon."



"And why didn't you do it at seven in the morning? You ought to have

been there at seven in the morning," returned Bilibin with a smile.

"You ought to have been there at seven in the morning."



"Why did you not succeed in impressing on Bonaparte by diplomatic

methods that he had better leave Genoa alone?" retorted Prince

Andrew in the same tone.



"I know," interrupted Bilibin, "you're thinking it's very easy to

take marshals, sitting on a sofa by the fire! That is true, but

still why didn't you capture him? So don't be surprised if not only

the Minister of War but also his Most August Majesty the Emperor and

King Francis is not much delighted by your victory. Even I, a poor

secretary of the Russian Embassy, do not feel any need in token of

my joy to give my Franz a thaler, or let him go with his Liebchen to

the Prater... True, we have no Prater here..."



He looked straight at Prince Andrew and suddenly unwrinkled his

forehead.



"It is now my turn to ask you 'why?' mon cher," said Bolkonski. "I

confess I do not understand: perhaps there are diplomatic subtleties

here beyond my feeble intelligence, but I can't make it out. Mack

loses a whole army, the Archduke Ferdinand and the Archduke Karl

give no signs of life and make blunder after blunder. Kutuzov alone at

last gains a real victory, destroying the spell of the invincibility

of the French, and the Minister of War does not even care to hear

the details."



"That's just it, my dear fellow. You see it's hurrah for the Tsar,

for Russia, for the Orthodox Greek faith! All that is beautiful, but

what do we, I mean the Austrian court, care for your victories?

Bring us nice news of a victory by the Archduke Karl or Ferdinand (one

archduke's as good as another, as you know) and even if it is only

over a fire brigade of Bonaparte's, that will be another story and

we'll fire off some cannon! But this sort of thing seems done on

purpose to vex us. The Archduke Karl does nothing, the Archduke

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Ferdinand disgraces himself. You abandon Vienna, give up its

defense--as much as to say: 'Heaven is with us, but heaven help you

and your capital!' The one general whom we all loved, Schmidt, you

expose to a bullet, and then you congratulate us on the victory! Admit

that more irritating news than yours could not have been conceived.

It's as if it had been done on purpose, on purpose. Besides, suppose

you did gain a brilliant victory, if even the Archduke Karl gained a

victory, what effect would that have on the general course of

events? It's too late now when Vienna is occupied by the French army!"



"What? Occupied? Vienna occupied?"



"Not only occupied, but Bonaparte is at Schonbrunn, and the count,

our dear Count Vrbna, goes to him for orders."



After the fatigues and impressions of the journey, his reception,

and especially after having dined, Bolkonski felt that he could not

take in the full significance of the words he heard.



"Count Lichtenfels was here this morning," Bilibin continued, "and

showed me a letter in which the parade of the French in Vienna was

fully described: Prince Murat et tout le tremblement... You see that

your victory is not a matter for great rejoicing and that you can't be

received as a savior."



"Really I don't care about that, I don't care at all," said Prince

Andrew, beginning to understand that his news of the battle before

Krems was really of small importance in view of such events as the

fall of Austria's capital. "How is it Vienna was taken? What of the

bridge and its celebrated bridgehead and Prince Auersperg? We heard

reports that Prince Auersperg was defending Vienna?" he said.



"Prince Auersperg is on this, on our side of the river, and is

defending us--doing it very badly, I think, but still he is

defending us. But Vienna is on the other side. No, the bridge has

not yet been taken and I hope it will not be, for it is mined and

orders have been given to blow it up. Otherwise we should long ago

have been in the mountains of Bohemia, and you and your army would

have spent a bad quarter of an hour between two fires."



"But still this does not mean that the campaign is over," said

Prince Andrew.



"Well, I think it is. The bigwigs here think so too, but they

daren't say so. It will be as I said at the beginning of the campaign,

it won't be your skirmishing at Durrenstein, or gunpowder at all, that

will decide the matter, but those who devised it," said Bilibin

quoting one of his own mots, releasing the wrinkles on his forehead,

and pausing. "The only question is what will come of the meeting

between the Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia in Berlin? If

Prussia joins the Allies, Austria's hand will be forced and there will

be war. If not it is merely a question of settling where the

preliminaries of the new Campo Formio are to be drawn up."



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"What an extraordinary genius!" Prince Andrew suddenly exclaimed,

clenching his small hand and striking the table with it, "and what

luck the man has!"



"Buonaparte?" said Bilibin inquiringly, puckering up his forehead to

indicate that he was about to say something witty. "Buonaparte?" he

repeated, accentuating the u: "I think, however, now that he lays down

laws for Austria at Schonbrunn, il faut lui faire grace de l'u!* I

shall certainly adopt an innovation and call him simply Bonaparte!"





*"We must let him off the u!"





"But joking apart," said Prince Andrew, "do you really think the

campaign is over?"



"This is what I think. Austria has been made a fool of, and she is

not used to it. She will retaliate. And she has been fooled in the

first place because her provinces have been pillaged--they say the

Holy Russian army loots terribly--her army is destroyed, her capital

taken, and all this for the beaux yeux* of His Sardinian Majesty.

And therefore--this is between ourselves--I instinctively feel that we

are being deceived, my instinct tells me of negotiations with France

and projects for peace, a secret peace concluded separately."





*Fine eyes.





"Impossible!" cried Prince Andrew. "That would be too base."



"If we live we shall see," replied Bilibin, his face again

becoming smooth as a sign that the conversation was at an end.



When Prince Andrew reached the room prepared for him and lay down in

a clean shirt on the feather bed with its warmed and fragrant pillows,

he felt that the battle of which he had brought tidings was far, far

away from him. The alliance with Prussia, Austria's treachery,

Bonaparte's new triumph, tomorrow's levee and parade, and the audience

with the Emperor Francis occupied his thoughts.



He closed his eyes, and immediately a sound of cannonading, of

musketry and the rattling of carriage wheels seemed to fill his

ears, and now again drawn out in a thin line the musketeers were

descending the hill, the French were firing, and he felt his heart

palpitating as he rode forward beside Schmidt with the bullets merrily

whistling all around, and he experienced tenfold the joy of living, as

he had not done since childhood.



He woke up...



"Yes, that all happened!" he said, and, smiling happily to himself

like a child, he fell into a deep, youthful slumber.

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CHAPTER XI





Next day he woke late. Recalling his recent impressions, the first

thought that came into his mind was that today he had to be

presented to the Emperor Francis; he remembered the Minister of War,

the polite Austrian adjutant, Bilibin, and last night's

conversation. Having dressed for his attendance at court in full

parade uniform, which he had not worn for a long time, he went into

Bilibin's study fresh, animated, and handsome, with his hand bandaged.

In the study were four gentlemen of the diplomatic corps. With

Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, who was a secretary to the embassy,

Bolkonski was already acquainted. Bilibin introduced him to the

others.



The gentlemen assembled at Bilibin's were young, wealthy, gay

society men, who here, as in Vienna, formed a special set which

Bilibin, their leader, called les notres.* This set, consisting almost

exclusively of diplomats, evidently had its own interests which had

nothing to do with war or politics but related to high society, to

certain women, and to the official side of the service. These

gentlemen received Prince Andrew as one of themselves, an honor they

did not extend to many. From politeness and to start conversation,

they asked him a few questions about the army and the battle, and then

the talk went off into merry jests and gossip.





*Ours.





"But the best of it was," said one, telling of the misfortune of a

fellow diplomat, "that the Chancellor told him flatly that his

appointment to London was a promotion and that he was so to regard it.

Can you fancy the figure he cut?..."



"But the worst of it, gentlemen--I am giving Kuragin away to you--is

that that man suffers, and this Don Juan, wicked fellow, is taking

advantage of it!"



Prince Hippolyte was lolling in a lounge chair with his legs over

its arm. He began to laugh.



"Tell me about that!" he said.



"Oh, you Don Juan! You serpent!" cried several voices.



"You, Bolkonski, don't know," said Bilibin turning to Prince Andrew,

"that all the atrocities of the French army (I nearly said of the

Russian army) are nothing compared to what this man has been doing

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among the women!"



"La femme est la compagne de l'homme,"* announced Prince

Hippolyte, and began looking through a lorgnette at his elevated legs.





*"Woman is man's companion."





Bilibin and the rest of "ours" burst out laughing in Hippolyte's

face, and Prince Andrew saw that Hippolyte, of whom--he had to

admit--he had almost been jealous on his wife's account, was the

butt of this set.



"Oh, I must give you a treat," Bilibin whispered to Bolkonski.

"Kuragin is exquisite when he discusses politics--you should see his

gravity!"



He sat down beside Hippolyte and wrinkling his forehead began

talking to him about politics. Prince Andrew and the others gathered

round these two.



"The Berlin cabinet cannot express a feeling of alliance," began

Hippolyte gazing round with importance at the others, "without

expressing... as in its last note... you understand... Besides, unless

His Majesty the Emperor derogates from the principle of our

alliance...



"Wait, I have not finished..." he said to Prince Andrew, seizing him

by the arm, "I believe that intervention will be stronger than

nonintervention. And..." he paused. "Finally one cannot impute the

nonreceipt of our dispatch of November 18. That is how it will end."

And he released Bolkonski's arm to indicate that he had now quite

finished.



"Demosthenes, I know thee by the pebble thou secretest in thy golden

mouth!" said Bilibin, and the mop of hair on his head moved with

satisfaction.



Everybody laughed, and Hippolyte louder than anyone. He was

evidently distressed, and breathed painfully, but could not restrain

the wild laughter that convulsed his usually impassive features.



"Well now, gentlemen," said Bilibin, "Bolkonski is my guest in

this house and in Brunn itself. I want to entertain him as far as I

can, with all the pleasures of life here. If we were in Vienna it

would be easy, but here, in this wretched Moravian hole, it is more

difficult, and I beg you all to help me. Brunn's attractions must be

shown him. You can undertake the theater, I society, and you,

Hippolyte, of course the women."



"We must let him see Amelie, she's exquisite!" said one of "ours,"

kissing his finger tips.



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"In general we must turn this bloodthirsty soldier to more humane

interests," said Bilibin.



"I shall scarcely be able to avail myself of your hospitality,

gentlemen, it is already time for me to go," replied Prince Andrew

looking at his watch.



"Where to?"



"To the Emperor."



"Oh! Oh! Oh! Well, au revoir, Bolkonski! Au revoir, Prince! Come

back early to dinner," cried several voices. "We'll take you in hand."



"When speaking to the Emperor, try as far as you can to praise the

way that provisions are supplied and the routes indicated," said

Bilibin, accompanying him to the hall.



"I should like to speak well of them, but as far as I the facts, I

can't," replied Bolkonski, smiling.



"Well, talk as much as you can, anyway. He has a passion for

giving audiences, but he does not like talking himself and can't do

it, as you will see."









CHAPTER XII





At the levee Prince Andrew stood among the Austrian officers as he

had been told to, and the Emperor Francis merely looked fixedly into

his face and just nodded to him with to him with his long head. But

after it was over, the adjutant he had seen the previous day

ceremoniously informed Bolkonski that the Emperor desired to give

him an audience. The Emperor Francis received him standing in the

middle of the room. Before the conversation began Prince Andrew was

struck by the fact that the Emperor seemed confused and blushed as

if not knowing what to say.



"Tell me, when did the battle begin?" he asked hurriedly.



Prince Andrew replied. Then followed other questions just as simple:

"Was Kutuzov well? When had he left Krems?" and so on. The Emperor

spoke as if his sole aim were to put a given number of questions-

the answers to these questions, as was only too evident, did not

interest him.



"At what o'clock did the battle begin?" asked the Emperor.



"I cannot inform Your Majesty at what o'clock the battle began at

the front, but at Durrenstein, where I was, our attack began after

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five in the afternoon," replied Bolkonski growing more animated and

expecting that he would have a chance to give a reliable account,

which he had ready in his mind, of all he knew and had seen. But the

Emperor smiled and interrupted him.



"How many miles?"



"From where to where, Your Majesty?"



"From Durrenstein to Krems."



"Three and a half miles, Your Majesty."



"The French have abandoned the left bank?"



"According to the scouts the last of them crossed on rafts during

the night."



"Is there sufficient forage in Krems?"



"Forage has not been supplied to the extent..."



The Emperor interrupted him.



"At what o'clock was General Schmidt killed?"



"At seven o'clock, I believe."



"At seven o'clock? It's very sad, very sad!"



The Emperor thanked Prince Andrew and bowed. Prince Andrew

withdrew and was immediately surrounded by courtiers on all sides.

Everywhere he saw friendly looks and heard friendly words. Yesterday's

adjutant reproached him for not having stayed at the palace, and

offered him his own house. The Minister of War came up and

congratulated him on the Maria Theresa Order of the third grade, which

the Emperor was conferring on him. The Empress' chamberlain invited

him to see Her Majesty. The archduchess also wished to see him. He did

not know whom to answer, and for a few seconds collected his thoughts.

Then the Russian ambassador took him by the shoulder, led him to the

window, and began to talk to him.



Contrary to Bilibin's forecast the news he had brought was

joyfully received. A thanksgiving service was arranged, Kutuzov was

awarded the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa, and the whole army

received rewards. Bolkonski was invited everywhere, and had to spend

the whole morning calling on the principal Austrian dignitaries.

Between four and five in the afternoon, having made all his calls,

he was returning to Bilibin's house thinking out a letter to his

father about the battle and his visit to Brunn. At the door he found a

vehicle half full of luggage. Franz, Bilibin's man, was dragging a

portmanteau with some difficulty out of the front door.



Before returning to Bilibin's Prince Andrew had gone to bookshop

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to provide himself with some books for the campaign, and had spent

some time in the shop.



"What is it?" he asked.



"Oh, your excellency!" said Franz, with difficulty rolling the

portmanteau into the vehicle, "we are to move on still farther. The

scoundrel is again at our heels!"



"Eh? What?" asked Prince Andrew.



Bilibin came out to meet him. His usually calm face showed

excitement.



"There now! Confess that this is delightful," said he. "This

affair of the Thabor Bridge, at Vienna.... They have crossed without

striking a blow!"



Prince Andrew could not understand.



"But where do you come from not to know what every coachman in the

town knows?"



"I come from the archduchess'. I heard nothing there."



"And you didn't see that everybody is packing up?"



"I did not... What is it all about?" inquired Prince Andrew

impatiently.



"What's it all about? Why, the French have crossed the bridge that

Auersperg was defending, and the bridge was not blown up: so Murat

is now rushing along the road to Brunn and will be here in a day or

two."



"What? Here? But why did they not blow up the bridge, if it was

mined?"



"That is what I ask you. No one, not even Bonaparte, knows why."



Bolkonski shrugged his shoulders.



"But if the bridge is crossed it means that the army too is lost? It

will be cut off," said he.



"That's just it," answered Bilibin. "Listen! The French entered

Vienna as I told you. Very well. Next day, which was yesterday,

those gentlemen, messieurs les marechaux,* Murat, Lannes,and Belliard,

mount and ride to bridge. (Observe that all three are Gascons.)

'Gentlemen,' says one of them, 'you know the Thabor Bridge is mined

and doubly mined and that there are menacing fortifications at its

head and an army of fifteen thousand men has been ordered to blow up

the bridge and not let us cross? But it will please our sovereign

the Emperor Napoleon if we take this bridge, so let us three go and

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take it!' 'Yes, let's!' say the others. And off they go and take the

bridge, cross it, and now with their whole army are on this side of

the Danube, marching on us, you, and your lines of communication."





*The marshalls.





"Stop jesting," said Prince Andrew sadly and seriously. This news

grieved him and yet he was pleased.



As soon as he learned that the Russian army was in such a hopeless

situation it occurred to him that it was he who was destined to lead

it out of this position; that here was the Toulon that would lift

him from the ranks of obscure officers and offer him the first step to

fame! Listening to Bilibin he was already imagining how on reaching

the army he would give an opinion at the war council which would be

the only one that could save the army, and how he alone would be

entrusted with the executing of the plan.



"Stop this jesting," he said



"I am not jesting," Bilibin went on. "Nothing is truer or sadder.

These gentlemen ride onto the bridge alone and wave white

handkerchiefs; they assure the officer on duty that they, the

marshals, are on their way to negotiate with Prince Auersperg. He lets

them enter the tete-de-pont.* They spin him a thousand gasconades,

saying that the war is over, that the Emperor Francis is arranging a

meeting with Bonaparte, that they desire to see Prince Auersperg,

and so on. The officer sends for Auersperg; these gentlemen embrace

the officers, crack jokes, sit on the cannon, and meanwhile a French

battalion gets to the bridge unobserved, flings the bags of incendiary

material into the water, and approaches the tete-de-pont. At length

appears the lieutenant general, our dear Prince Auersperg von

Mautern himself. 'Dearest foe! Flower of the Austrian army, hero of

the Turkish wars Hostilities are ended, we can shake one another's

hand.... The Emperor Napoleon burns with impatience to make Prince

Auersperg's acquaintance.' In a word, those gentlemen, Gascons indeed,

so bewildered him with fine words, and he is so flattered by his

rapidly established intimacy with the French marshals, and so

dazzled by the sight of Murat's mantle and ostrich plumes, qu'il n'y

voit que du feu, et oublie celui qu'il devait faire faire sur

l'ennemi!"*[2] In spite of the animation of his speech, Bilibin did

not forget to pause after this mot to give time for its due

appreciation. "The French battalion rushes to the bridgehead, spikes

the guns, and the bridge is taken! But what is best of all," he went

on, his excitement subsiding under the delightful interest of his

own story, "is that the sergeant in charge of the cannon which was

to give the signal to fire the mines and blow up the bridge, this

sergeant, seeing that the French troops were running onto the

bridge, was about to fire, but Lannes stayed his hand. The sergeant,

who was evidently wiser than his general, goes up to Auersperg and

says: 'Prince, you are being deceived, here are the French!' Murat,

seeing that all is lost if the sergeant is allowed to speak, turns

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to Auersperg with feigned astonishment (he is a true Gascon) and says:

'I don't recognize the world-famous Austrian discipline, if you

allow a subordinate to address you like that!' It was a stroke of

genius. Prince Auersperg feels his dignity at stake and orders the

sergeant to be arrested. Come, you must own that this affair of the

Thabor Bridge is delightful! It is not exactly stupidity, nor

rascality...."





*Bridgehead.



*[2] That their fire gets into his eyes and he forgets that he ought

to be firing at the enemy.





"It may be treachery," said Prince Andrew, vividly imagining the

gray overcoats, wounds, the smoke of gunpowder, the sounds of

firing, and the glory that awaited him.



"Not that either. That puts the court in too bad a light," replied

Bilibin. "It's not treachery nor rascality nor stupidity: it is just as

at Ulm... it is..."--he seemed to be trying to find the right

expression. "C'est... c'est du Mack. Nous sommes mackes [It is... it

is a bit of Mack. We are Macked]," he concluded, feeling that he had

produced a good epigram, a fresh one that would be repeated. His

hitherto puckered brow became smooth as a sign of pleasure, and with a

slight smile he began to examine his nails.



"Where are you off to?" he said suddenly to Prince Andrew who had

risen and was going toward his room.



"I am going away."



"Where to?"



"To the army."



"But you meant to stay another two days?"



"But now I am off at once."



And Prince Andrew after giving directions about his departure went

to his room.



"Do you know, mon cher," said Bilibin following him, "I have been

thinking about you. Why are you going?"



And in proof of the conclusiveness of his opinion all the wrinkles

vanished from his face.



Prince Andrew looked inquiringly at him and gave no reply.



"Why are you going? I know you think it your duty to gallop back

to the army now that it is in danger. I understand that. Mon cher,

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it is heroism!"



"Not at all," said Prince Andrew.



"But as you are a philosopher, be a consistent one, look at the

other side of the question and you will see that your duty, on the

contrary, is to take care of yourself. Leave it to those who are no

longer fit for anything else.... You have not been ordered to return

and have not been dismissed from here; therefore, you can stay and

go with us wherever our ill luck takes us. They say we are going to

Olmutz, and Olmutz is a very decent town. You and I will travel

comfortably in my caleche."



"Do stop joking, Bilibin," cried Bolkonski.



"I am speaking sincerely as a friend! Consider! Where and why are

you going, when you might remain here? You are faced by one of two

things," and the skin over his left temple puckered, "either you

will not reach your regiment before peace is concluded, or you will

share defeat and disgrace with Kutuzov's whole army."



And Bilibin unwrinkled his temple, feeling that the dilemma was

insoluble.



"I cannot argue about it," replied Prince Andrew coldly, but he

thought: "I am going to save the army."



"My dear fellow, you are a hero!" said Bilibin.









CHAPTER XIII





That same night, having taken leave of the Minister of War,

Bolkonski set off to rejoin the army, not knowing where he would

find it and fearing to be captured by the French on the way to Krems.



In Brunn everybody attached to the court was packing up, and the

heavy baggage was already being dispatched to Olmutz. Near Hetzelsdorf

Prince Andrew struck the high road along which the Russian army was

moving with great haste and in the greatest disorder. The road was

so obstructed with carts that it was impossible to get by in a

carriage. Prince Andrew took a horse and a Cossack from a Cossack

commander, and hungry and weary, making his way past the baggage

wagons, rode in search of the commander in chief and of his own

luggage. Very sinister reports of the position of the army reached him

as he went along, and the appearance of the troops in their disorderly

flight confirmed these rumors.



"Cette armee russe que l'or de l'Angleterre a transportee des

extremites de l'univers, nous allons lui faire eprouver le meme

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sort--(le sort de l'armee d'Ulm)."* He remembered these words in

Bonaparte's address to his army at the beginning of the campaign,

and they awoke in him astonishment at the genius of his hero, a

feeling of wounded pride, and a hope of glory. "And should there be

nothing left but to die?" he thought. "Well, if need be, I shall do it

no worse than others."





*"That Russian army which has been brought from the ends of the

earth by English gold, we shall cause to share the same fate--(the

fate of the army at Ulm)."





He looked with disdain at the endless confused mass of

detachments, carts, guns, artillery, and again baggage wagons and

vehicles of all kinds overtaking one another and blocking the muddy

road, three and sometimes four abreast. From all sides, behind and

before, as far as ear could reach, there were the rattle of wheels,

the creaking of carts and gun carriages, the tramp of horses, the

crack of whips, shouts, the urging of horses, and the swearing of

soldiers, orderlies, and officers. All along the sides of the road

fallen horses were to be seen, some flayed, some not, and

broken-down carts beside which solitary soldiers sat waiting for

something, and again soldiers straggling from their companies,

crowds of whom set off to the neighboring villages, or returned from

them dragging sheep, fowls, hay, and bulging sacks. At each ascent

or descent of the road the crowds were yet denser and the din of

shouting more incessant. Soldiers floundering knee-deep in mud

pushed the guns and wagons themselves. Whips cracked, hoofs slipped,

traces broke, and lungs were strained with shouting. The officers

directing the march rode backward and forward between the carts. Their

voices were but feebly heard amid the uproar and one saw by their

faces that they despaired of the possibility of checking this

disorder.



"Here is our dear Orthodox Russian army," thought Bolkonski,

recalling Bilibin's words.



Wishing to find out where the commander in chief was, he rode up

to a convoy. Directly opposite to him came a strange one-horse

vehicle, evidently rigged up by soldiers out of any available

materials and looking like something between a cart, a cabriolet,

and a caleche. A soldier was driving, and a woman enveloped in

shawls sat behind the apron under the leather hood of the vehicle.

Prince Andrew rode up and was just putting his question to a soldier

when his attention was diverted by the desperate shrieks of the

woman in the vehicle. An officer in charge of transport was beating

the soldier who was driving the woman's vehicle for trying to get

ahead of others, and the strokes of his whip fell on the apron of

the equipage. The woman screamed piercingly. Seeing Prince Andrew

she leaned out from behind the apron and, waving her thin arms from

under the woolen shawl, cried:



"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Mr. Aide-de-camp!... For heaven's sake... Protect

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me! What will become of us? I am the wife of the doctor of the Seventh

Chasseurs.... They won't let us pass, we are left behind and have lost

our people..."



"I'll flatten you into a pancake!" shouted the angry officer to

the soldier. "Turn back with your slut!"



"Mr. Aide-de-camp! Help me!... What does it all mean?" screamed

the doctor's wife.



"Kindly let this cart pass. Don't you see it's a woman?" said Prince

Andrew riding up to the officer.



The officer glanced at him, and without replying turned again to the

soldier. "I'll teach you to push on!... Back!"



"Let them pass, I tell you!" repeated Prince Andrew, compressing his

lips.



"And who are you?" cried the officer, turning on him with tipsy

rage, "who are you? Are you in command here? Eh? I am commander

here, not you! Go back or I'll flatten you into a pancake," repeated

he. This expression evidently pleased him.



"That was a nice snub for the little aide-de-camp," came a voice

from behind.



Prince Andrew saw that the officer was in that state of senseless,

tipsy rage when a man does not know what he is saying. He saw that his

championship of the doctor's wife in her queer trap might expose him

to what he dreaded more than anything in the world--to ridicule; but

his instinct urged him on. Before the officer finished his sentence

Prince Andrew, his face distorted with fury, rode up to him and raised

his riding whip.



"Kind...ly let--them--pass!"



The officer flourished his arm and hastily rode away.



"It's all the fault of these fellows on the staff that there's

this disorder," he muttered. "Do as you like."



Prince Andrew without lifting his eyes rode hastily away from the

doctor's wife, who was calling him her deliverer, and recalling with a

sense of disgust the minutest details of this humiliating scene he

galloped on to the village where he was told that the commander in

chief was.



On reaching the village he dismounted and went to the nearest house,

intending to rest if but for a moment, eat something, and try to

sort out the stinging and tormenting thoughts that confused his

mind. "This is a mob of scoundrels and not an army," he was thinking

as he went up to the window of the first house, when a familiar

voice called him by name.

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He turned round. Nesvitski's handsome face looked out of the

little window. Nesvitski, moving his moist lips as he chewed

something, and flourishing his arm, called him to enter.



"Bolkonski! Bolkonski!... Don't you hear? Eh? Come quick..." he

shouted.



Entering the house, Prince Andrew saw Nesvitski and another adjutant

having something to eat. They hastily turned round to him asking if he

had any news. On their familiar faces he read agitation and alarm.

This was particularly noticeable on Nesvitski's usually laughing

countenance.



"Where is the commander in chief?" asked Bolkonski.



"Here, in that house," answered the adjutant.



"Well, is it true that it's peace and capitulation?" asked

Nesvitski.



"I was going to ask you. I know nothing except that it was all I

could do to get here."



"And we, my dear boy! It's terrible! I was wrong to laugh at Mack,

we're getting it still worse," said Nesvitski. "But sit down and

have something to eat."



"You won't be able to find either your baggage or anything else now,

Prince. And God only knows where your man Peter is," said the other

adjutant.



"Where are headquarters?"



"We are to spend the night in Znaim."



"Well, I have got all I need into packs for two horses," said

Nesvitski. "They've made up splendid packs for me--fit to cross the

Bohemian mountains with. It's a bad lookout, old fellow! But what's

the matter with you? You must be ill to shiver like that," he added,

noticing that Prince Andrew winced as at an electric shock.



"It's nothing," replied Prince Andrew.



He had just remembered his recent encounter with the doctor's wife

and the convoy officer.



"What is the commander in chief doing here?" he asked.



"I can't make out at all," said Nesvitski.



"Well, all I can make out is that everything is abominable,

abominable, quite abominable!" said Prince Andrew, and he went off

to the house where the commander in chief was.

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Passing by Kutuzov's carriage and the exhausted saddle horses of his

suite, with their Cossacks who were talking loudly together, Prince

Andrew entered the passage. Kutuzov himself, he was told, was in the

house with Prince Bagration and Weyrother. Weyrother was the

Austrian general who had succeeded Schmidt. In the passage little

Kozlovski was squatting on his heels in front of a clerk. The clerk,

with cuffs turned up, was hastily writing at a tub turned bottom

upwards. Kozlovski's face looked worn--he too had evidently not

slept all night. He glanced at Prince Andrew and did not even nod to

him.



"Second line... have you written it?" he continued dictating to

the clerk. "The Kiev Grenadiers, Podolian..."



"One can't write so fast, your honor," said the clerk, glancing

angrily and disrespectfully at Kozlovski.



Through the door came the sounds of Kutuzov's voice, excited and

dissatisfied, interrupted by another, an unfamiliar voice. From the

sound of these voices, the inattentive way Kozlovski looked at him,

the disrespectful manner of the exhausted clerk, the fact that the

clerk and Kozlovski were squatting on the floor by a tub so near to

the commander in chief, and from the noisy laughter of the Cossacks

holding the horses near the window, Prince Andrew felt that

something important and disastrous was about to happen.



He turned to Kozlovski with urgent questions.



"Immediately, Prince," said Kozlovski. "Dispositions for Bagration."



"What about capitulation?"



"Nothing of the sort. Orders are issued for a battle."



Prince Andrew moved toward the door from whence voices were heard.

Just as he was going to open it the sounds ceased, the door opened,

and Kutuzov with his eagle nose and puffy face appeared in the

doorway. Prince Andrew stood right in front of Kutuzov but the

expression of the commander in chief's one sound eye showed him to

be so preoccupied with thoughts and anxieties as to be oblivious of

his presence. He looked straight at his adjutant's face without

recognizing him.



"Well, have you finished?" said he to Kozlovski.



"One moment, your excellency."



Bagration, a gaunt middle-aged man of medium height with a firm,

impassive face of Oriental type, came out after the commander in

chief.



"I have the honor to present myself," repeated Prince Andrew

rather loudly, handing Kutuzov an envelope.

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"Ah, from Vienna? Very good. Later, later!"



Kutuzov went out into the porch with Bagration.



"Well, good-by, Prince," said he to Bagration. "My blessing, and may

Christ be with you in your great endeavor!"



His face suddenly softened and tears came into his eyes. With his

left hand he drew Bagration toward him, and with his right, on which

he wore a ring, he made the sign of the cross over him with a

gesture evidently habitual, offering his puffy cheek, but Bagration

kissed him on the neck instead.



"Christ be with you!" Kutuzov repeated and went toward his carriage.

"Get in with me," said he to Bolkonski.



"Your excellency, I should like to be of use here. Allow me to

remain with Prince Bagration's detachment."



"Get in," said Kutuzov, and noticing that Bolkonski still delayed,

he added: "I need good officers myself, need them myself!"



They got into the carriage and drove for a few minutes in silence.



"There is still much, much before us," he said, as if with an old

man's penetration he understood all that was passing in Bolkonski's

mind. "If a tenth part of his detachment returns I shall thank God,"

he added as if speaking to himself.



Prince Andrew glanced at Kutuzov's face only a foot distant from him

and involuntarily noticed the carefully washed seams of the scar

near his temple, where an Ismail bullet had pierced his skull, and the

empty eye socket. "Yes, he has a right to speak so calmly of those

men's death," thought Bolkonski.



"That is why I beg to be sent to that detachment," he said.



Kutuzov did not reply. He seemed to have forgotten what he had

been saying, and sat plunged in thought. Five minutes later, gently

swaying on the soft springs of the carriage, he turned to Prince

Andrew. There was not a trace of agitation on his face. With

delicate irony he questioned Prince Andrew about the details of his

interview with the Emperor, about the remarks he had heard at court

concerning the Krems affair, and about some ladies they both knew.









CHAPTER XIV





On November 1 Kutuzov had received, through a spy, news that the

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army he commanded was in an almost hopeless position. The spy reported

that the French, after crossing the bridge at Vienna, were advancing

in immense force upon Kutuzov's line of communication with the

troops that were arriving from Russia. If Kutuzov decided to remain at

Krems, Napoleon's army of one hundred and fifty thousand men would cut

him off completely and surround his exhausted army of forty

thousand, and he would find himself in the position of Mack at Ulm. If

Kutuzov decided to abandon the road connecting him with the troops

arriving from Russia, he would have to march with no road into unknown

parts of the Bohemian mountains, defending himself against superior

forces of the enemy and abandoning all hope of a junction with

Buxhowden. If Kutuzov decided to retreat along the road from Krems

to Olmutz, to unite with the troops arriving from Russia, he risked

being forestalled on that road by the French who had crossed the

Vienna bridge, and encumbered by his baggage and transport, having

to accept battle on the march against an enemy three times as

strong, who would hem him in from two sides.



Kutuzov chose this latter course.



The French, the spy reported, having crossed the Vienna bridge, were

advancing by forced marches toward Znaim, which lay sixty-six miles

off on the line of Kutuzov's retreat. If he reached Znaim before the

French, there would be great hope of saving the army; to let the

French forestall him at Znaim meant the exposure of his whole army

to a disgrace such as that of Ulm, or to utter destruction. But to

forestall the French with his whole army was impossible. The road

for the French from Vienna to Znaim was shorter and better than the

road for the Russians from Krems to Znaim.



The night he received the news, Kutuzov sent Bagration's vanguard,

four thousand strong, to the right across the hills from the

Krems-Znaim to the Vienna-Znaim road. Bagration was to make this march

without resting, and to halt facing Vienna with Znaim to his rear, and

if he succeeded in forestalling the French he was to delay them as

long as possible. Kutuzov himself with all his transport took the road

to Znaim.



Marching thirty miles that stormy night across roadless hills,

with his hungry, ill-shod soldiers, and losing a third of his men as

stragglers by the way, Bagration came out on the Vienna-Znaim road

at Hollabrunn a few hours ahead of the French who were approaching

Hollabrunn from Vienna. Kutuzov with his transport had still to

march for some days before he could reach Znaim. Hence Bagration

with his four thousand hungry, exhausted men would have to detain

for days the whole enemy army that came upon him at Hollabrunn,

which was clearly impossible. But a freak of fate made the

impossible possible. The success of the trick that had placed the

Vienna bridge in the hands of the French without a fight led Murat

to try to deceive Kutuzov in a similar way. Meeting Bagration's weak

detachment on the Znaim road he supposed it to be Kutuzov's whole

army. To be able to crush it absolutely he awaited the arrival of

the rest of the troops who were on their way from Vienna, and with

this object offered a three days' truce on condition that both

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armies should remain in position without moving. Murat declared that

negotiations for peace were already proceeding, and that he

therefore offered this truce to avoid unnecessary bloodshed. Count

Nostitz, the Austrian general occupying the advanced posts, believed

Murat's emissary and retired, leaving Bagration's division exposed.

Another emissary rode to the Russian line to announce the peace

negotiations and to offer the Russian army the three days' truce.

Bagration replied that he was not authorized either to accept or

refuse a truce and sent his adjutant to Kutuzov to report the offer he

had received.



A truce was Kutuzov's sole chance of gaining time, giving

Bagration's exhausted troops some rest, and letting the transport

and heavy convoys (whose movements were concealed from the French)

advance if but one stage nearer Znaim. The offer of a truce gave the

only, and a quite unexpected, chance of saving the army. On

receiving the news he immediately dispatched Adjutant General

Wintzingerode, who was in attendance on him, to the enemy camp.

Wintzingerode was not merely to agree to the truce but also to offer

terms of capitulation, and meanwhile Kutuzov sent his adjutants back

to hasten to the utmost the movements of the baggage trains of the

entire army along the Krems-Znaim road. Bagration's exhausted and

hungry detachment, which alone covered this movement of the

transport and of the whole army, had to remain stationary in face of

an enemy eight times as strong as itself.



Kutuzov's expectations that the proposals of capitulation (which

were in no way binding) might give time for part of the transport to

pass, and also that Murat's mistake would very soon be discovered,

proved correct. As soon as Bonaparte (who was at Schonbrunn, sixteen

miles from Hollabrunn) received Murat's dispatch with the proposal

of a truce and a capitulation, he detected a ruse and wrote the

following letter to Murat:





Schonbrunn, 25th Brumaire, 1805,



at eight o'clock in the morning



To PRINCE MURAT,



I cannot find words to express to you my displeasure. You command

only my advance guard, and have no right to arrange an armistice

without my order. You are causing me to lose the fruits of a campaign.

Break the armistice immediately and march on the enemy. Inform him

that the general who signed that capitulation had no right to do so,

and that no one but the Emperor of Russia has that right.



If, however, the Emperor of Russia ratifies that convention, I

will ratify it; but it is only a trick. March on, destroy the

Russian army.... You are in a position to seize its baggage and

artillery.



The Russian Emperor's aide-de-camp is an impostor. Officers are

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nothing when they have no powers; this one had none.... The

Austrians let themselves be tricked at the crossing of the Vienna

bridge, you are letting yourself be tricked by an aide-de-camp of

the Emperor.



NAPOLEON





Bonaparte's adjutant rode full gallop with this menacing letter to

Murat. Bonaparte himself, not trusting to his generals, moved with all

the Guards to the field of battle, afraid of letting a ready victim

escape, and Bagration's four thousand men merrily lighted campfires,

dried and warmed themselves, cooked their porridge for the first

time for three days, and not one of them knew or imagined what was

in store for him.









CHAPTER XV





Between three and four o'clock in the afternoon Prince Andrew, who

had persisted in his request to Kutuzov, arrived at Grunth and

reported himself to Bagration. Bonaparte's adjutant had not yet

reached Murat's detachment and the battle had not yet begun. In

Bagration's detachment no one knew anything of the general position of

affairs. They talked of peace but did not believe in its

possibility; others talked of a battle but also disbelieved in the

nearness of an engagement. Bagration, knowing Bolkonski to be a

favorite and trusted adjutant, received him with distinction and

special marks of favor, explaining to him that there would probably be

an engagement that day or the next, and giving him full liberty to

remain with him during the battle or to join the rearguard and have an

eye on the order of retreat, "which is also very important."



"However, there will hardly be an engagement today," said

Bagration as if to reassure Prince Andrew.



"If he is one of the ordinary little staff dandies sent to earn a

medal he can get his reward just as well in the rearguard, but if he

wishes to stay with me, let him... he'll be of use here if he's a

brave officer," thought Bagration. Prince Andrew, without replying,

asked the prince's permission to ride round the position to see the

disposition of the forces, so as to know his bearings should he be

sent to execute an order. The officer on duty, a handsome, elegantly

dressed man with a diamond ring on his forefinger, who was fond of

speaking French though he spoke it badly, offered to conduct Prince

Andrew.



On all sides they saw rain-soaked officers with dejected faces who

seemed to be seeking something, and soldiers dragging doors,

benches, and fencing from the village.

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"There now, Prince! We can't stop those fellows," said the staff

officer pointing to the soldiers. "The officers don't keep them in

hand. And there," he pointed to a sutler's tent, "they crowd in and

sit. This morning I turned them all out and now look, it's full again.

I must go there, Prince, and scare them a bit. It won't take a

moment."



"Yes, let's go in and I will get myself a roll and some cheese,"

said Prince Andrew who had not yet had time to eat anything.



"Why didn't you mention it, Prince? I would have offered you

something."



They dismounted and entered the tent. Several officers, with flushed

and weary faces, were sitting at the table eating and drinking.



"Now what does this mean, gentlemen?" said the staff officer, in the

reproachful tone of a man who has repeated the same thing more than

once. "You know it won't do to leave your posts like this. The

prince gave orders that no one should leave his post. Now you,

Captain," and he turned to a thin, dirty little artillery officer

who without his boots (he had given them to the canteen keeper to

dry), in only his stockings, rose when they entered, smiling not

altogether comfortably.



"Well, aren't you ashamed of yourself, Captain Tushin?" he

continued. "One would think that as an artillery officer you would set

a good example, yet here you are without your boots! The alarm will be

sounded and you'll be in a pretty position without your boots!" (The

staff officer smiled.) "Kindly return to your posts, gentlemen, all of

you, all!" he added in a tone of command.



Prince Andrew smiled involuntarily as he looked at the artillery

officer Tushin, who silent and smiling, shifting from one stockinged

foot to the other, glanced inquiringly with his large, intelligent,

kindly eyes from Prince Andrew to the staff officer.



"The soldiers say it feels easier without boots," said Captain

Tushin smiling shyly in his uncomfortable position, evidently

wishing to adopt a jocular tone. But before he had finished he felt

that his jest was unacceptable and had not come off. He grew confused.



"Kindly return to your posts," said the staff officer trying to

preserve his gravity.



Prince Andrew glanced again at the artillery officer's small figure.

There was something peculiar about it, quite unsoldierly, rather

comic, but extremely attractive.



The staff officer and Prince Andrew mounted their horses and rode

on.



Having ridden beyond the village, continually meeting and overtaking

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soldiers and officers of various regiments, they saw on their left

some entrenchments being thrown up, the freshly dug clay of which

showed up red. Several battalions of soldiers, in their shirt

sleeves despite the cold wind, swarmed in these earthworks like a host

of white ants; spadefuls of red clay were continually being thrown

up from behind the bank by unseen hands. Prince Andrew and the officer

rode up, looked at the entrenchment, and went on again. Just behind it

they came upon some dozens of soldiers, continually replaced by

others, who ran from the entrenchment. They had to hold their noses

and put their horses to a trot to escape from the poisoned

atmosphere of these latrines.



"Voila l'agrement des camps, monsieur le Prince,"* said the staff

officer.





*"This is a pleasure one gets in camp, Prince."





They rode up the opposite hill. From there the French could

already be seen. Prince Andrew stopped and began examining the

position.



"That's our battery," said the staff officer indicating the

highest point. "It's in charge of the queer fellow we saw without

his boots. You can see everything from there; let's go there, Prince."



"Thank you very much, I will go on alone," said Prince Andrew,

wishing to rid himself of this staff officer's company, "please

don't trouble yourself further."



The staff officer remained behind and Prince Andrew rode on alone.



The farther forward and nearer the enemy he went, the more orderly

and cheerful were the troops. The greatest disorder and depression had

been in the baggage train he had passed that morning on the Znaim road

seven miles away from the French. At Grunth also some apprehension and

alarm could be felt, but the nearer Prince Andrew came to the French

lines the more confident was the appearance of our troops. The

soldiers in their greatcoats were ranged in lines, the sergeants major

and company officers were counting the men, poking the last man in

each section in the ribs and telling him to hold his hand up. Soldiers

scattered over the whole place were dragging logs and brushwood and

were building shelters with merry chatter and laughter; around the

fires sat others, dressed and undressed, drying their shirts and leg

bands or mending boots or overcoats and crowding round the boilers and

porridge cookers. In one company dinner was ready, and the soldiers

were gazing eagerly at the steaming boiler, waiting till the sample,

which a quartermaster sergeant was carrying in a wooden bowl to an

officer who sat on a log before his shelter, had been tasted.



Another company, a lucky one for not all the companies had vodka,

crowded round a pock-marked, broad-shouldered sergeant major who,

tilting a keg, filled one after another the canteen lids held out to

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him. The soldiers lifted the canteen lids to their lips with

reverential faces, emptied them, rolling the vodka in their mouths,

and walked away from the sergeant major with brightened expressions,

licking their lips and wiping them on the sleeves of their greatcoats.

All their faces were as serene as if all this were happening at home

awaiting peaceful encampment, and not within sight of the enemy before

an action in which at least half of them would be left on the field.

After passing a chasseur regiment and in the lines of the Kiev

grenadiers--fine fellows busy with similar peaceful affairs--near

the shelter of the regimental commander, higher than and different

from the others, Prince Andrew came out in front of a platoon of

grenadiers before whom lay a naked man. Two soldiers held him while

two others were flourishing their switches and striking him

regularly on his bare back. The man shrieked unnaturally. A stout

major was pacing up and down the line, and regardless of the screams

kept repeating:



"It's a shame for a soldier to steal; a soldier must be honest,

honorable, and brave, but if he robs his fellows there is no honor

in him, he's a scoundrel. Go on! Go on!"



So the swishing sound of the strokes, and the desperate but

unnatural screams, continued.



"Go on, go on!" said the major.



A young officer with a bewildered and pained expression on his

face stepped away from the man and looked round inquiringly at the

adjutant as he rode by.



Prince Andrew, having reached the front line, rode along it. Our

front line and that of the enemy were far apart on the right and

left flanks, but in the center where the men with a flag of truce

had passed that morning, the lines were so near together that the

men could see one another's faces and speak to one another. Besides

the soldiers who formed the picket line on either side, there were

many curious onlookers who, jesting and laughing, stared at their

strange foreign enemies.



Since early morning--despite an injunction not to approach the

picket line--the officers had been unable to keep sight-seers away.

The soldiers forming the picket line, like showmen exhibiting a

curiosity, no longer looked at the French but paid attention to the

sight-seers and grew weary waiting to be relieved. Prince Andrew

halted to have a look at the French.



"Look! Look there!" one soldier was saying to another, pointing to a

Russian musketeer who had gone up to the picket line with an officer

and was rapidly and excitedly talking to a French grenadier. "Hark

to him jabbering! Fine, isn't it? It's all the Frenchy can do to

keep up with him. There now, Sidorov!"



"Wait a bit and listen. It's fine!" answered Sidorov, who was

considered an adept at French.

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The soldier to whom the laughers referred was Dolokhov. Prince

Andrew recognized him and stopped to listen to what he was saying.

Dolokhov had come from the left flank where their regiment was

stationed, with his captain.



"Now then, go on, go on!" incited the officer, bending forward and

trying not to lose a word of the speech which was incomprehensible

to him. "More, please: more! What's he saying?"



Dolokhov did not answer the captain; he had been drawn into a hot

dispute with the French grenadier. They were naturally talking about

the campaign. The Frenchman, confusing the Austrians with the

Russians, was trying to prove that the Russians had surrendered and

had fled all the way from Ulm, while Dolokhov maintained that the

Russians had not surrendered but had beaten the French.



"We have orders to drive you off here, and we shall drive you

off," said Dolokhov.



"Only take care you and your Cossacks are not all captured!" said

the French grenadier.



The French onlookers and listeners laughed.



"We'll make you dance as we did under Suvorov...,"* said Dolokhov.





*"On vous fera danser."





"Qu' est-ce qu'il chante?"* asked a Frenchman.





*"What's he singing about?"





"It's ancient history," said another, guessing that it referred to a

former war. "The Emperor will teach your Suvara as he has taught the

others..."



"Bonaparte..." began Dolokhov, but the Frenchman interrupted him.



"Not Bonaparte. He is the Emperor! Sacre nom...!" cried he angrily.



"The devil skin your Emperor."



And Dolokhov swore at him in coarse soldier's Russian and

shouldering his musket walked away.



"Let us go, Ivan Lukich," he said to the captain.



"Ah, that's the way to talk French," said the picket soldiers. "Now,

Sidorov, you have a try!"

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Sidorov, turning to the French, winked, and began to jabber

meaningless sounds very fast: "Kari, mala, tafa, safi, muter,

Kaska," he said, trying to give an expressive intonation to his voice.



"Ho! ho! ho! Ha! ha! ha! ha! Ouh! ouh!" came peals of such healthy

and good-humored laughter from the soldiers that it infected the

French involuntarily, so much so that the only thing left to do seemed

to be to unload the muskets, muskets, explode the ammunition, and

all return home as quickly as possible.



But the guns remained loaded, the loopholes in blockhouses and

entrenchments looked out just as menacingly, and the unlimbered cannon

confronted one another as before.









CHAPTER XVI





Having ridden round the whole line from right flank to left,

Prince Andrew made his way up to the battery from which the staff

officer had told him the whole field could be seen. Here he

dismounted, and stopped beside the farthest of the four unlimbered

cannon. Before the guns an artillery sentry was pacing up and down; he

stood at attention when the officer arrived, but at a sign resumed his

measured, monotonous pacing. Behind the guns were their limbers and

still farther back picket ropes and artillerymen's bonfires. To the

left, not far from the farthest cannon, was a small, newly constructed

wattle shed from which came the sound of officers' voices in eager

conversation.



It was true that a view over nearly the whole Russian position and

the greater part of the enemy's opened out from this battery. Just

facing it, on the crest of the opposite hill, the village of Schon

Grabern could be seen, and in three places to left and right the

French troops amid the smoke of their campfires, the greater part of

whom were evidently in the village itself and behind the hill. To

the left from that village, amid the smoke, was something resembling a

battery, but it was impossible to see it clearly with the naked eye.

Our right flank was posted on a rather steep incline which dominated

the French position. Our infantry were stationed there, and at the

farthest point the dragoons. In the center, where Tushin's battery

stood and from which Prince Andrew was surveying the position, was the

easiest and most direct descent and ascent to the brook separating

us from Schon Grabern. On the left our troops were close to a copse,

in which smoked the bonfires of our infantry who were felling wood.

The French line was wider than ours, and it was plain that they

could easily outflank us on both sides. Behind our position was a

steep and deep dip, making it difficult for artillery and cavalry to

retire. Prince Andrew took out his notebook and, leaning on the

cannon, sketched a plan of the position. He made some notes on two

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points, intending to mention them to Bagration. His idea was, first,

to concentrate all the artillery in the center, and secondly, to

withdraw the cavalry to the other side of the dip. Prince Andrew,

being always near the commander in chief, closely following the mass

movements and general orders, and constantly studying historical

accounts of battles, involuntarily pictured to himself the course of

events in the forthcoming action in broad outline. He imagined only

important possibilities: "If the enemy attacks the right flank," he

said to himself, "the Kiev grenadiers and the Podolsk chasseurs must

hold their position till reserves from the center come up. In that

case the dragoons could successfully make a flank counterattack. If

they attack our center we, having the center battery on this high

ground, shall withdraw the left flank under its cover, and retreat

to the dip by echelons." So he reasoned.... All the time he had been

beside the gun, he had heard the voices of the officers distinctly,

but as often happens had not understood a word of what they were

saying. Suddenly, however, he was struck by a voice coming from the

shed, and its tone was so sincere that he could not but listen.



"No, friend," said a pleasant and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew,

a familiar voice, "what I say is that if it were possible to know what

is beyond death, none of us would be afraid of it. That's so, friend."



Another, a younger voice, interrupted him: "Afraid or not, you can't

escape it anyhow."



"All the same, one is afraid! Oh, you clever people," said a third

manly voice interrupting them both. "Of course you artillery men are

very wise, because you can take everything along with you--vodka and

snacks."



And the owner of the manly voice, evidently an infantry officer,

laughed.



"Yes, one is afraid," continued the first speaker, he of the

familiar voice. "One is afraid of the unknown, that's what it is.

Whatever we may say about the soul going to the sky... we know there

is no sky but only an atmosphere."



The manly voice again interrupted the artillery officer.



"Well, stand us some of your herb vodka, Tushin," it said.



"Why," thought Prince Andrew, "that's the captain who stood up in

the sutler's hut without his boots." He recognized the agreeable,

philosophizing voice with pleasure.



"Some herb vodka? Certainly!" said Tushin. "But still, to conceive a

future life..."



He did not finish. Just then there was a whistle in the air;

nearer and nearer, faster and louder, louder and faster, a cannon

ball, as if it had not finished saying what was necessary, thudded

into the ground near the shed with super human force, throwing up a

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mass of earth. The ground seemed to groan at the terrible impact.



And immediately Tushin, with a short pipe in the corner of his mouth

and his kind, intelligent face rather pale, rushed out of the shed

followed by the owner of the manly voice, a dashing infantry officer

who hurried off to his company, buttoning up his coat as he ran.









CHAPTER XVII





Mounting his horse again Prince Andrew lingered with the battery,

looking at the puff from the gun that had sent the ball. His eyes

ran rapidly over the wide space, but he only saw that the hitherto

motionless masses of the French now swayed and that there really was a

battery to their left. The smoke above it had not yet dispersed. Two

mounted Frenchmen, probably adjutants, were galloping up the hill. A

small but distinctly visible enemy column was moving down the hill,

probably to strengthen the front line. The smoke of the first shot had

not yet dispersed before another puff appeared, followed by a

report. The battle had begun! Prince Andrew turned his horse and

galloped back to Grunth to find Prince Bagration. He heard the

cannonade behind him growing louder and more frequent. Evidently our

guns had begun to reply. From the bottom of the slope, where the

parleys had taken place, came the report of musketry.



Lemarrois had just arrived at a gallop with Bonaparte's stern

letter, and Murat, humiliated and anxious to expiate his fault, had at

once moved his forces to attack the center and outflank both the

Russian wings, hoping before evening and before the arrival of the

Emperor to crush the contemptible detachment that stood before him.



"It has begun. Here it is!" thought Prince Andrew, feeling the blood

rush to his heart. "But where and how will my Toulon present itself?"



Passing between the companies that had been eating porridge and

drinking vodka a quarter of an hour before, he saw everywhere the same

rapid movement of soldiers forming ranks and getting their muskets

ready, and on all their faces he recognized the same eagerness that

filled his heart. "It has begun! Here it is, dreadful but

enjoyable!" was what the face of each soldier and each officer

seemed to say.



Before he had reached the embankments that were being thrown up,

he saw, in the light of the dull autumn evening, mounted men coming

toward him. The foremost, wearing a Cossack cloak and lambskin cap and

riding a white horse, was Prince Bagration. Prince Andrew stopped,

waiting for him to come up; Prince Bagration reined in his horse and

recognizing Prince Andrew nodded to him. He still looked ahead while

Prince Andrew told him what he had seen.



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The feeling, "It has begun! Here it is!" was seen even on Prince

Bagration's hard brown face with its half-closed, dull, sleepy eyes.

Prince Andrew gazed with anxious curiosity at that impassive face

and wished he could tell what, if anything, this man was thinking

and feeling at that moment. "Is there anything at all behind that

impassive face?" Prince Andrew asked himself as he looked. Prince

Bagration bent his head in sign of agreement with what Prince Andrew

told him, and said, "Very good!" in a tone that seemed to imply that

everything that took place and was reported to him was exactly what he

had foreseen. Prince Andrew, out of breath with his rapid ride,

spoke quickly. Prince Bagration, uttering his words with an Oriental

accent, spoke particularly slowly, as if to impress the fact that

there was no need to hurry. However, he put his horse to a trot in the

direction of Tushin's battery. Prince Andrew followed with the

suite. Behind Prince Bagration rode an officer of the suite, the

prince's personal adjutant, Zherkov, an orderly officer, the staff

officer on duty, riding a fine bobtailed horse, and a civilian--an

accountant who had asked permission to be present at the battle out of

curiosity. The accountant, a stout, full-faced man, looked around

him with a naive smile of satisfaction and presented a strange

appearance among the hussars, Cossacks, and adjutants, in his camlet

coat, as he jolted on his horse with a convoy officer's saddle.



"He wants to see a battle," said Zherkov to Bolkonski, pointing to

the accountant, "but he feels a pain in the pit of his stomach

already."



"Oh, leave off!" said the accountant with a beaming but rather

cunning smile, as if flattered at being made the subject of

Zherkov's joke, and purposely trying to appear stupider than he really

was.



"It is very strange, mon Monsieur Prince," said the staff officer.

(He remembered that in French there is some peculiar way of addressing

a prince, but could not get it quite right.)



By this time they were all approaching Tushin's battery, and a

ball struck the ground in front of them.



"What's that that has fallen?" asked the accountant with a naive

smile.



"A French pancake," answered Zherkov.



"So that's what they hit with?" asked the accountant. "How awful!"



He seemed to swell with satisfaction. He had hardly finished

speaking when they again heard an unexpectedly violent whistling which

suddenly ended with a thud into something soft... f-f-flop! and a

Cossack, riding a little to their right and behind the accountant,

crashed to earth with his horse. Zherkov and the staff officer bent

over their saddles and turned their horses away. The accountant

stopped, facing the Cossack, and examined him with attentive

curiosity. The Cossack was dead, but the horse still struggled.

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Prince Bagration screwed up his eyes, looked round, and, seeing

the cause of the confusion, turned away with indifference, as if to

say, "Is it worth while noticing trifles?" He reined in his horse with

the case of a skillful rider and, slightly bending over, disengaged

his saber which had caught in his cloak. It was an old-fashioned saber

of a kind no longer in general use. Prince Andrew remembered the story

of Suvorov giving his saber to Bagration in Italy, and the

recollection was particularly pleasant at that moment. They had

reached the battery at which Prince Andrew had been when he examined

the battlefield.



"Whose company?" asked Prince Bagration of an artilleryman

standing by the ammunition wagon.



He asked, "Whose company?" but he really meant, "Are you

frightened here?" and the artilleryman understood him.



"Captain Tushin's, your excellency!" shouted the red-haired,

freckled gunner in a merry voice, standing to attention.



"Yes, yes," muttered Bagration as if considering something, and he

rode past the limbers to the farthest cannon.



As he approached, a ringing shot issued from it deafening him and

his suite, and in the smoke that suddenly surrounded the gun they

could see the gunners who had seized it straining to roll it quickly

back to its former position. A huge, broad-shouldered gunner, Number

One, holding a mop, his legs far apart, sprang to the wheel; while

Number Two with a trembling hand placed a charge in the cannon's

mouth. The short, round-shouldered Captain Tushin, stumbling over

the tail of the gun carriage, moved forward and, not noticing the

general, looked out shading his eyes with his small hand.



"Lift it two lines more and it will be just right," cried he in a

feeble voice to which he tried to impart a dashing note, ill suited to

his weak figure. "Number Two!" he squeaked. "Fire, Medvedev!"



Bagration called to him, and Tushin, raising three fingers to his

cap with a bashful and awkward gesture not at all like a military

salute but like a priest's benediction, approached the general. Though

Tushin's guns had been intended to cannonade the valley, he was firing

incendiary balls at the village of Schon Grabern visible just

opposite, in front of which large masses of French were advancing.



No one had given Tushin orders where and at what to fire, but

after consulting his sergeant major, Zakharchenko, for whom he had

great respect, he had decided that it would be a good thing to set

fire to the village. "Very good!" said Bagration in reply to the

officer's report, and began deliberately to examine the whole

battlefield extended before him. The French had advanced nearest on

our right. Below the height on which the Kiev regiment was

stationed, in the hollow where the rivulet flowed, the soul-stirring

rolling and crackling of musketry was heard, and much farther to the

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right beyond the dragoons, the officer of the suite pointed out to

Bagration a French column that was outflanking us. To the left the

horizon bounded by the adjacent wood. Prince Bagration ordered two

battalions from the center to be sent to reinforce the right flank.

The officer of the suite ventured to remark to the prince that if

these battalions went away, the guns would remain without support.

Prince Bagration turned to the officer and with his dull eyes looked

at him in silence. It seemed to Prince Andrew that the officer's

remark was just and that really no answer could be made to it. But

at that moment an adjutant galloped up with a message from the

commander of the regiment in the hollow and news that immense masses

of the French were coming down upon them and that his regiment was

in disorder and was retreating upon the Kiev grenadiers. Prince

Bagration bowed his head in sign of assent and approval. He rode off

at a walk to the right and sent an adjutant to the dragoons with

orders to attack the French. But this adjutant returned half an hour

later with the news that the commander of the dragoons had already

retreated beyond the dip in the ground, as a heavy fire had been

opened on him and he was losing men uselessly, and so had hastened

to throw some sharpshooters into the wood.



"Very good!" said Bagration.



As he was leaving the battery, firing was heard on the left also,

and as it was too far to the left flank for him to have time to go

there himself, Prince Bagration sent Zherkov to tell the general in

command (the one who had paraded his regiment before Kutuzov at

Braunau) that he must retreat as quickly as possible behind the hollow

in the rear, as the right flank would probably not be able to

withstand the enemy's attack very long. About Tushin and the battalion

that had been in support of his battery all was forgotten. Prince

Andrew listened attentively to Bagration's colloquies with the

commanding officers and the orders he gave them and, to his

surprise, found that no orders were really given, but that Prince

Bagration tried to make it appear that everything done by necessity,

by accident, or by the will of subordinate commanders was done, if not

by his direct command, at least in accord with his intentions.

Prince Andrew noticed, however, that though what happened was due to

chance and was independent of the commander's will, owing to the

tact Bagration showed, his presence was very valuable. Officers who

approached him with disturbed countenances became calm; soldiers and

officers greeted him gaily, grew more cheerful in his presence, and

were evidently anxious to display their courage before him.









CHAPTER XVIII





Prince Bagration, having reached the highest point of our right

flank, began riding downhill to where the roll of musketry was heard

but where on account of the smoke nothing could be seen. The nearer

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they got to the hollow the less they could see but the more they

felt the nearness of the actual battlefield. They began to meet

wounded men. One with a bleeding head and no cap was being dragged

along by two soldiers who supported him under the arms. There was a

gurgle in his throat and he was spitting blood. A bullet had evidently

hit him in the throat or mouth. Another was walking sturdily by

himself but without his musket, groaning aloud and swinging his arm

which had just been hurt, while blood from it was streaming over his

greatcoat as from a bottle. He had that moment been wounded and his

face showed fear rather than suffering. Crossing a road they descended

a steep incline and saw several men lying on the ground; they also met

a crowd of soldiers some of whom were unwounded. The soldiers were

ascending the hill breathing heavily, and despite the general's

presence were talking loudly and gesticulating. In front of them

rows of gray cloaks were already visible through the smoke, and an

officer catching sight of Bagration rushed shouting after the crowd of

retreating soldiers, ordering them back. Bagration rode up to the

ranks along which shots crackled now here and now there, drowning

the sound of voices and the shouts of command. The whole air reeked

with smoke. The excited faces of the soldiers were blackened with

it. Some were using their ramrods, others putting powder on the

touchpans or taking charges from their pouches, while others were

firing, though who they were firing at could not be seen for the smoke

which there was no wind to carry away. A pleasant humming and

whistling of bullets were often heard. "What is this?" thought

Prince Andrew approaching the crowd of soldiers. "It can't be an

attack, for they are not moving; it can't be a square--for they are

not drawn up for that."



The commander of the regiment, a thin, feeble-looking old man with a

pleasant smile--his eyelids drooping more than half over his old eyes,

giving him a mild expression, rode up to Bagration and welcomed him as

a host welcomes an honored guest. He reported that his regiment had

been attacked by French cavalry and that, though the attack had been

repulsed, he had lost more than half his men. He said the attack had

been repulsed, employing this military term to describe what had

occurred to his regiment, but in reality he did not himself know

what had happened during that half-hour to the troops entrusted to

him, and could not say with certainty whether the attack had been

repulsed or his regiment had been broken up. All he knew was that at

the commencement of the action balls and shells began flying all

over his regiment and hitting men and that afterwards someone had

shouted "Cavalry!" and our men had begun firing. They were still

firing, not at the cavalry which had disappeared, but at French

infantry who had come into the hollow and were firing at our men.

Prince Bagration bowed his head as a sign that this was exactly what

he had desired and expected. Turning to his adjutant he ordered him to

bring down the two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs whom they had

just passed. Prince Andrew was struck by the changed expression on

Prince Bagration's face at this moment. It expressed the

concentrated and happy resolution you see on the face of a man who

on a hot day takes a final run before plunging into the water. The

dull, sleepy expression was no longer there, nor the affectation of

profound thought. The round, steady, hawk's eyes looked before him

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eagerly and rather disdainfully, not resting on anything although

his movements were still slow and measured.



The commander of the regiment turned to Prince Bagration, entreating

him to go back as it was too dangerous to remain where they were.

"Please, your excellency, for God's sake!" he kept saying, glancing

for support at an officer of the suite who turned away from him.

"There, you see!" and he drew attention to the bullets whistling,

singing, and hissing continually around them. He spoke in the tone

of entreaty and reproach that a carpenter uses to a gentleman who

has picked up an ax: "We are used to it, but you, sir, will blister

your hands." He spoke as if those bullets could not kill him, and

his half-closed eyes gave still more persuasiveness to his words.

The staff officer joined in the colonel's appeals, but Bagration did

not reply; he only gave an order to cease firing and re-form, so as to

give room for the two approaching battalions. While he was speaking,

the curtain of smoke that had concealed the hollow, driven by a rising

wind, began to move from right to left as if drawn by an invisible

hand, and the hill opposite, with the French moving about on it,

opened out before them. All eyes fastened involuntarily on this French

column advancing against them and winding down over the uneven ground.

One could already see the soldiers' shaggy caps, distinguish the

officers from the men, and see the standard flapping against its

staff.



"They march splendidly," remarked someone in Bagration's suite.



The head of the column had already descended into the hollow. The

clash would take place on this side of it...



The remains of our regiment which had been in action rapidly

formed up and moved to the right; from behind it, dispersing the

laggards, came two battalions of the Sixth Chasseurs in fine order.

Before they had reached Bagration, the weighty tread of the mass of

men marching in step could be heard. On their left flank, nearest to

Bagration, marched a company commander, a fine round-faced man, with a

stupid and happy expression--the same man who had rushed out of the

wattle shed. At that moment he was clearly thinking of nothing but how

dashing a fellow he would appear as he passed the commander.



With the self-satisfaction of a man on parade, he stepped lightly

with his muscular legs as if sailing along, stretching himself to

his full height without the smallest effort, his ease contrasting with

the heavy tread of the soldiers who were keeping step with him. He

carried close to his leg a narrow unsheathed sword (small, curved, and

not like a real weapon) and looked now at the superior officers and

now back at the men without losing step, his whole powerful body

turning flexibly. It was as if all the powers of his soul were

concentrated on passing the commander in the best possible manner, and

feeling that he was doing it well he was happy. "Left... left...

left..." he seemed to repeat to himself at each alternate step; and in

time to this, with stern but varied faces, the wall of soldiers

burdened with knapsacks and muskets marched in step, and each one of

these hundreds of soldiers seemed to be repeating to himself at each

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alternate step, "Left... left... left..." A fat major skirted a

bush, puffing and falling out of step; a soldier who had fallen

behind, his face showing alarm at his defection, ran at a trot,

panting to catch up with his company. A cannon ball, cleaving the air,

flew over the heads of Bagration and his suite, and fell into the

column to the measure of "Left... left!" "Close up!" came the

company commander's voice in jaunty tones. The soldiers passed in a

semicircle round something where the ball had fallen, and an old

trooper on the flank, a noncommissioned officer who had stopped beside

the dead men, ran to catch up his line and, falling into step with a

hop, looked back angrily, and through the ominous silence and the

regular tramp of feet beating the ground in unison, one seemed to hear

left... left... left.



"Well done, lads!" said Prince Bagration.



"Glad to do our best, your ex'len-lency!" came a confused shout from

the ranks. A morose soldier marching on the left turned his eyes on

Bagration as he shouted, with an expression that seemed to say: "We

know that ourselves!" Another, without looking round, as though

fearing to relax, shouted with his mouth wide open and passed on.



The order was given to halt and down knapsacks.



Bagration rode round the ranks that had marched past him and

dismounted. He gave the reins to a Cossack, took off and handed over

his felt coat, stretched his legs, and set his cap straight. The

head of the French column, with its officers leading, appeared from

below the hill.



"Forward, with God!" said Bagration, in a resolute, sonorous

voice, turning for a moment to the front line, and slightly swinging

his arms, he went forward uneasily over the rough field with the

awkward gait of a cavalryman. Prince Andrew felt that an invisible

power was leading him forward, and experienced great happiness.



The French were already near. Prince Andrew, walking beside

Bagration, could clearly distinguish their bandoliers, red epaulets,

and even their faces. (He distinctly saw an old French officer who,

with gaitered legs and turned-out toes, climbed the hill with

difficulty.) Prince Bagration gave no further orders and silently

continued to walk on in front of the ranks. Suddenly one shot after

another rang out from the French, smoke appeared all along their

uneven ranks, and musket shots sounded. Several of our men fell, among

them the round-faced officer who had marched so gaily and

complacently. But at the moment the first report was heard,

Bagration looked round and shouted, "Hurrah!"



"Hurrah--ah!--ah!" rang a long-drawn shout from our ranks, and

passing Bagration and racing one another they rushed in an irregular

but joyous and eager crowd down the hill at their disordered foe.









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CHAPTER XIX





The attack of the Sixth Chasseurs secured the retreat of our right

flank. In the center Tushin's forgotten battery, which had managed

to set fire to the Schon Grabern village, delayed the French

advance. The French were putting out the fire which the wind was

spreading, and thus gave us time to retreat. The retirement of the

center to the other side of the dip in the ground at the rear was

hurried and noisy, but the different companies did not get mixed.

But our left--which consisted of the Azov and Podolsk infantry and the

Pavlograd hussars--was simultaneously attacked and outflanked by

superior French forces under Lannes and was thrown into confusion.

Bagration had sent Zherkov to the general commanding that left flank

with orders to retreat immediately.



Zherkov, not removing his hand from his cap, turned his horse

about and galloped off. But no sooner had he left Bagration than his

courage failed him. He was seized by panic and could not go where it

was dangerous.



Having reached the left flank, instead of going to the front where

the firing was, he began to look for the general and his staff where

they could not possibly be, and so did not deliver the order.



The command of the left flank belonged by seniority to the commander

of the regiment Kutuzov had reviewed at Braunau and in which

Dolokhov was serving as a private. But the command of the extreme left

flank had been assigned to the commander of the Pavlograd regiment

in which Rostov was serving, and a misunderstanding arose. The two

commanders were much exasperated with one another and, long after

the action had begun on the right flank and the French were already

advancing, were engaged in discussion with the sole object of

offending one another. But the regiments, both cavalry and infantry,

were by no means ready for the impending action. From privates to

general they were not expecting a battle and were engaged in

peaceful occupations, the cavalry feeding the horses and the

infantry collecting wood.



"He higher iss dan I in rank," said the German colonel of the

hussars, flushing and addressing an adjutant who had ridden up, "so

let him do what he vill, but I cannot sacrifice my hussars...

Bugler, sount ze retreat!"



But haste was becoming imperative. Cannon and musketry, mingling

together, thundered on the right and in the center, while the

capotes of Lannes' sharpshooters were already seen crossing the

milldam and forming up within twice the range of a musket shot. The

general in command of the infantry went toward his horse with jerky

steps, and having mounted drew himself up very straight and tall and

rode to the Pavlograd commander. The commanders met with polite bows

but with secret malevolence in their hearts.

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"Once again, Colonel," said the general, "I can't leave half my

men in the wood. I beg of you, I beg of you," he repeated, "to

occupy the position and prepare for an attack."



"I peg of you yourself not to mix in vot is not your business!"

suddenly replied the irate colonel. "If you vere in the cavalry..."



"I am not in the cavalry, Colonel, but I am a Russian general and if

you are not aware of the fact..."



"Quite avare, your excellency," suddenly shouted the colonel,

touching his horse and turning purple in the face. "Vill you be so

goot to come to ze front and see dat zis position iss no goot? I don't

vish to destroy my men for your pleasure!"



"You forget yourself, Colonel. I am not considering my own

pleasure and I won't allow it to be said!"



Taking the colonel's outburst as a challenge to his courage, the

general expanded his chest and rode, frowning, beside him to the front

line, as if their differences would be settled there amongst the

bullets. They reached the front, several bullets sped over them, and

they halted in silence. There was nothing fresh to be seen from the

line, for from where they had been before it had been evident that

it was impossible for cavalry to act among the bushes and broken

ground, as well as that the French were outflanking our left. The

general and colonel looked sternly and significantly at one another

like two fighting cocks preparing for battle, each vainly trying to

detect signs of cowardice in the other. Both passed the examination

successfully. As there was nothing to said, and neither wished to give

occasion for it to be alleged that he had been the first to leave

the range of fire, they would have remained there for a long time

testing each other's courage had it not been that just then they heard

the rattle of musketry and a muffled shout almost behind them in the

wood. The French had attacked the men collecting wood in the copse. It

was no longer possible for the hussars to retreat with the infantry.

They were cut off from the line of retreat on the left by the

French. However inconvenient the position, it was now necessary to

attack in order to cut away through for themselves.



The squadron in which Rostov was serving had scarcely time to

mount before it was halted facing the enemy. Again, as at the Enns

bridge, there was nothing between the squadron and the enemy, and

again that terrible dividing line of uncertainty and fear-

resembling the line separating the living from the dead--lay between

them. All were conscious of this unseen line, and the question whether

they would cross it or not, and how they would cross it,

agitated them all.



The colonel rode to the front, angrily gave some reply to

questions put to him by the officers, and, like a man desperately

insisting on having his own way, gave an order. No one said anything

definite, but the rumor of an attack spread through the squadron.

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The command to form up rang out and the sabers whizzed as they were

drawn from their scabbards. Still no one moved. The troops of the left

flank, infantry and hussars alike, felt that the commander did not

himself know what to do, and this irresolution communicated itself

to the men.



"If only they would be quick!" thought Rostov, feeling that at

last the time had come to experience the joy of an attack of which

he had so often heard from his fellow hussars.



"Fo'ward, with God, lads!" rang out Denisov's voice. "At a twot

fo'ward!"



The horses' croups began to sway in the front line. Rook pulled at

the reins and started of his own accord.



Before him, on the right, Rostov saw the front lines of his

hussars and still farther ahead a dark line which he could not see

distinctly but took to be the enemy. Shots could be heard, but some

way off.



"Faster!" came the word of command, and Rostov felt Rook's flanks

drooping as he broke into a gallop.



Rostov anticipated his horse's movements and became more and more

elated. He had noticed a solitary tree ahead of him. This tree had

been in the middle of the line that had seemed so terrible--and now he

had crossed that line and not only was there nothing terrible, but

everything was becoming more and more happy and animated. "Oh, how I

will slash at him!" thought Rostov, gripping the hilt of his saber.



"Hur-a-a-a-ah!" came a roar of voices. "Let anyone come my way now,"

thought Rostov driving his spurs into Rook and letting him go at a

full gallop so that he outstripped the others. Ahead, the enemy was

already visible. Suddenly something like a birch broom seemed to sweep

over the squadron. Rostov raised his saber, ready to strike, but at

that instant the trooper Nikitenko, who was galloping ahead, shot away

from him, and Rostov felt as in a dream that he continued to be

carried forward with unnatural speed but yet stayed on the same

spot. From behind him Bondarchuk, an hussar he knew, jolted against

him and looked angrily at him. Bondarchuk's horse swerved and galloped

past.



"How is it I am not moving? I have fallen, I am killed!" Rostov

asked and answered at the same instant. He was alone in the middle

of a field. Instead of the moving horses and hussars' backs, he saw

nothing before him but the motionless earth and the stubble around

him. There was warm blood under his arm. "No, I am wounded and the

horse is killed." Rook tried to rise on his forelegs but fell back,

pinning his rider's leg. Blood was flowing from his head; he struggled

but could not rise. Rostov also tried to rise but fell back, his

sabretache having become entangled in the saddle. Where our men

were, and where the French, he did not know. There was no one near.



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Having disentangled his leg, he rose. "Where, on which side, was now

the line that had so sharply divided the two armies?" he asked himself

and could not answer. "Can something bad have happened to me?" he

wondered as he got up: and at that moment he felt that something

superfluous was hanging on his benumbed left arm. The wrist felt as if

it were not his. He examined his hand carefully, vainly trying to find

blood on it. "Ah, here are people coming," he thought joyfully, seeing

some men running toward him. "They will help me!" In front came a

man wearing a strange shako and a blue cloak, swarthy, sunburned,

and with a hooked nose. Then came two more, and many more running

behind. One of them said something strange, not in Russian. In among

the hindmost of these men wearing similar shakos was a Russian hussar.

He was being held by the arms and his horse was being led behind him.



"It must be one of ours, a prisoner. Yes. Can it be that they will

take me too? Who are these men?" thought Rostov, scarcely believing

his eyes. "Can they be French?" He looked at the approaching

Frenchmen, and though but a moment before he had been galloping to get

at them and hack them to pieces, their proximity now seemed so awful

that he could not believe his eyes. "Who are they? Why are they

running? Can they be coming at me? And why? To kill me? Me whom

everyone is so fond of?" He remembered his mother's love for him,

and his family's, and his friends', and the enemy's intention to

kill him seemed impossible. "But perhaps they may do it!" For more

than ten seconds he stood not moving from the spot or realizing the

situation. The foremost Frenchman, the one with the hooked nose, was

already so close that the expression of his face could be seen. And

the excited, alien face of that man, his bayonet hanging down, holding

his breath, and running so lightly, frightened Rostov. He seized his

pistol and, instead of firing it, flung it at the Frenchman and ran

with all his might toward the bushes. He did not now run with the

feeling of doubt and conflict with which he had trodden the Enns

bridge, but with the feeling of a hare fleeing from the hounds. One

single sentiment, that of fear for his young and happy life, possessed

his whole being. Rapidly leaping the furrows, he fled across the field

with the impetuosity he used to show at catchplay, now and then

turning his good-natured, pale, young face to look back. A shudder

of terror went through him: "No, better not look," he thought, but

having reached the bushes he glanced round once more. The French had

fallen behind, and just as he looked round the first man changed his

run to a walk and, turning, shouted something loudly to a comrade

farther back. Rostov paused. "No, there's some mistake," thought he.

"They can't have wanted to kill me." But at the same time, his left

arm felt as heavy as if a seventy-pound weight were tied to it. He

could run no more. The Frenchman also stopped and took aim. Rostov

closed his eyes and stooped down. One bullet and then another whistled

past him. He mustered his last remaining strength, took hold of his

left hand with his right, and reached the bushes. Behind these were

some Russian sharpshooters.









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CHAPTER XX





The infantry regiments that had been caught unawares in the

outskirts of the wood ran out of it, the different companies getting

mixed, and retreated as a disorderly crowd. One soldier, in his

fear, uttered the senseless cry, "Cut off!" that is so terrible in

battle, and that word infected the whole crowd with a feeling of

panic.



"Surrounded! Cut off? We're lost!" shouted the fugitives.



The moment he heard the firing and the cry from behind, the

general realized that something dreadful had happened to his regiment,

and the thought that he, an exemplary officer of many years' service

who had never been to blame, might be held responsible at headquarters

for negligence or inefficiency so staggered him that, forgetting the

recalcitrant cavalry colonel, his own dignity as a general, and

above all quite forgetting the danger and all regard for

self-preservation, he clutched the crupper of his saddle and, spurring

his horse, galloped to the regiment under a hail of bullets which fell

around, but fortunately missed him. His one desire was to know what

was happening and at any cost correct, or remedy, the mistake if he

had made one, so that he, an exemplary officer of twenty-two years'

service, who had never been censured, should not be held to blame.



Having galloped safely through the French, he reached a field behind

the copse across which our men, regardless of orders, were running and

descending the valley. That moment of moral hesitation which decides

the fate of battles had arrived. Would this disorderly crowd of

soldiers attend to the voice of their commander, or would they,

disregarding him, continue their flight? Despite his desperate

shouts that used to seem so terrible to the soldiers, despite his

furious purple countenance distorted out of all likeness to his former

self, and the flourishing of his saber, the soldiers all continued

to run, talking, firing into the air, and disobeying orders. The moral

hesitation which decided the fate of battles was evidently culminating

in a panic.



The general had a fit of coughing as a result of shouting and of the

powder smoke and stopped in despair. Everything seemed lost. But at

that moment the French who were attacking, suddenly and without any

apparent reason, ran back and disappeared from the outskirts, and

Russian sharpshooters showed themselves in the copse. It was

Timokhin's company, which alone had maintained its order in the wood

and, having lain in ambush in a ditch, now attacked the French

unexpectedly. Timokhin, armed only with a sword, had rushed at the

enemy with such a desperate cry and such mad, drunken determination

that, taken by surprise, the French had thrown down their muskets

and run. Dolokhov, running beside Timokhin, killed a Frenchman at

close quarters and was the first to seize the surrendering French

officer by his collar. Our fugitives returned, the battalions

re-formed, and the French who had nearly cut our left flank in half

were for the moment repulsed. Our reserve units were able to join

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up, and the fight was at an end. The regimental commander and Major

Ekonomov had stopped beside a bridge, letting the retreating companies

pass by them, when a soldier came up and took hold of the

commander's stirrup, almost leaning against him. The man was wearing a

bluish coat of broadcloth, he had no knapsack or cap, his head was

bandaged, and over his shoulder a French munition pouch was slung.

He had an officer's sword in his hand. The soldier was pale, his

blue eyes looked impudently into the commander's face, and his lips

were smiling. Though the commander was occupied in giving instructions

to Major Ekonomov, he could not help taking notice of the soldier.



"Your excellency, here are two trophies," said Dolokhov, pointing to

the French sword and pouch. "I have taken an officer prisoner. I

stopped the company." Dolokhov breathed heavily from weariness and

spoke in abrupt sentences. "The whole company can bear witness. I

beg you will remember this, your excellency!"



"All right, all right," replied the commander, and turned to Major

Ekonomov.



But Dolokhov did not go away; he untied the handkerchief around

his head, pulled it off, and showed the blood congealed on his hair.



"A bayonet wound. I remained at the front. Remember, your

excellency!"





Tushin's battery had been forgotten and only at the very end of

the action did Prince Bagration, still hearing the cannonade in the

center, send his orderly staff officer, and later Prince Andrew

also, to order the battery to retire as quickly as possible. When

the supports attached to Tushin's battery had been moved away in the

middle of the action by someone's order, the battery had continued

firing and was only not captured by the French because the enemy could

not surmise that anyone could have the effrontery to continue firing

from four quite undefended guns. On the contrary, the energetic action

of that battery led the French to suppose that here--in the center-

the main Russian forces were concentrated. Twice they had attempted to

attack this point, but on each occasion had been driven back by

grapeshot from the four isolated guns on the hillock.



Soon after Prince Bagration had left him, Tushin had succeeded in

setting fire to Schon Grabern.



"Look at them scurrying! It's burning! Just see the smoke! Fine!

Grand! Look at the smoke, the smoke!" exclaimed the artillerymen,

brightening up.



All the guns, without waiting for orders, were being fired in the

direction of the conflagration. As if urging each other on, the

soldiers cried at each shot: "Fine! That's good! Look at it... Grand!"

The fire, fanned by the breeze, was rapidly spreading. The French

columns that had advanced beyond the village went back; but as

though in revenge for this failure, the enemy placed ten guns to the

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right of the village and began firing them at Tushin's battery.



In their childlike glee, aroused by the fire and their luck in

successfully cannonading the French, our artillerymen only noticed

this battery when two balls, and then four more, fell among our

guns, one knocking over two horses and another tearing off a

munition-wagon driver's leg. Their spirits once roused were,

however, not diminished, but only changed character. The horses were

replaced by others from a reserve gun carriage, the wounded were

carried away, and the four guns were turned against the ten-gun

battery. Tushin's companion officer had been killed at the beginning

of the engagement and within an hour seventeen of the forty men of the

guns' crews had been disabled, but the artillerymen were still as

merry and lively as ever. Twice they noticed the French appearing

below them, and then they fired grapeshot at them.



Little Tushin, moving feebly and awkwardly, kept telling his orderly

to "refill my pipe for that one!" and then, scattering sparks from it,

ran forward shading his eyes with his small hand to look at the

French.



"Smack at 'em, lads!" he kept saying, seizing the guns by the wheels

and working the screws himself.



Amid the smoke, deafened by the incessant reports which always

made him jump, Tushin not taking his pipe from his mouth ran from

gun to gun, now aiming, now counting the charges, now giving orders

about replacing dead or wounded horses and harnessing fresh ones,

and shouting in his feeble voice, so high pitched and irresolute.

His face grew more and more animated. Only when a man was killed or

wounded did he frown and turn away from the sight, shouting angrily at

the men who, as is always the case, hesitated about lifting the

injured or dead. The soldiers, for the most part handsome fellows and,

as is always the case in an artillery company, a head and shoulders

taller and twice as broad as their officer--all looked at their

commander like children in an embarrassing situation, and the

expression on his face was invariably reflected on theirs.



Owing to the terrible uproar and the necessity for concentration and

activity, Tushin did not experience the slightest unpleasant sense

of fear, and the thought that he might be killed or badly wounded

never occurred to him. On the contrary, he became more and more

elated. It seemed to him that it was a very long time ago, almost a

day, since he had first seen the enemy and fired the first shot, and

that the corner of the field he stood on was well-known and familiar

ground. Though he thought of everything, considered everything, and

did everything the best of officers could do in his position, he was

in a state akin to feverish delirium or drunkenness.



From the deafening sounds of his own guns around him, the whistle

and thud of the enemy's cannon balls, from the flushed and

perspiring faces of the crew bustling round the guns, from the sight

of the blood of men and horses, from the little puffs of smoke on

the enemy's side (always followed by a ball flying past and striking

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the earth, a man, a gun, a horse), from the sight of all these

things a fantastic world of his own had taken possession of his

brain and at that moment afforded him pleasure. The enemy's guns

were in his fancy not guns but pipes from which occasional puffs

were blown by an invisible smoker.



"There... he's puffing again," muttered Tushin to himself, as a

small cloud rose from the hill and was borne in a streak to the left

by the wind.



"Now look out for the ball... we'll throw it back."



"What do you want, your honor?" asked an artilleryman, standing

close by, who heard him muttering.



"Nothing... only a shell..." he answered.



"Come along, our Matvevna!" he said to himself. "Matvevna"* was

the name his fancy gave to the farthest gun of the battery, which

was large and of an old pattern. The French swarming round their

guns seemed to him like ants. In that world, the handsome drunkard

Number One of the second gun's crew was "uncle"; Tushin looked at

him more often than at anyone else and took delight in his every

movement. The sound of musketry at the foot of the hill, now

diminishing, now increasing, seemed like someone's breathing. He

listened intently to the ebb and flow of these sounds.





*Daughter of Matthew.





"Ah! Breathing again, breathing!" he muttered to himself.



He imagined himself as an enormously tall, powerful man who was

throwing cannon balls at the French with both hands.



"Now then, Matvevna, dear old lady, don't let me down!" he was

saying as he moved from the gun, when a strange, unfamiliar voice

called above his head: "Captain Tushin! Captain!"



Tushin turned round in dismay. It was the staff officer who had

turned him out of the booth at Grunth. He was shouting in a gasping

voice:



"Are you mad? You have twice been ordered to retreat, and you..."



"Why are they down on me?" thought Tushin, looking in alarm at his

superior.



"I... don't..." he muttered, holding up two fingers to his cap.

"I..."



But the staff officer did not finish what he wanted to say. A cannon

ball, flying close to him, caused him to duck and bend over his horse.

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He paused, and just as he was about to say something more, another

ball stopped him. He turned his horse and galloped off.



"Retire! All to retire!" he shouted from a distance.



The soldiers laughed. A moment later, an adjutant arrived with the

same order.



It was Prince Andrew. The first thing he saw on riding up to the

space where Tushin's guns were stationed was an unharnessed horse with

a broken leg, that lay screaming piteously beside the harnessed

horses. Blood was gushing from its leg as from a spring. Among the

limbers lay several dead men. One ball after another passed over as he

approached and he felt a nervous shudder run down his spine. But the

mere thought of being afraid roused him again. "I cannot be afraid,"

thought he, and dismounted slowly among the guns. He delivered the

order and did not leave the battery. He decided to have the guns

removed from their positions and withdrawn in his presence. Together

with Tushin, stepping across the bodies and under a terrible fire from

the French, he attended to the removal of the guns.



"A staff officer was here a minute ago, but skipped off," said an

artilleryman to Prince Andrew. "Not like your honor!"



Prince Andrew said nothing to Tushin. They were both so busy as to

seem not to notice one another. When having limbered up the only two

cannon that remained uninjured out of the four, they began moving down

the hill (one shattered gun and one unicorn were left behind),

Prince Andrew rode up to Tushin.



"Well, till we meet again..." he said, holding out his hand to

Tushin.



"Good-by, my dear fellow," said Tushin. "Dear soul! Good-by, my dear

fellow!" and for some unknown reason tears suddenly filled his eyes.









CHAPTER XXI





The wind had fallen and black clouds, merging with the powder smoke,

hung low over the field of battle on the horizon. It was growing

dark and the glow of two conflagrations was the more conspicuous.

The cannonade was dying down, but the rattle of musketry behind and on

the right sounded oftener and nearer. As soon as Tushin with his guns,

continually driving round or coming upon wounded men, was out of range

of fire and had descended into the dip, he was met by some of the

staff, among them the staff officer and Zherkov, who had been twice

sent to Tushin's battery but had never reached it. Interrupting one

another, they all gave, and transmitted, orders as to how to

proceed, reprimanding and reproaching him. Tushin gave no orders, and,

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silently--fearing to speak because at every word he felt ready to weep

without knowing why--rode behind on his artillery nag. Though the

orders were to abandon the wounded, many of them dragged themselves

after troops and begged for seats on the gun carriages. The jaunty

infantry officer who just before the battle had rushed out of Tushin's

wattle shed was laid, with a bullet in his stomach, on "Matvevna's"

carriage. At the foot of the hill, a pale hussar cadet, supporting one

hand with the other, came up to Tushin and asked for a seat.



"Captain, for God's sake! I've hurt my arm," he said timidly. "For

God's sake... I can't walk. For God's sake!"



It was plain that this cadet had already repeatedly asked for a lift

and been refused. He asked in a hesitating, piteous voice.



"Tell them to give me a seat, for God's sake!"



"Give him a seat," said Tushin. "Lay a cloak for him to sit on,

lad," he said, addressing his favorite soldier. "And where is the

wounded officer?"



"He has been set down. He died," replied someone.



"Help him up. Sit down, dear fellow, sit down! Spread out the cloak,

Antonov."



The cadet was Rostov. With one hand he supported the other; he was

pale and his jaw trembled, shivering feverishly. He was placed on

"Matvevna," the gun from which they had removed the dead officer.

The cloak they spread under him was wet with blood which stained his

breeches and arm.



"What, are you wounded, my lad?" said Tushin, approaching the gun on

which Rostov sat.



"No, it's a sprain."



"Then what is this blood on the gun carriage?" inquired Tushin.



"It was the officer, your honor, stained it," answered the

artilleryman, wiping away the blood with his coat sleeve, as if

apologizing for the state of his gun.



It was all that they could do to get the guns up the rise aided by

the infantry, and having reached the village of Gruntersdorf they

halted. It had grown so dark that one could not distinguish the

uniforms ten paces off, and the firing had begun to subside. Suddenly,

near by on the right, shouting and firing were again heard. Flashes of

shot gleamed in the darkness. This was the last French attack and

was met by soldiers who had sheltered in the village houses. They

all rushed out of the village again, but Tushin's guns could not move,

and the artillerymen, Tushin, and the cadet exchanged silent glances

as they awaited their fate. The firing died down and soldiers, talking

eagerly, streamed out of a side street.

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"Not hurt, Petrov?" asked one.



"We've given it 'em hot, mate! They won't make another push now,"

said another.



"You couldn't see a thing. How they shot at their own fellows!

Nothing could be seen. Pitch-dark, brother! Isn't there something to

drink?"



The French had been repulsed for the last time. And again and

again in the complete darkness Tushin's guns moved forward, surrounded

by the humming infantry as by a frame.



In the darkness, it seemed as though a gloomy unseen river was

flowing always in one direction, humming with whispers and talk and

the sound of hoofs and wheels. Amid the general rumble, the groans and

voices of the wounded were more distinctly heard than any other

sound in the darkness of the night. The gloom that enveloped the

army was filled with their groans, which seemed to melt into one

with the darkness of the night. After a while the moving mass became

agitated, someone rode past on a white horse followed by his suite,

and said something in passing: "What did he say? Where to, now?

Halt, is it? Did he thank us?" came eager questions from all sides.

The whole moving mass began pressing closer together and a report

spread that they were ordered to halt: evidently those in front had

halted. All remained where they were in the middle of the muddy road.



Fires were lighted and the talk became more audible. Captain Tushin,

having given orders to his company, sent a soldier to find a

dressing station or a doctor for the cadet, and sat down by a

bonfire the soldiers had kindled on the road. Rostov, too, dragged

himself to the fire. From pain, cold, and damp, a feverish shivering

shook his whole body. Drowsiness was irresistibly mastering him, but

he kept awake by an excruciating pain in his arm, for which

he could find no satisfactory position. He kept closing his eyes and

then again looking at the fire, which seemed to him dazzlingly red,

and at the feeble, round-shouldered figure of Tushin who was sitting

cross-legged like a Turk beside him. Tushin's large, kind, intelligent

eyes were fixed with sympathy and commiseration on Rostov, who saw

that Tushin with his whole heart wished to help him but could not.



From all sides were heard the footsteps and talk of the infantry,

who were walking, driving past, and settling down all around. The

sound of voices, the tramping feet, the horses' hoofs moving in mud,

the crackling of wood fires near and afar, merged into one tremulous

rumble.



It was no longer, as before, a dark, unseen river flowing through

the gloom, but a dark sea swelling and gradually subsiding after a

storm. Rostov looked at and listened listlessly to what passed

before and around him. An infantryman came to the fire, squatted on

his heels, held his hands to the blaze, and turned away his face.



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"You don't mind your honor?" he asked Tushin. "I've lost my company,

your honor. I don't know where... such bad luck!"



With the soldier, an infantry officer with a bandaged cheek came

up to the bonfire, and addressing Tushin asked him to have the guns

moved a trifle to let a wagon go past. After he had gone, two soldiers

rushed to the campfire. They were quarreling and fighting desperately,

each trying to snatch from the other a boot they were both holding

on to.



"You picked it up?... I dare say! You're very smart!" one of them

shouted hoarsely.



Then a thin, pale soldier, his neck bandaged with a bloodstained leg

band, came up and in angry tones asked the artillerymen for water.



"Must one die like a dog?" said he.



Tushin told them to give the man some water. Then a cheerful soldier

ran up, begging a little fire for the infantry.



"A nice little hot torch for the infantry! Good luck to you,

fellow countrymen. Thanks for the fire--we'll return it with

interest," said he, carrying away into the darkness a glowing stick.



Next came four soldiers, carrying something heavy on a cloak, and

passed by the fire. One of them stumbled.



"Who the devil has put the logs on the road?" snarled he.



"He's dead--why carry him?" said another.



"Shut up!"



And they disappeared into the darkness with with their load.



"Still aching?" Tushin asked Rostov in a whisper.



"Yes."



"Your honor, you're wanted by the general. He is in the hut here,"

said a gunner, coming up to Tushin.



"Coming, friend."



Tushin rose and, buttoning his greatcoat and pulling it straight,

walked away from the fire.



Not far from the artillery campfire, in a hut that had been prepared

for him, Prince Bagration sat at dinner, talking with some

commanding officers who had gathered at his quarters. The little old

man with the half-closed eyes was there greedily gnawing a mutton

bone, and the general who had served blamelessly for twenty-two years,

flushed by a glass of vodka and the dinner; and the staff officer with

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the signet ring, and Zherkov, uneasily glancing at them all, and

Prince Andrew, pale, with compressed lips and feverishly glittering

eyes.



In a corner of the hut stood a standard captured from the French,

and the accountant with the naive face was feeling its texture,

shaking his head in perplexity--perhaps because the banner really

interested him, perhaps because it was hard for him, hungry as he was,

to look on at a dinner where there was no place for him. In the next

hut there was a French colonel who had been taken prisoner by our

dragoons. Our officers were flocking in to look at him. Prince

Bagration was thanking the individual commanders and inquiring into

details of the action and our losses. The general whose regiment had

been inspected at Braunau was informing the prince that as soon as the

action began he had withdrawn from the wood, mustered the men who were

woodcutting, and, allowing the French to pass him, had made a

bayonet charge with two battalions and had broken up the French

troops.



"When I saw, your excellency, that their first battalion was

disorganized, I stopped in the road and thought: 'I'll let them come

on and will meet them with the fire of the whole battalion'--and

that's what I did."



The general had so wished to do this and was so sorry he had not

managed to do it that it seemed to him as if it had really happened.

Perhaps it might really have been so? Could one possibly make out amid

all that confusion what did or did not happen?



"By the way, your excellency, I should inform you," he continued-

remembering Dolokhov's conversation with Kutuzov and his last

interview with the gentleman-ranker--"that Private Dolokhov, who was

reduced to the ranks, took a French officer prisoner in my presence

and particularly distinguished himself."



"I saw the Pavlograd hussars attack there, your excellency,"

chimed in Zherkov, looking uneasily around. He had not seen the

hussars all that day, but had heard about them from an infantry

officer. "They broke up two squares, your excellency."



Several of those present smiled at Zherkov's words, expecting one of

his usual jokes, but noticing that what he was saying redounded to the

glory of our arms and of the day's work, they assumed a serious

expression, though many of them knew that what he was saying was a lie

devoid of any foundation. Prince Bagration turned to the old colonel:



"Gentlemen, I thank you all; all arms have behaved heroically:

infantry, cavalry, and artillery. How was it that two guns were

abandoned in the center?" he inquired, searching with his eyes for

someone. (Prince Bagration did not ask about the guns on the left

flank; he knew that all the guns there had been abandoned at the

very beginning of the action.) "I think I sent you?" he added, turning

to the staff officer on duty.



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"One was damaged," answered the staff officer, "and the other I

can't understand. I was there all the time giving orders and had

only just left.... It is true that it was hot there," he added,

modestly.



Someone mentioned that Captain Tushin was bivouacking close to the

village and had already been sent for.



"Oh, but you were there?" said Prince Bagration, addressing Prince

Andrew.



"Of course, we only just missed one another," said the staff

officer, with a smile to Bolkonski.



"I had not the pleasure of seeing you," said Prince Andrew, coldly

and abruptly.



All were silent. Tushin appeared at the threshold and made his way

timidly from behind the backs of the generals. As he stepped past

the generals in the crowded hut, feeling embarrassed as he always

was by the sight of his superiors, he did not notice the staff of

the banner and stumbled over it. Several of those present laughed.



"How was it a gun was abandoned?" asked Bagration, frowning, not

so much at the captain as at those who were laughing, among whom

Zherkov laughed loudest.



Only now, when he was confronted by the stern authorities, did his

guilt and the disgrace of having lost two guns and yet remaining alive

present themselves to Tushin in all their horror. He had been so

excited that he had not thought about it until that moment. The

officers' laughter confused him still more. He stood before

Bagration with his lower jaw trembling and was hardly able to

mutter: "I don't know... your excellency... I had no men... your

excellency."



"You might have taken some from the covering troops."



Tushin did not say that there were no covering troops, though that

was perfectly true. He was afraid of getting some other officer into

trouble, and silently fixed his eyes on Bagration as a schoolboy who

has blundered looks at an examiner.



The silence lasted some time. Prince Bagration, apparently not

wishing to be severe, found nothing to say; the others did not venture

to intervene. Prince Andrew looked at Tushin from under his brows

and his fingers twitched nervously.



"Your excellency!" Prince Andrew broke the silence with his abrupt

voice," you were pleased to send me to Captain Tushin's battery. I

went there and found two thirds of the men and horses knocked out, two

guns smashed, and no supports at all."



Prince Bagration and Tushin looked with equal intentness at

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Bolkonski, who spoke with suppressed agitation.



"And, if your excellency will allow me to express my opinion," he

continued, "we owe today's success chiefly to the action of that

battery and the heroic endurance of Captain Tushin and his company,"

and without awaiting a reply, Prince Andrew rose and left the table.



Prince Bagration looked at Tushin, evidently reluctant to show

distrust in Bolkonski's emphatic opinion yet not feeling able fully to

credit it, bent his head, and told Tushin that he could go. Prince

Andrew went out with him.



"Thank you; you saved me, my dear fellow!" said Tushin.



Prince Andrew gave him a look, but said nothing and went away. He

felt sad and depressed. It was all so strange, so unlike what he had

hoped.





"Who are they? Why are they here? What do they want? And when will

all this end?" thought Rostov, looking at the changing shadows

before him. The pain in his arm became more and more intense.

Irresistible drowsiness overpowered him, red rings danced before his

eyes, and the impression of those voices and faces and a sense of

loneliness merged with the physical pain. It was they, these soldiers-

wounded and unwounded--it was they who were crushing, weighing down,

and twisting the sinews and scorching the flesh of his sprained arm

and shoulder. To rid himself of them he closed his eyes.



For a moment he dozed, but in that short interval innumerable things

appeared to him in a dream: his mother and her large white hand,

Sonya's thin little shoulders, Natasha's eyes and laughter, Denisov

with his voice and mustache, and Telyanin and all that affair with

Telyanin and Bogdanich. That affair was the same thing as this soldier

with the harsh voice, and it was that affair and this soldier that

were so agonizingly, incessantly pulling and pressing his arm and

always dragging it in one direction. He tried to get away from them,

but they would not for an instant let his shoulder move a hair's

breadth. It would not ache--it would be well--if only they did not

pull it, but it was impossible to get rid of them.



He opened his eyes and looked up. The black canopy of night hung

less than a yard above the glow of the charcoal. Flakes of falling

snow were fluttering in that light. Tushin had not returned, the

doctor had not come. He was alone now, except for a soldier who was

sitting naked at the other side of the fire, warming his thin yellow

body.



"Nobody wants me!" thought Rostov. "There is no one to help me or

pity me. Yet I was once at home, strong, happy, and loved." He

sighed and, doing so, groaned involuntarily.



"Eh, is anything hurting you?" asked the soldier, shaking his

shirt out over the fire, and not waiting for an answer he gave a grunt

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and added: "What a lot of men have been crippled today--frightful!"



Rostov did not listen to the soldier. He looked at the snowflakes

fluttering above the fire and remembered a Russian winter at his warm,

bright home, his fluffy fur coat, his quickly gliding sleigh, his

healthy body, and all the affection and care of his family. "And why

did I come here?" he wondered.



Next day the French army did not renew their attack, and the remnant

of Bagration's detachment was reunited to Kutuzov's army.









BOOK THREE: 1805









CHAPTER I





Prince Vasili was not a man who deliberately thought out his

plans. Still less did he think of injuring anyone for his own

advantage. He was merely a man of the world who had got on and to whom

getting on had become a habit. Schemes and devices for which he

never rightly accounted to himself, but which formed the whole

interest of his life, were constantly shaping themselves in his

mind, arising from the circumstances and persons he met. Of these

plans he had not merely one or two in his head but dozens, some only

beginning to form themselves, some approaching achievement, and some

in course of disintegration. He did not, for instance, say to himself:

"This man now has influence, I must gain his confidence and friendship

and through him obtain a special grant." Nor did he say to himself:

"Pierre is a rich man, I must entice him to marry my daughter and lend

me the forty thousand rubles I need." But when he came across

a man of position his instinct immediately told him that this

man could be useful, and without any premeditation Prince Vasili

took the first opportunity to gain his confidence, flatter him, become

intimate with him, and finally make his request.



He had Pierre at hand in Moscow and procured for him an

appointment as Gentleman of the Bedchamber, which at that time

conferred the status of Councilor of State, and insisted on the

young man accompanying him to Petersburg and staying at his house.

With apparent absent-mindedness, yet with unhesitating assurance

that he was doing the right thing, Prince Vasili did everything to get

Pierre to marry his daughter. Had he thought out his plans

beforehand he could not have been so natural and shown such unaffected

familiarity in intercourse with everybody both above and below him

in social standing. Something always drew him toward those richer

and more powerful than himself and he had rare skill in seizing the

most opportune moment for making use of people.

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Pierre, on unexpectedly becoming Count Bezukhov and a rich man, felt

himself after his recent loneliness and freedom from cares so beset

and preoccupied that only in bed was he able to be by himself. He

had to sign papers, to present himself at government offices, the

purpose of which was not clear to him, to question his chief

steward, to visit his estate near Moscow, and to receive many people

who formerly did not even wish to know of his existence but would

now have been offended and grieved had he chosen not to see them.

These different people--businessmen, relations, and acquaintances

alike--were all disposed to treat the young heir in the most

friendly and flattering manner: they were all evidently firmly

convinced of Pierre's noble qualities. He was always hearing such

words as: "With your remarkable kindness," or, "With your excellent

heart," "You are yourself so honorable Count," or, "Were he as

clever as you," and so on, till he began sincerely to believe in his

own exceptional kindness and extraordinary intelligence, the more so

as in the depth of his heart it had always seemed to him that he

really was very kind and intelligent. Even people who had formerly

been spiteful toward him and evidently unfriendly now became gentle

and affectionate. The angry eldest princess, with the long waist and

hair plastered down like a doll's, had come into Pierre's room after

the funeral. With drooping eyes and frequent blushes she told him

she was very sorry about their past misunderstandings and did not

now feel she had a right to ask him for anything, except only for

permission, after the blow she had received, to remain for a few weeks

longer in the house she so loved and where she had sacrificed so much.

She could not refrain from weeping at these words. Touched that this

statuesque princess could so change, Pierre took her hand and begged

her forgiveness, without knowing what for. From that day the eldest

princess quite changed toward Pierre and began knitting a striped

scarf for him.



"Do this for my sake, mon cher; after all, she had to put up with

a great deal from the deceased," said Prince Vasili to him, handing

him a deed to sign for the princess' benefit.



Prince Vasili had come to the conclusion that it was necessary to

throw this bone--a bill for thirty thousand rubles--to the poor

princess that it might not occur to her to speak of his share in the

affair of the inlaid portfolio. Pierre signed the deed and after

that the princess grew still kinder. The younger sisters also became

affectionate to him, especially the youngest, the pretty one with

the mole, who often made him feel confused by her smiles and her own

confusion when meeting him.



It seemed so natural to Pierre that everyone should like him, and it

would have seemed so unnatural had anyone disliked him, that he

could not but believe in the sincerity of those around him. Besides,

he had no time to ask himself whether these people were sincere or

not. He was always busy and always felt in a state of mild and

cheerful intoxication. He felt as though he were the center of some

important and general movement; that something was constantly expected

of him, that if he did not do it he would grieve and disappoint many

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people, but if he did this and that, all would be well; and he did

what was demanded of him, but still that happy result always

remained in the future.



More than anyone else, Prince Vasili took possession of Pierre's

affairs and of Pierre himself in those early days. From the death of

Count Bezukhov he did not let go his hold of the lad. He had the air

of a man oppressed by business, weary and suffering, who yet would

not, for pity's sake, leave this helpless youth who, after all, was

the son of his old friend and the possessor of such enormous wealth,

to the caprice of fate and the designs of rogues. During the few

days he spent in Moscow after the death of Count Bezukhov, he would

call Pierre, or go to him himself, and tell him what ought to be

done in a tone of weariness and assurance, as if he were adding

every time: "You know I am overwhelmed with business and it is

purely out of charity that I trouble myself about you, and you also

know quite well that what I propose is the only thing possible."



"Well, my dear fellow, tomorrow we are off at last," said Prince

Vasili one day, closing his eyes and fingering Pierre's elbow,

speaking as if he were saying something which had long since been

agreed upon and could not now be altered. "We start tomorrow and I'm

giving you a place in my carriage. I am very glad. All our important

business here is now settled, and I ought to have been off long ago.

Here is something I have received from the chancellor. I asked him for

you, and you have been entered in the diplomatic corps and made a

Gentleman of the Bedchamber. The diplomatic career now lies open

before you."



Notwithstanding the tone of wearied assurance with which these words

were pronounced, Pierre, who had so long been considering his

career, wished to make some suggestion. But Prince Vasili

interrupted him in the special deep cooing tone, precluding the

possibility of interrupting his speech, which he used in extreme cases

when special persuasion was needed.



"Mais, mon cher, I did this for my own sake, to satisfy my

conscience, and there is nothing to thank me for. No one has ever

complained yet of being too much loved; and besides, you are free, you

could throw it up tomorrow. But you will see everything for yourself

when you get to Petersburg. It is high time for you to get away from

these terrible recollections." Prince Vasili sighed. "Yes, yes, my

boy. And my valet can go in your carriage. Ah! I was nearly

forgetting," he added. "You know, mon cher, your father and I had some

accounts to settle, so I have received what was due from the Ryazan

estate and will keep it; you won't require it. We'll go into the

accounts later."



By "what was due from the Ryazan estate" Prince Vasili meant several

thousand rubles quitrent received from Pierre's peasants, which the

prince had retained for himself.



In Petersburg, as in Moscow, Pierre found the same atmosphere of

gentleness and affection. He could not refuse the post, or rather

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the rank (for he did nothing), that Prince Vasili had procured for

him, and acquaintances, invitations, and social occupations were so

numerous that, even more than in Moscow, he felt a sense of

bewilderment, bustle, and continual expectation of some good, always

in front of him but never attained.



Of his former bachelor acquaintances many were no longer in

Petersburg. The Guards had gone to the front; Dolokhov had been

reduced to the ranks; Anatole was in the army somewhere in the

provinces; Prince Andrew was abroad; so Pierre had not the opportunity

to spend his nights as he used to like to spend them, or to open his

mind by intimate talks with a friend older than himself and whom he

respected. His whole time was taken up with dinners and balls and

was spent chiefly at Prince Vasili's house in the company of the stout

princess, his wife, and his beautiful daughter Helene.



Like the others, Anna Pavlovna Scherer showed Pierre the change of

attitude toward him that had taken place in society.



Formerly in Anna Pavlovna's presence, Pierre had always felt that

what he was saying was out of place, tactless and unsuitable, that

remarks which seemed to him clever while they formed in his mind

became foolish as soon as he uttered them, while on the contrary

Hippolyte's stupidest remarks came out clever and apt. Now

everything Pierre said was charmant. Even if Anna Pavlovna did not say

so, he could see that she wished to and only refrained out of regard

for his modesty.



In the beginning of the winter of 1805-6 Pierre received one of Anna

Pavlovna's usual pink notes with an invitation to which was added:

"You will find the beautiful Helene here, whom it is always delightful

to see."



When he read that sentence, Pierre felt for the first time that some

link which other people recognized had grown up between himself and

Helene, and that thought both alarmed him, as if some obligation

were being imposed on him which he could not fulfill, and pleased

him as an entertaining supposition.



Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" was like the former one, only the

novelty she offered her guests this time was not Mortemart, but a

diplomatist fresh from Berlin with the very latest details of the

Emperor Alexander's visit to Potsdam, and of how the two august

friends had pledged themselves in an indissoluble alliance to uphold

the cause of justice against the enemy of the human race. Anna

Pavlovna received Pierre with a shade of melancholy, evidently

relating to the young man's recent loss by the death of Count Bezukhov

(everyone constantly considered it a duty to assure Pierre that he was

greatly afflicted by the death of the father he had hardly known), and

her melancholy was just like the august melancholy she showed at the

mention of her most august Majesty the Empress Marya Fedorovna. Pierre

felt flattered by this. Anna Pavlovna arranged the different groups in

her drawing room with her habitual skill. The large group, in which

were Prince Vasili and the generals, had the benefit of the

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diplomat. Another group was at the tea table. Pierre wished to join

the former, but Anna Pavlovna--who was in the excited condition of a

commander on a battlefield to whom thousands of new and brilliant

ideas occur which there is hardly time to put in action--seeing

Pierre, touched his sleeve with her finger, saying:



"Wait a bit, I have something in view for you this evening." (She

glanced at Helene and smiled at her.) "My dear Helene, be charitable

to my poor aunt who adores you. Go and keep her company for ten

minutes. And that it will not be too dull, here is the dear count

who will not refuse to accompany you."



The beauty went to the aunt, but Anna Pavlovna detained Pierre,

looking as if she had to give some final necessary instructions.



"Isn't she exquisite?" she said to Pierre, pointing to the stately

beauty as she glided away. "And how she carries herself! For so

young a girl, such tact, such masterly perfection of manner! It

comes from her heart. Happy the man who wins her! With her the least

worldly of men would occupy a most brilliant position in society.

Don't you think so? I only wanted to know your opinion," and Anna

Pavlovna let Pierre go.



Pierre, in reply, sincerely agreed with her as to Helene's

perfection of manner. If he ever thought of Helene, it was just of her

beauty and her remarkable skill in appearing silently dignified in

society.



The old aunt received the two young people in her corner, but seemed

desirous of hiding her adoration for Helene and inclined rather to

show her fear of Anna Pavlovna. She looked at her niece, as if

inquiring what she was to do with these people. On leaving them,

Anna Pavlovna again touched Pierre's sleeve, saying: "I hope you won't

say that it is dull in my house again," and she glanced at Helene.



Helene smiled, with a look implying that she did not admit the

possibility of anyone seeing her without being enchanted. The aunt

coughed, swallowed, and said in French that she was very pleased to

see Helene, then she turned to Pierre with the same words of welcome

and the same look. In the middle of a dull and halting conversation,

Helene turned to Pierre with the beautiful bright smile that she

gave to everyone. Pierre was so used to that smile, and it had so

little meaning for him, that he paid no attention to it. The aunt

was just speaking of a collection of snuffboxes that had belonged to

Pierre's father, Count Bezukhov, and showed them her own box. Princess

Helene asked to see the portrait of the aunt's husband on the box lid.



"That is probably the work of Vinesse," said Pierre, mentioning a

celebrated miniaturist, and he leaned over the table to take the

snuffbox while trying to hear what was being said at the other table.



He half rose, meaning to go round, but the aunt handed him the

snuffbox, passing it across Helene's back. Helene stooped forward to

make room, and looked round with a smile. She was, as always at

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evening parties, wearing a dress such as was then fashionable, cut

very low at front and back. Her bust, which had always seemed like

marble to Pierre, was so close to him that his shortsighted eyes could

not but perceive the living charm of her neck and shoulders, so near

to his lips that he need only have bent his head a little to have

touched them. He was conscious of the warmth of her body, the scent of

perfume, and the creaking of her corset as she moved. He did not see

her marble beauty forming a complete whole with her dress, but all the

charm of her body only covered by her garments. And having once seen

this he could not help being aware it, just as we cannot renew an

illusion we have once seen through.



"So you have never noticed before how beautiful I am?" Helene seemed

to say. "You had not noticed that I am a woman? Yes, I am a woman

who may belong to anyone--to you too," said her glance. And at that

moment Pierre felt that Helene not only could, but must, be his

wife, and that it could not be otherwise.



He knew this at that moment as surely as if he had been standing

at the altar with her. How and when this would be he did not know,

he did not even know if it would be a good thing (he even felt, he

knew not why, that it would be a bad thing), but he knew it would

happen.



Pierre dropped his eyes, lifted them again, and wished once more

to see her as a distant beauty far removed from him, as he had seen

her every day until then, but he could no longer do it. He could

not, any more than a man who has been looking at a tuft of steppe

grass through the mist and taking it for a tree can again take it

for a tree after he has once recognized it to be a tuft of grass.

She was terribly close to him. She already had power over him, and

between them there was no longer any barrier except the barrier of his

own will.



"Well, I will leave you in your little corner," came Anna Pavlovna's

voice, "I see you are all right there."



And Pierre, anxiously trying to remember whether he had done

anything reprehensible, looked round with a blush. It seemed to him

that everyone knew what had happened to him as he knew it himself.



A little later when he went up to the large circle, Anna Pavlovna

said to him: "I hear you are refitting your Petersburg house?"



This was true. The architect had told him that it was necessary, and

Pierre, without knowing why, was having his enormous Petersburg

house done up.



"That's a good thing, but don't move from Prince Vasili's. It is

good to have a friend like the prince," she said, smiling at Prince

Vasili. "I know something about that. Don't I? And you are still so

young. You need advice. Don't be angry with me for exercising an old

woman's privilege."



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She paused, as women always do, expecting something after they

have mentioned their age. "If you marry it will be a different thing,"

she continued, uniting them both in one glance. Pierre did not look at

Helene nor she at him. But she was just as terribly close to him. He

muttered something and colored.



When he got home he could not sleep for a long time for thinking

of what had happened. What had happened? Nothing. He had merely

understood that the woman he had known as a child, of whom when her

beauty was mentioned he had said absent-mindedly: "Yes, she's good

looking," he had understood that this woman might belong to him.



"But she's stupid. I have myself said she is stupid," he thought.

"There is something nasty, something wrong, in the feeling she excites

in me. I have been told that her brother Anatole was in love with

her and she with him, that there was quite a scandal and that that's

why he was sent away. Hippolyte is her brother... Prince Vasili is her

father... It's bad...." he reflected, but while he was thinking this

(the reflection was still incomplete), he caught himself smiling and

was conscious that another line of thought had sprung up, and while

thinking of her worthlessness he was also dreaming of how she would be

his wife, how she would love him become quite different, and how all

he had thought and heard of her might be false. And he again saw her

not as the daughter of Prince Vasili, but visualized her whole body

only veiled by its gray dress. "But no! Why did this thought never

occur to me before?" and again he told himself that it was impossible,

that there would be something unnatural, and as it seemed to him

dishonorable, in this marriage. He recalled her former words and looks

and the words and looks of those who had seen them together. He

recalled Anna Pavlovna's words and looks when she spoke to him about

his house, recalled thousands of such hints from Prince Vasili and

others, and was seized by terror lest he had already, in some way,

bound himself to do something that was evidently wrong and that he

ought not to do. But at the very time he was expressing this

conviction to himself, in another part of his mind her image rose in

all its womanly beauty.









CHAPTER II



In November, 1805, Prince Vasili had to go on a tour of inspection

in four different provinces. He had arranged this for himself so as to

visit his neglected estates at the same time and pick up his son

Anatole where his regiment was stationed, and take him to visit Prince

Nicholas Bolkonski in order to arrange a match for him with the

daughter of that rich old man. But before leaving home and undertaking

these new affairs, Prince Vasili had to settle matters with Pierre,

who, it is true, had latterly spent whole days at home, that is, in

Prince Vasili's house where he was staying, and had been absurd,

excited, and foolish in Helene's presence (as a lover should be),

but had not yet proposed to her.

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"This is all very fine, but things must be settled," said Prince

Vasili to himself, with a sorrowful sigh, one morning, feeling that

Pierre who was under such obligations to him ("But never mind that")

was not behaving very well in this matter. "Youth, frivolity...

well, God be with him," thought he, relishing his own goodness of

heart, "but it must be brought to a head. The day after tomorrow

will be Lelya's name day. I will invite two or three people, and if he

does not understand what he ought to do then it will be my affair-

yes, my affair. I am her father."



Six weeks after Anna Pavlovna's "At Home" and after the sleepless

night when he had decided that to marry Helene would be a calamity and

that he ought to avoid her and go away, Pierre, despite that decision,

had not left Prince Vasili's and felt with terror that in people's

eyes he was every day more and more connected with her, that it was

impossible for him to return to his former conception of her, that

he could not break away from her, and that though it would be a

terrible thing he would have to unite his fate with hers. He might

perhaps have been able to free himself but that Prince Vasili (who had

rarely before given receptions) now hardly let a day go by without

having an evening party at which Pierre had to be present unless he

wished to spoil the general pleasure and disappoint everyone's

expectation. Prince Vasili, in the rare moments when he was at home,

would take Pierre's hand in passing and draw it downwards, or

absent-mindedly hold out his wrinkled, clean-shaven cheek for Pierre

to kiss and would say: "Till tomorrow," or, "Be in to dinner or I

shall not see you," or, "I am staying in for your sake," and so on.

And though Prince Vasili, when he stayed in (as he said) for

Pierre's sake, hardly exchanged a couple of words with him, Pierre

felt unable to disappoint him. Every day he said to himself one and

the same thing: "It is time I understood her and made up my mind

what she really is. Was I mistaken before, or am I mistaken now? No,

she is not stupid, she is an excellent girl," he sometimes said to

himself "she never makes a mistake, never says anything stupid. She

says little, but what she does say is always clear and simple, so

she is not stupid. She never was abashed and is not abashed now, so

she cannot be a bad woman!" He had often begun to make reflections

or think aloud in her company, and she had always answered him

either by a brief but appropriate remark--showing that it did not

interest her--or by a silent look and smile which more palpably than

anything else showed Pierre her superiority. She was right in

regarding all arguments as nonsense in comparison with that smile.



She always addressed him with a radiantly confiding smile meant

for him alone, in which there was something more significant than in

the general smile that usually brightened her face. Pierre knew that

everyone was waiting for him to say a word and cross a certain line,

and he knew that sooner or later he would step across it, but an

incomprehensible terror seized him at the thought of that dreadful

step. A thousand times during that month and a half while he felt

himself drawn nearer and nearer to that dreadful abyss, Pierre said to

himself: "What am I doing? I need resolution. Can it be that I have

none?"

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He wished to take a decision, but felt with dismay that in this

matter he lacked that strength of will which he had known in himself

and really possessed. Pierre was one of those who are only strong when

they feel themselves quite innocent, and since that day when he was

overpowered by a feeling of desire while stooping over the snuffbox at

Anna Pavlovna's, an unacknowledged sense of the guilt of that desire

paralyzed his will.



On Helene's name day, a small party of just their own people--as his

wife said--met for supper at Prince Vasili's. All these friends and

relations had been given to understand that the fate of the young girl

would be decided that evening. The visitors were seated at supper.

Princess Kuragina, a portly imposing woman who had once been handsome,

was sitting at the head of the table. On either side of her sat the

more important guests--an old general and his wife, and Anna

Pavlovna Scherer. At the other end sat the younger and less

important guests, and there too sat the members of the family, and

Pierre and Helene, side by side. Prince Vasili was not having any

supper: he went round the table in a merry mood, sitting down now by

one, now by another, of the guests. To each of them he made some

careless and agreeable remark except to Pierre and Helene, whose

presence he seemed not to notice. He enlivened the whole party. The

wax candles burned brightly, the silver and crystal gleamed, so did

the ladies' toilets and the gold and silver of the men's epaulets;

servants in scarlet liveries moved round the table, the clatter of

plates, knives, and glasses mingled with the animated hum of several

conversations. At one end of the table, the old chamberlain was

heard assuring an old baroness that he loved her passionately, at

which she laughed; at the other could be heard the story of the

misfortunes of some Mary Viktorovna or other. At the center of the

table, Prince Vasili attracted everybody's attention. With a facetious

smile on his face, he was telling the ladies about last Wednesday's

meeting of the Imperial Council, at which Sergey Kuzmich

Vyazmitinov, the new military governor general of Petersburg, had

received and read the then famous rescript of the Emperor Alexander

from the army to Sergey Kuzmich, in which the Emperor said that he was

receiving from all sides declarations of the people's loyalty, that

the declaration from Petersburg gave him particular pleasure, and that

he was proud to be at the head of such a nation and would endeavor

to be worthy of it. This rescript began with the words: "Sergey

Kuzmich, From all sides reports reach me," etc.



"Well, and so he never got farther than: 'Sergey Kuzmich'?" asked

one of the ladies.



"Exactly, not a hair's breadth farther," answered Prince Vasili,

laughing, "'Sergey Kuzmich... From all sides... From all sides...

Sergey Kuzmich...' Poor Vyazmitinov could not get any farther! He

began the rescript again and again, but as soon as he uttered 'Sergey'

he sobbed, 'Kuz-mi-ch,' tears, and 'From all sides' was smothered in

sobs and he could get no farther. And again his handkerchief, and

again: 'Sergey Kuzmich, From all sides,'... and tears, till at last

somebody else was asked to read it."

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"Kuzmich... From all sides... and then tears," someone repeated

laughing.



"Don't be unkind," cried Anna Pavlovna from her end of the table

holding up a threatening finger. "He is such a worthy and excellent

man, our dear Vyazmitinov...."



Everybody laughed a great deal. At the head of the table, where

the honored guests sat, everyone seemed to be in high spirits and

under the influence of a variety of exciting sensations. Only Pierre

and Helene sat silently side by side almost at the bottom of the

table, a suppressed smile brightening both their faces, a smile that

had nothing to do with Sergey Kuzmich--a smile of bashfulness at their

own feelings. But much as all the rest laughed, talked, and joked,

much as they enjoyed their Rhine wine, saute, and ices, and however

they avoided looking at the young couple, and heedless and unobservant

as they seemed of them, one could feel by the occasional glances

they gave that the story about Sergey Kuzmich, the laughter, and the

food were all a pretense, and that the whole attention of that company

was directed to--Pierre and Helene. Prince Vasili mimicked the sobbing

of Sergey Kuzmich and at the same time his eyes glanced toward his

daughter, and while he laughed the expression on his face clearly

said: "Yes... it's getting on, it will all be settled today." Anna

Pavlovna threatened him on behalf of "our dear Vyazmitinov," and in

her eyes, which, for an instant, glanced at Pierre, Prince Vasili read

a congratulation on his future son-in-law and on his daughter's

happiness. The old princess sighed sadly as she offered some wine to

the old lady next to her and glanced angrily at her daughter, and

her sigh seemed to say: "Yes, there's nothing left for you and me

but to sip sweet wine, my dear, now that the time has come for these

young ones to be thus boldly, provocatively happy." "And what nonsense

all this is that I am saying!" thought a diplomatist, glancing at

the happy faces of the lovers. "That's happiness!"



Into the insignificant, trifling, and artificial interests uniting

that society had entered the simple feeling of the attraction of a

healthy and handsome young man and woman for one another. And this

human feeling dominated everything else and soared above all their

affected chatter. Jests fell flat, news was not interesting, and the

animation was evidently forced. Not only the guests but even the

footmen waiting at table seemed to feel this, and they forgot their

duties as they looked at the beautiful Helene with her radiant face

and at the red, broad, and happy though uneasy face of Pierre. It

seemed as if the very light of the candles was focused on those two

happy faces alone.



Pierre felt that he was the center of it all, and this both pleased

and embarrassed him. He was like a man entirely absorbed in some

occupation. He did not see, hear, or understand anything clearly. Only

now and then detached ideas and impressions from the world of

reality shot unexpectedly through his mind.



"So it is all finished!" he thought. "And how has it all happened?

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How quickly! Now I know that not because of her alone, nor of myself

alone, but because of everyone, it must inevitably come about. They

are all expecting it, they are so sure that it will happen that I

cannot, I cannot, disappoint them. But how will it be? I do not

know, but it will certainly happen!" thought Pierre, glancing at those

dazzling shoulders close to his eyes.



Or he would suddenly feel ashamed of he knew not what. He felt it

awkward to attract everyone's attention and to be considered a lucky

man and, with his plain face, to be looked on as a sort of Paris

possessed of a Helen. "But no doubt it always is and must be so!" he

consoled himself. "And besides, what have I done to bring it about?

How did it begin? I traveled from Moscow with Prince Vasili. Then

there was nothing. So why should I not stay at his house? Then I

played cards with her and picked up her reticule and drove out with

her. How did it begin, when did it all come about?" And here he was

sitting by her side as her betrothed, seeing, hearing, feeling her

nearness, her breathing, her movements, her beauty. Then it would

suddenly seem to him that it was not she but he was so unusually

beautiful, and that that was why they all looked so at him, and

flattered by this general admiration he would expand his chest,

raise his head, and rejoice at his good fortune. Suddenly he heard a

familiar voice repeating something to him a second time. But Pierre

was so absorbed that he did not understand what was said.



"I am asking you when you last heard from Bolkonski," repeated

Prince Vasili a third time. "How absent-minded you are, my dear

fellow."



Prince Vasili smiled, and Pierre noticed that everyone was smiling

at him and Helene. "Well, what of it, if you all know it?" thought

Pierre. "What of it? It's the truth!" and he himself smiled his gentle

childlike smile, and Helene smiled too.



"When did you get the letter? Was it from Olmutz?" repeated Prince

Vasili, who pretended to want to know this in order to settle a

dispute.



"How can one talk or think of such trifles?" thought Pierre.



"Yes, from Olmutz," he answered, with a sigh.



After supper Pierre with his partner followed the others into the

drawing room. The guests began to disperse, some without taking

leave of Helene. Some, as if unwilling to distract her from an

important occupation, came up to her for a moment and made haste to go

away, refusing to let her see them off. The diplomatist preserved a

mournful silence as he left the drawing room. He pictured the vanity

of his diplomatic career in comparison with Pierre's happiness. The

old general grumbled at his wife when she asked how his leg was.

"Oh, the old fool," he thought. "That Princess Helene will be

beautiful still when she's fifty."



"I think I may congratulate you," whispered Anna Pavlovna to the old

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princess, kissing her soundly. "If I hadn't this headache I'd have

stayed longer."



The old princess did not reply, she was tormented by jealousy of her

daughter's happiness.



While the guests were taking their leave Pierre remained for a

long time alone with Helene in the little drawing room where they were

sitting. He had often before, during the last six weeks, remained

alone with her, but had never spoken to her of love. Now he felt

that it was inevitable, but he could not make up his mind to take

the final step. He felt ashamed; he felt that he was occupying someone

else's place here beside Helene. "This happiness is not for you," some

inner voice whispered to him. "This happiness is for those who have

not in them what there is in you."



But, as he had to say something, he began by asking her whether

she was satisfied with the party. She replied in her usual simple

manner that this name day of hers had been one of the pleasantest

she had ever had.



Some of the nearest relatives had not yet left. They were sitting in

the large drawing room. Prince Vasili came up to Pierre with languid

footsteps. Pierre rose and said it was getting late. Prince Vasili

gave him a look of stern inquiry, as though what Pierre had just

said was so strange that one could not take it in. But then the

expression of severity changed, and he drew Pierre's hand downwards,

made him sit down, and smiled affectionately.



"Well, Lelya?" he asked, turning instantly to his daughter and

addressing her with the careless tone of habitual tenderness natural

to parents who have petted their children from babyhood, but which

Prince Vasili had only acquired by imitating other parents.



And he again turned to Pierre.



"Sergey Kuzmich--From all sides-" he said, unbuttoning the top

button of his waistcoat.



Pierre smiled, but his smile showed that he knew it was not the

story about Sergey Kuzmich that interested Prince Vasili just then,

and Prince Vasili saw that Pierre knew this. He suddenly muttered

something and went away. It seemed to Pierre that even the prince

was disconcerted. The sight of the discomposure of that old man of the

world touched Pierre: he looked at Helene and she too seemed

disconcerted, and her look seemed to say: "Well, it is your own

fault."



"The step must be taken but I cannot, I cannot!" thought Pierre, and

he again began speaking about indifferent matters, about Sergey

Kuzmich, asking what the point of the story was as he had not heard it

properly. Helene answered with a smile that she too had missed it.



When Prince Vasili returned to the drawing room, the princess, his

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wife, was talking in low tones to the elderly lady about Pierre.



"Of course, it is a very brilliant match, but happiness, my dear..."



"Marriages are made in heaven," replied the elderly lady.



Prince Vasili passed by, seeming not to hear the ladies, and sat

down on a sofa in a far corner of the room. He closed his eyes and

seemed to be dozing. His head sank forward and then he roused himself.



"Aline," he said to his wife, "go and see what they are about."



The princess went up to the door, passed by it with a dignified

and indifferent air, and glanced into the little drawing room.

Pierre and Helene still sat talking just as before.



"Still the same," she said to her husband.



Prince Vasili frowned, twisting his mouth, his cheeks quivered and

his face assumed the coarse, unpleasant expression peculiar to him.

Shaking himself, he rose, threw back his head, and with resolute steps

went past the ladies into the little drawing room. With quick steps he

went joyfully up to Pierre. His face was so unusually triumphant

that Pierre rose in alarm on seeing it.



"Thank God!" said Prince Vasili. "My wife has told me everything!"

(He put one arm around Pierre and the other around his daughter.)--"My

dear boy... Lelya... I am very pleased." (His voice trembled.) "I

loved your father... and she will make you a good wife... God bless

you!..."



He embraced his daughter, and then again Pierre, and kissed him with

his malodorous mouth. Tears actually moistened his cheeks.



"Princess, come here!" he shouted.



The old princess came in and also wept. The elderly lady was using

her handkerchief too. Pierre was kissed, and he kissed the beautiful

Helene's hand several times. After a while they were left alone again.



"All this had to be and could not be otherwise," thought Pierre, "so

it is useless to ask whether it is good or bad. It is good because

it's definite and one is rid of the old tormenting doubt." Pierre held

the hand of his betrothed in silence, looking at her beautiful bosom

as it rose and fell.



"Helene!" he said aloud and paused.



"Something special is always said in such cases," he thought, but

could not remember what it was that people say. He looked at her face.

She drew nearer to him. Her face flushed.



"Oh, take those off... those..." she said, pointing to his

spectacles.

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Pierre took them off, and his eyes, besides the strange look eyes

have from which spectacles have just been removed, had also a

frightened and inquiring look. He was about to stoop over her hand and

kiss it, but with a rapid, almost brutal movement of her head, she

intercepted his lips and met them with her own. Her face struck

Pierre, by its altered, unpleasantly excited expression.



"It is too late now, it's done; besides I love her," thought Pierre.



"Je vous aime!"* he said, remembering what has to be said at such

moments: but his words sounded so weak that he felt ashamed of

himself.





*"I love you."





Six weeks later he was married, and settled in Count Bezukhov's

large, newly furnished Petersburg house, the happy possessor, as

people said, of a wife who was a celebrated beauty and of millions

of money.









CHAPTER III





Old Prince Nicholas Bolkonski received a letter from Prince Vasili

in November, 1805, announcing that he and his son would be paying

him a visit. "I am starting on a journey of inspection, and of

course I shall think nothing of an extra seventy miles to come and see

you at the same time, my honored benefactor," wrote Prince Vasili. "My

son Anatole is accompanying me on his way to the army, so I hope you

will allow him personally to express the deep respect that,

emulating his father, he feels for you."



"It seems that there will be no need to bring Mary out, suitors

are coming to us of their own accord," incautiously remarked the

little princess on hearing the news.



Prince Nicholas frowned, but said nothing.



A fortnight after the letter Prince Vasili's servants came one

evening in advance of him, and he and his son arrived next day.



Old Bolkonski had always had a poor opinion of Prince Vasili's

character, but more so recently, since in the new reigns of Paul and

Alexander Prince Vasili had risen to high position and honors. And

now, from the hints contained in his letter and given by the little

princess, he saw which way the wind was blowing, and his low opinion

changed into a feeling of contemptuous ill will. He snorted whenever

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he mentioned him. On the day of Prince Vasili's arrival, Prince

Bolkonski was particularly discontented and out of temper. Whether

he was in a bad temper because Prince Vasili was coming, or whether

his being in a bad temper made him specially annoyed at Prince

Vasili's visit, he was in a bad temper, and in the morning Tikhon

had already advised the architect not to go to the prince with his

report.



"Do you hear how he's walking?" said Tikhon, drawing the architect's

attention to the sound of the prince's footsteps. "Stepping flat on

his heels--we know what that means...."



However, at nine o'clock the prince, in his velvet coat with a sable

collar and cap, went out for his usual walk. It had snowed the day

before and the path to the hothouse, along which the prince was in the

habit of walking, had been swept: the marks of the broom were still

visible in the snow and a shovel had been left sticking in one of

the soft snowbanks that bordered both sides of the path. The prince

went through the conservatories, the serfs' quarters, and the

outbuildings, frowning and silent.



"Can a sleigh pass?" he asked his overseer, a venerable man,

resembling his master in manners and looks, who was accompanying him

back to the house.



"The snow is deep. I am having the avenue swept, your honor."



The prince bowed his head and went up to the porch. "God be

thanked," thought the overseer, "the storm has blown over!"



"It would have been hard to drive up, your honor," he added. "I

heard, your honor, that a minister is coming to visit your honor."



The prince turned round to the overseer and fixed his eyes on him,

frowning.



"What? A minister? What minister? Who gave orders?" he said in his

shrill, harsh voice. "The road is not swept for the princess my

daughter, but for a minister! For me, there are no ministers!"



"Your honor, I thought..."



"You thought!" shouted the prince, his words coming more and more

rapidly and indistinctly. "You thought!... Rascals! Blackgaurds!...

I'll teach you to think!" and lifting his stick he swung it and

would have hit Alpatych, the overseer, had not the latter

instinctively avoided the blow. "Thought... Blackguards..." shouted

the prince rapidly.



But although Alpatych, frightened at his own temerity in avoiding

the stroke, came up to the prince, bowing his bald head resignedly

before him, or perhaps for that very reason, the prince, though he

continued to shout: "Blackgaurds!... Throw the snow back on the road!"

did not lift his stick again but hurried into the house.

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Before dinner, Princess Mary and Mademoiselle Bourienne, who knew

that the prince was in a bad humor, stood awaiting him; Mademoiselle

Bourienne with a radiant face that said: "I know nothing, I am the

same as usual," and Princess Mary pale, frightened, and with

downcast eyes. What she found hardest to bear was to know that on such

occasions she ought to behave like Mademoiselle Bourienne, but could

not. She thought: "If I seem not to notice he will think that I do not

sympathize with him; if I seem sad and out of spirits myself, he

will say (as he has done before) that I'm in the dumps."



The prince looked at his daughter's frightened face and snorted.



"Fool... or dummy!" he muttered.



"And the other one is not here. They've been telling tales," he

thought--referring to the little princess who was not in the dining

room.



"Where is the princess?" he asked. "Hiding?"



"She is not very well," answered Mademoiselle Bourienne with a

bright smile, "so she won't come down. It is natural in her state."



"Hm! Hm!" muttered the prince, sitting down.



His plate seemed to him not quite clean, and pointing to a spot he

flung it away. Tikhon caught it and handed it to a footman. The little

princess was not unwell, but had such an overpowering fear of the

prince that, hearing he was in a bad humor, she had decided not to

appear.



"I am afraid for the baby," she said to Mademoiselle Bourienne:

"Heaven knows what a fright might do."



In general at Bald Hills the little princess lived in constant fear,

and with a sense of antipathy to the old prince which she did not

realize because the fear was so much the stronger feeling. The

prince reciprocated this antipathy, but it was overpowered by his

contempt for her. When the little princess had grown accustomed to

life at Bald Hills, she took a special fancy to Mademoiselle

Bourienne, spent whole days with her, asked her to sleep in her

room, and often talked with her about the old prince and criticized

him.



"So we are to have visitors, mon prince?" remarked Mademoiselle

Bourienne, unfolding her white napkin with her rosy fingers. "His

Excellency Prince Vasili Kuragin and his son, I understand?" she

said inquiringly.



"Hm!--his excellency is a puppy.... I got him his appointment in the

service," said the prince disdainfully. "Why his son is coming I don't

understand. Perhaps Princess Elizabeth and Princess Mary know. I don't

want him." (He looked at his blushing daughter.) "Are you unwell

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today? Eh? Afraid of the 'minister' as that idiot Alpatych called

him this morning?"



"No, mon pere."



Though Mademoiselle Bourienne had been so unsuccessful in her choice

of a subject, she did not stop talking, but chattered about the

conservatories and the beauty of a flower that had just opened, and

after the soup the prince became more genial.



After dinner, he went to see his daughter-in-law. The little

princess was sitting at a small table, chattering with Masha, her

maid. She grew pale on seeing her father-in-law.



She was much altered. She was now plain rather than pretty. Her

cheeks had sunk, her lip was drawn up, and her eyes drawn down.



"Yes, I feel a kind of oppression," she said in reply to the

prince's question as to how she felt.



"Do you want anything?"



"No, merci, mon pere."



"Well, all right, all right."



He left the room and went to the waiting room where Alpatych stood

with bowed head.



"Has the snow been shoveled back?"



"Yes, your excellency. Forgive me for heaven's sake... It was only

my stupidity."



"All right, all right," interrupted the prince, and laughing his

unnatural way, he stretched out his hand for Alpatych to kiss, and

then proceeded to his study.



Prince Vasili arrived that evening. He was met in the avenue by

coachmen and footmen, who, with loud shouts, dragged his sleighs up to

one of the lodges over the road purposely laden with snow.



Prince Vasili and Anatole had separate rooms assigned to them.



Anatole, having taken off his overcoat, sat with arms akimbo

before a table on a corner of which he smilingly and absent-mindedly

fixed his large and handsome eyes. He regarded his whole life as a

continual round of amusement which someone for some reason had to

provide for him. And he looked on this visit to a churlish old man and

a rich and ugly heiress in the same way. All this might, he thought,

turn out very well and amusingly. "And why not marry her if she really

has so much money? That never does any harm," thought Anatole.



He shaved and scented himself with the care and elegance which had

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become habitual to him and, his handsome head held high, entered his

father's room with the good-humored and victorious air natural to him.

Prince Vasili's two valets were busy dressing him, and he looked round

with much animation and cheerfully nodded to his son as the latter

entered, as if to say: "Yes, that's how I want you to look."



"I say, Father, joking apart, is she very hideous?" Anatole asked,

as if continuing a conversation the subject of which had often been

mentioned during the journey.



"Enough! What nonsense! Above all, try to be respectful and cautious

with the old prince."



"If he starts a row I'll go away," said Prince Anatole. "I can't

bear those old men! Eh?"



"Remember, for you everything depends on this."



In the meantime, not only was it known in the maidservants' rooms

that the minister and his son had arrived, but the appearance of

both had been minutely described. Princess Mary was sitting alone in

her room, vainly trying to master her agitation.



"Why did they write, why did Lise tell me about it? It can never

happen!" she said, looking at herself in the glass. "How shall I enter

the drawing room? Even if I like him I can't now be myself with

him." The mere thought of her father's look filled her with terror.

The little princess and Mademoiselle Bourienne had already received

from Masha, the lady's maid, the necessary report of how handsome

the minister's son was, with his rosy cheeks and dark eyebrows, and

with what difficulty the father had dragged his legs upstairs while

the son had followed him like an eagle, three steps at a time.

Having received this information, the little princess and Mademoiselle

Bourienne, whose chattering voices had reached her from the

corridor, went into Princess Mary's room.



"You know they've come, Marie?" said the little princess, waddling

in, and sinking heavily into an armchair.



She was no longer in the loose gown she generally wore in the

morning, but had on one of her best dresses. Her hair was carefully

done and her face was animated, which, however, did not conceal its

sunken and faded outlines. Dressed as she used to be in Petersburg

society, it was still more noticeable how much plainer she had become.

Some unobtrusive touch had been added to Mademoiselle Bourienne's

toilet which rendered her fresh and pretty face yet more attractive.



"What! Are you going to remain as you are, dear princess?" she

began. "They'll be announcing that the gentlemen are in the drawing

room and we shall have to go down, and you have not smartened yourself

up at all!"



The little princess got up, rang for the maid, and hurriedly and

merrily began to devise and carry out a plan of how Princess Mary

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should be dressed. Princess Mary's self-esteem was wounded by the fact

that the arrival of a suitor agitated her, and still more so by both

her companions' not having the least conception that it could be

otherwise. To tell them that she felt ashamed for herself and for them

would be to betray her agitation, while to decline their offers to

dress her would prolong their banter and insistence. She flushed,

her beautiful eyes grew dim, red blotches came on her face, and it

took on the unattractive martyrlike expression it so often wore, as

she submitted herself to Mademoiselle Bourienne and Lise. Both these

women quite sincerely tried to make her look pretty. She was so

plain that neither of them could think of her as a rival, so they

began dressing her with perfect sincerity, and with the naive and firm

conviction women have that dress can make a face pretty.



"No really, my dear, this dress is not pretty," said Lise, looking

sideways at Princess Mary from a little distance. "You have a maroon

dress, have it fetched. Really! You know the fate of your whole life

may be at stake. But this one is too light, it's not becoming!"



It was not the dress, but the face and whole figure of Princess Mary

that was not pretty, but neither Mademoiselle Bourienne nor the little

princess felt this; they still thought that if a blue ribbon were

placed in the hair, the hair combed up, and the blue scarf arranged

lower on the best maroon dress, and so on, all would be well. They

forgot that the frightened face and the figure could not be altered,

and that however they might change the setting and adornment of that

face, it would still remain piteous and plain. After two or three

changes to which Princess Mary meekly submitted, just as her hair

had been arranged on the top of her head (a style that quite altered

and spoiled her looks) and she had put on a maroon dress with a

pale-blue scarf, the little princess walked twice round her, now

adjusting a fold of the dress with her little hand, now arranging

the scarf and looking at her with her head bent first on one side

and then on the other.



"No, it will not do," she said decidedly, clasping her hands. "No,

Mary, really this dress does not suit you. I prefer you in your little

gray everyday dress. Now please, do it for my sake. Katie," she said

to the maid, "bring the princess her gray dress, and you'll see,

Mademoiselle Bourienne, how I shall arrange it," she added, smiling

with a foretaste of artistic pleasure.



But when Katie brought the required dress, Princess Mary remained

sitting motionless before the glass, looking at her face, and saw in

the mirror her eyes full of tears and her mouth quivering, ready to

burst into sobs.



"Come, dear princess," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "just one more

little effort."



The little princess, taking the dress from the maid, came up to

Princess Mary.



"Well, now we'll arrange something quite simple and becoming," she

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said.



The three voices, hers, Mademoiselle Bourienne's, and Katie's, who

was laughing at something, mingled in a merry sound, like the chirping

of birds.



"No, leave me alone," said Princess Mary.



Her voice sounded so serious and so sad that the chirping of the

birds was silenced at once. They looked at the beautiful, large,

thoughtful eyes full of tears and of thoughts, gazing shiningly and

imploringly at them, and understood that it was useless and even cruel

to insist.



"At least, change your coiffure," said the little princess.

"Didn't I tell you," she went on, turning reproachfully to

Mademoiselle Bourienne, "Mary's is a face which such a coiffure does

not suit in the least. Not in the least! Please change it."



"Leave me alone, please leave me alone! It is all quite the same

to me," answered a voice struggling with tears.



Mademoiselle Bourienne and the little princess had to own to

themselves that Princess Mary in this guise looked very plain, worse

than usual, but it was too late. She was looking at them with an

expression they both knew, an expression thoughtful and sad. This

expression in Princess Mary did not frighten them (she never

inspired fear in anyone), but they knew that when it appeared on her

face, she became mute and was not to be shaken in her determination.



"You will change it, won't you?" said Lise. And as Princess Mary

gave no answer, she left the room.



Princess Mary was left alone. She did not comply with Lise's

request, she not only left her hair as it was, but did not even look

in her glass. Letting her arms fall helplessly, she sat with

downcast eyes and pondered. A husband, a man, a strong dominant and

strangely attractive being rose in her imagination, and carried her

into a totally different happy world of his own. She fancied a

child, her own--such as she had seen the day before in the arms of her

nurse's daughter--at her own breast, the husband standing by and

gazing tenderly at her and the child. "But no, it is impossible, I

am too ugly," she thought.



"Please come to tea. The prince will be out in a moment," came the

maid's voice at the door.



She roused herself, and felt appalled at what she had been thinking,

and before going down she went into the room where the icons hung and,

her eyes fixed on the dark face of a large icon of the Saviour lit

by a lamp, she stood before it with folded hands for a few moments.

A painful doubt filled her soul. Could the joy of love, of earthly

love for a man, be for her? In her thoughts of marriage Princess

Mary dreamed of happiness and of children, but her strongest, most

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deeply hidden longing was for earthly love. The more she tried to hide

this feeling from others and even from herself, the stronger it

grew. "O God," she said, "how am I to stifle in my heart these

temptations of the devil? How am I to renounce forever these vile

fancies, so as peacefully to fulfill Thy will?" And scarcely had she

put that question than God gave her the answer in her own heart.

"Desire nothing for thyself, seek nothing, be not anxious or

envious. Man's future and thy own fate must remain hidden from thee,

but live so that thou mayest be ready for anything. If it be God's

will to prove thee in the duties of marriage, be ready to fulfill

His will." With this consoling thought (but yet with a hope for the

fulfillment of her forbidden earthly longing) Princess Mary sighed,

and having crossed herself went down, thinking neither of her gown and

coiffure nor of how she would go in nor of what she would say. What

could all that matter in comparison with the will of God, without

Whose care not a hair of man's head can fall?









CHAPTER IV





When Princess Mary came down, Prince Vasili and his son were already

in the drawing room, talking to the little princess and Mademoiselle

Bourienne. When she entered with her heavy step, treading on her

heels, the gentlemen and Mademoiselle Bourienne rose and the little

princess, indicating her to the gentlemen, said: "Voila Marie!"

Princess Mary saw them all and saw them in detail. She saw Prince

Vasili's face, serious for an instant at the sight of her, but

immediately smiling again, and the little princess curiously noting

the impression "Marie" produced on the visitors. And she saw

Mademoiselle Bourienne, with her ribbon and pretty face, and her

unusually animated look which was fixed on him, but him she could

not see, she only saw something large, brilliant, and handsome

moving toward her as she entered the room. Prince Vasili approached

first, and she kissed the bold forehead that bent over her hand and

answered his question by saying that, on the contrary, she

remembered him quite well. Then Anatole came up to her. She still

could not see him. She only felt a soft hand taking hers firmly, and

she touched with her lips a white forehead, over which was beautiful

light-brown hair smelling of pomade. When she looked up at him she was

struck by his beauty. Anatole stood with his right thumb under a

button of his uniform, his chest expanded and his back drawn in,

slightly swinging one foot, and, with his head a little bent, looked

with beaming face at the princess without speaking and evidently not

thinking about her at all. Anatole was not quick-witted, nor ready

or eloquent in conversation, but he had the faculty, so invaluable

in society, of composure and imperturbable self-possession. If a man

lacking in self-confidence remains dumb on a first introduction and

betrays a consciousness of the impropriety of such silence and an

anxiety to find something to say, the effect is bad. But Anatole was

dumb, swung his foot, and smilingly examined the princess' hair. It

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was evident that he could be silent in this way for a very long

time. "If anyone finds this silence inconvenient, let him talk, but

I don't want to," he seemed to say. Besides this, in his behavior to

women Anatole had a manner which particularly inspires in them

curiosity, awe, and even love--a supercilious consciousness of his own

superiority. It was was as if he said to them: "I know you, I know

you, but why should I bother about you? You'd be only too glad, of

course." Perhaps he did not really think this when he met women-

even probably he did not, for in general he thought very little--but

his looks and manner gave that impression. The princess felt this, and

as if wishing to show him that she did not even dare expect to

interest him, she turned to his father. The conversation was general

and animated, thanks to Princess Lise's voice and little downy lip

that lifted over her white teeth. She met Prince Vasili with that

playful manner often employed by lively chatty people, and

consisting in the assumption that between the person they so address

and themselves there are some semi-private, long-established jokes and

amusing reminiscences, though no such reminiscences really exist--just

as none existed in this case. Prince Vasili readily adopted her tone

and the little princess also drew Anatole, whom she hardly knew,

into these amusing recollections of things that had never occurred.

Mademoiselle Bourienne also shared them and even Princess Mary felt

herself pleasantly made to share in these merry reminiscences.



"Here at least we shall have the benefit of your company all to

ourselves, dear prince," said the little princess (of course, in

French) to Prince Vasili. "It's not as at Annette's* receptions

where you always ran away; you remember cette chere Annette!"





*Anna Pavlovna.



"Ah, but you won't talk politics to me like Annette!"



"And our little tea table?"



"Oh, yes!"



"Why is it you were never at Annette's?" the little princess asked

Anatole. "Ah, I know, I know," she said with a sly glance, "your

brother Hippolyte told me about your goings on. Oh!" and she shook her

finger at him, "I have even heard of your doings in Paris!"



"And didn't Hippolyte tell you?" asked Prince Vasili, turning to his

son and seizing the little princess' arm as if she would have run away

and he had just managed to catch her, "didn't he tell you how he

himself was pining for the dear princess, and how she showed him the

door? Oh, she is a pearl among women, Princess," he added, turning

to Princess Mary.



When Paris was mentioned, Mademoiselle Bourienne for her part seized

the opportunity of joining in the general current of recollections.



She took the liberty of inquiring whether it was long since

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Anatole had left Paris and how he had liked that city. Anatole

answered the Frenchwoman very readily and, looking at her with a

smile, talked to her about her native land. When he saw the pretty

little Bourienne, Anatole came to the conclusion that he would not

find Bald Hills dull either. "Not at all bad!" he thought, examining

her, "not at all bad, that little companion! I hope she will bring her

along with her when we're married, la petite est gentille."*





*The little one is charming.





The old prince dressed leisurely in his study, frowning and

considering what he was to do. The coming of these visitors annoyed

him. "What are Prince Vasili and that son of his to me? Prince

Vasili is a shallow braggart and his son, no doubt, is a fine

specimen," he grumbled to himself. What angered him was that the

coming of these visitors revived in his mind an unsettled question

he always tried to stifle, one about which he always deceived himself.

The question was whether he could ever bring himself to part from

his daughter and give her to a husband. The prince never directly

asked himself that question, knowing beforehand that he would have

to answer it justly, and justice clashed not only with his feelings

but with the very possibility of life. Life without Princess Mary,

little as he seemed to value her, was unthinkable to him. "And why

should she marry?" he thought. "To be unhappy for certain. There's

Lise, married to Andrew--a better husband one would think could hardly

be found nowadays--but is she contented with her lot? And who would

marry Marie for love? Plain and awkward! They'll take her for her

connections and wealth. Are there no women living unmarried, and

even the happier for it?" So thought Prince Bolkonski while

dressing, and yet the question he was always putting off demanded an

immediate answer. Prince Vasili had brought his son with the evident

intention of proposing, and today or tomorrow he would probably ask

for an answer. His birth and position in society were not bad.

"Well, I've nothing against it," the prince said to himself, "but he

must be worthy of her. And that is what we shall see."



"That is what we shall see! That is what we shall see!" he added

aloud.



He entered the drawing room with his usual alert step, glancing

rapidly round the company. He noticed the change in the little

princess' dress, Mademoiselle Bourienne's ribbon, Princess Mary's

unbecoming coiffure, Mademoiselle Bourienne's and Anatole's smiles,

and the loneliness of his daughter amid the general conversation. "Got

herself up like a fool!" he thought, looking irritably at her. "She is

shameless, and he ignores her!"



He went straight up to Prince Vasili.



"Well! How d'ye do? How d'ye do? Glad to see you!"



"Friendship laughs at distance," began Prince Vasili in his usual

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rapid, self-confident, familiar tone. "Here is my second son; please

love and befriend him."



Prince Bolkonski surveyed Anatole.



"Fine young fellow! Fine young fellow!" he said. "Well, come and

kiss me," and he offered his cheek.



Anatole kissed the old man, and looked at him with curiosity and

perfect composure, waiting for a display of the eccentricities his

father had told him to expect.



Prince Bolkonski sat down in his usual place in the corner of the

sofa and, drawing up an armchair for Prince Vasili, pointed to it

and began questioning him about political affairs and news. He

seemed to listen attentively to what Prince Vasili said, but kept

glancing at Princess Mary.



"And so they are writing from Potsdam already?" he said, repeating

Prince Vasili's last words. Then rising, he suddenly went up to his

daughter.



"Is it for visitors you've got yourself up like that, eh?" said

he. "Fine, very fine! You have done up your hair in this new way for

the visitors, and before the visitors I tell you that in future you

are never to dare to change your way of dress without my consent."



"It was my fault, mon pere," interceded the little princess, with

a blush.



"You must do as you please," said Prince Bolkonski, bowing to his

daughter-in-law, "but she need not make a fool of herself, she's plain

enough as it is."



And he sat down again, paying no more attention to his daughter, who

was reduced to tears.



"On the contrary, that coiffure suits the princess very well,"

said Prince Vasili.



"Now you, young prince, what's your name?" said Prince Bolkonski,

turning to Anatole, "come here, let us talk and get acquainted."



"Now the fun begins," thought Anatole, sitting down with a smile

beside the old prince.



"Well, my dear boy, I hear you've been educated abroad, not taught

to read and write by the deacon, like your father and me. Now tell me,

my dear boy, are you serving in the Horse Guards?" asked the old

man, scrutinizing Anatole closely and intently.



"No, I have been transferred to the line," said Anatole, hardly able

to restrain his laughter.



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"Ah! That's a good thing. So, my dear boy, you wish to serve the

Tsar and the country? It is wartime. Such a fine fellow must serve.

Well, are you off to the front?"



"No, Prince, our regiment has gone to the front, but I am

attached... what is it I am attached to, Papa?" said Anatole,

turning to his father with a laugh.



"A splendid soldier, splendid! 'What am I attached to!' Ha, ha, ha!"

laughed Prince Bolkonski, and Anatole laughed still louder. Suddenly

Prince Bolkonski frowned.



"You may go," he said to Anatole.



Anatole returned smiling to the ladies.



"And so you've had him educated abroad, Prince Vasili, haven't you?"

said the old prince to Prince Vasili.



"I have done my best for him, and I can assure you the education

there is much better than ours."



"Yes, everything is different nowadays, everything is changed. The

lad's a fine fellow, a fine fellow! Well, come with me now." He took

Prince Vasili's arm and led him to his study. As soon as they were

alone together, Prince Vasili announced his hopes and wishes to the

old prince.



"Well, do you think I shall prevent her, that I can't part from

her?" said the old prince angrily. "What an idea! I'm ready for it

tomorrow! Only let me tell you, I want to know my son-in-law better.

You know my principles--everything aboveboard? I will ask her tomorrow

in your presence; if she is willing, then he can stay on. He can

stay and I'll see." The old prince snorted. "Let her marry, it's all

the same to me!" he screamed in the same piercing tone as when parting

from his son.



"I will tell you frankly," said Prince Vasili in the tone of a

crafty man convinced of the futility of being cunning with so

keen-sighted companion. "You know, you see right through people.

Anatole is no genius, but he is an honest, goodhearted lad; an

excellent son or kinsman."



"All right, all right, we'll see!"



As always happens when women lead lonely lives for any length of

time without male society, on Anatole's appearance all the three women

of Prince Bolkonski's household felt that their life had not been real

till then. Their powers of reasoning, feeling, and observing

immediately increased tenfold, and their life, which seemed to have

been passed in darkness, was suddenly lit up by a new brightness, full

of significance.



Princess Mary grew quite unconscious of her face and coiffure. The

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handsome open face of the man who might perhaps be her husband

absorbed all her attention. He seemed to her kind, brave,

determined, manly, and magnanimous. She felt convinced of that.

Thousands of dreams of a future family life continually rose in her

imagination. She drove them away and tried to conceal them.



"But am I not too cold with him?" thought the princess. "I try to be

reserved because in the depth of my soul I feel too near to him

already, but then he cannot know what I think of him and may imagine

that I do not like him."



And Princess Mary tried, but could not manage, to be cordial to

her new guest. "Poor girl, she's devilish ugly!" thought Anatole.



Mademoiselle Bourienne, also roused to great excitement by Anatole's

arrival, thought in another way. Of course, she, a handsome young

woman without any definite position, without relations or even a

country, did not intend to devote her life to serving Prince

Bolkonski, to reading aloud to him and being friends with Princess

Mary. Mademoiselle Bourienne had long been waiting for a Russian

prince who, able to appreciate at a glance her superiority to the

plain, badly dressed, ungainly Russian princesses, would fall in

love with her and carry her off; and here at last was a Russian

prince. Mademoiselle Bourienne knew a story, heard from her aunt but

finished in her own way, which she liked to repeat to herself. It

was the story of a girl who had been seduced, and to whom her poor

mother (sa pauvre mere) appeared, and reproached her for yielding to a

man without being married. Mademoiselle Bourienne was often touched to

tears as in imagination she told this story to him, her seducer. And

now he, a real Russian prince, had appeared. He would carry her away

and then sa pauvre mere would appear and he would marry her. So her

future shaped itself in Mademoiselle Bourienne's head at the very time

she was talking to Anatole about Paris. It was not calculation that

guided her (she did not even for a moment consider what she should

do), but all this had long been familiar to her, and now that

Anatole had appeared it just grouped itself around him and she

wished and tried to please him as much as possible.



The little princess, like an old war horse that hears the trumpet,

unconsciously and quite forgetting her condition, prepared for the

familiar gallop of coquetry, without any ulterior motive or any

struggle, but with naive and lighthearted gaiety.



Although in female society Anatole usually assumed the role of a man

tired of being run after by women, his vanity was flattered by the

spectacle of his power over these three women. Besides that, he was

beginning to feel for the pretty and provocative Mademoiselle

Bourienne that passionate animal feeling which was apt to master him

with great suddenness and prompt him to the coarsest and most reckless

actions.



After tea, the company went into the sitting room and Princess

Mary was asked to play on the clavichord. Anatole, laughing and in

high spirits, came and leaned on his elbows, facing her and beside

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Mademoiselle Bourienne. Princess Mary felt his look with a painfully

joyous emotion. Her favorite sonata bore her into a most intimately

poetic world and the look she felt upon her made that world still more

poetic. But Anatole's expression, though his eyes were fixed on her,

referred not to her but to the movements of Mademoiselle Bourienne's

little foot, which he was then touching with his own under the

clavichord. Mademoiselle Bourienne was also looking at Princess

Mary, and in her lovely eyes there was a look of fearful joy and

hope that was also new to the princess.



"How she loves me!" thought Princess Mary. "How happy I am now,

and how happy I may be with such a friend and such a husband! Husband?

Can it be possible?" she thought, not daring to look at his face,

but still feeling his eyes gazing at her.



In the evening, after supper, when all were about to retire, Anatole

kissed Princess Mary's hand. She did not know how she found the

courage, but she looked straight into his handsome face as it came

near to her shortsighted eyes. Turning from Princess Mary he went up

and kissed Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand. (This was not etiquette, but

then he did everything so simply and with such assurance!)

Mademoiselle Bourienne flushed, and gave the princess a frightened

look.



"What delicacy!" thought the princess. "Is it possible that Amelie"

(Mademoiselle Bourienne) "thinks I could be jealous of her, and not

value her pure affection and devotion to me?" She went up to her and

kissed her warmly. Anatole went up to kiss the little princess' hand.



"No! No! No! When your father writes to tell me that you are

behaving well I will give you my hand to kiss. Not till then!" she

said. And smilingly raising a finger at him, she left the room.









CHAPTER V





They all separated, but, except Anatole who fell asleep as soon as

he got into bed, all kept awake a long time that night.



"Is he really to be my husband, this stranger who is so kind--yes,

kind, that is the chief thing," thought Princess Mary; and fear, which

she had seldom experienced, came upon her. She feared to look round,

it seemed to her that someone was there standing behind the screen

in the dark corner. And this someone was he--the devil--and he was

also this man with the white forehead, black eyebrows, and red lips.



She rang for her maid and asked her to sleep in her room.



Mademoiselle Bourienne walked up and down the conservatory for a

long time that evening, vainly expecting someone, now smiling at

someone, now working herself up to tears with the imaginary words of

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her pauvre mere rebuking her for her fall.



The little princess grumbled to her maid that her bed was badly

made. She could not lie either on her face or on her side. Every

position was awkward and uncomfortable, and her burden oppressed her

now more than ever because Anatole's presence had vividly recalled

to her the time when she was not like that and when everything was

light and gay. She sat in an armchair in her dressing jacket and

nightcap and Katie, sleepy and disheveled, beat and turned the heavy

feather bed for the third time, muttering to herself.



"I told you it was all lumps and holes!" the little princess

repeated. "I should be glad enough to fall asleep, so it's not my

fault!" and her voice quivered like that of a child about to cry.



The old prince did not sleep either. Tikhon, half asleep, heard

him pacing angrily about and snorting. The old prince felt as though

he had been insulted through his daughter. The insult was the more

pointed because it concerned not himself but another, his daughter,

whom he loved more than himself. He kept telling himself that he would

consider the whole matter and decide what was right and how he

should act, but instead of that he only excited himself more and more.



"The first man that turns up--she forgets her father and

everything else, runs upstairs and does up her hair and wags her

tail and is unlike herself! Glad to throw her father over! And she

knew I should notice it. Fr... fr... fr! And don't I see that that

idiot had eyes only for Bourienne--I shall have to get rid of her. And

how is it she has not pride enough to see it? If she has no pride

for herself she might at least have some for my sake! She must be

shown that the blockhead thinks nothing of her and looks only at

Bourienne. No, she has no pride... but I'll let her see...."



The old prince knew that if he told his daughter she was making a

mistake and that Anatole meant to flirt with Mademoiselle Bourienne,

Princess Mary's self-esteem would be wounded and his point (not to

be parted from her) would be gained, so pacifying himself with this

thought, he called Tikhon and began to undress.



"What devil brought them here?" thought he, while Tikhon was putting

the nightshirt over his dried-up old body and gray-haired chest. "I

never invited them. They came to disturb my life--and there is not

much of it left."



"Devil take 'em!" he muttered, while his head was still covered by

the shirt.



Tikhon knew his master's habit of sometimes thinking aloud, and

therefore met with unaltered looks the angrily inquisitive

expression of the face that emerged from the shirt.



"Gone to bed?" asked the prince.



Tikhon, like all good valets, instinctively knew the direction of

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his master's thoughts. He guessed that the question referred to Prince

Vasili and his son.



"They have gone to bed and put out their lights, your excellency."



"No good... no good..." said the prince rapidly, and thrusting his

feet into his slippers and his arms into the sleeves of his dressing

gown, he went to the couch on which he slept.



Though no words had passed between Anatole and Mademoiselle

Bourienne, they quite understood one another as to the first part of

their romance, up to the appearance of the pauvre mere; they

understood that they had much to say to one another in private and

so they had been seeking an opportunity since morning to meet one

another alone. When Princess Mary went to her father's room at the

usual hour, Mademoiselle Bourienne and Anatole met in the

conservatory.



Princess Mary went to the door of the study with special

trepidation. It seemed to her that not only did everybody know that

her fate would be decided that day, but that they also knew what she

thought about it. She read this in Tikhon's face and in that of Prince

Vasili's valet, who made her a low bow when she met him in the

corridor carrying hot water.



The old prince was very affectionate and careful in his treatment of

his daughter that morning. Princess Mary well knew this painstaking

expression of her father's. His face wore that expression when his dry

hands clenched with vexation at her not understanding a sum in

arithmetic, when rising from his chair he would walk away from her,

repeating in a low voice the same words several times over.



He came to the point at once, treating her ceremoniously.



"I have had a proposition made me concerning you," he said with an

unnatural smile. "I expect you have guessed that Prince Vasili has not

come and brought his pupil with him" (for some reason Prince Bolkonski

referred to Anatole as a "pupil") "for the sake of my beautiful

eyes. Last night a proposition was made me on your account and, as you

know my principles, I refer it to you."



"How am I to understand you, mon pere?" said the princess, growing

pale and then blushing.



"How understand me!" cried her father angrily. "Prince Vasili

finds you to his taste as a daughter-in-law and makes a proposal to

you on his pupil's behalf. That's how it's to be understood! 'How

understand it'!... And I ask you!"



"I do not know what you think, Father," whispered the princess.



"I? I? What of me? Leave me out of the question. I'm not going to

get married. What about you? That's what I want to know."



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The princess saw that her father regarded the matter with

disapproval, but at that moment the thought occurred to her that her

fate would be decided now or never. She lowered her eyes so as not

to see the gaze under which she felt that she could not think, but

would only be able to submit from habit, and she said: "I wish only to

do your will, but if I had to express my own desire..." She had no

time to finish. The old prince interrupted her.



"That's admirable!" he shouted. "He will take you with your dowry

and take Mademoiselle Bourienne into the bargain. She'll be the

wife, while you..."



The prince stopped. He saw the effect these words had produced on

his daughter. She lowered her head and was ready to burst into tears.



"Now then, now then, I'm only joking!" he said. "Remember this,

Princess, I hold to the principle that a maiden has a full right to

choose. I give you freedom. Only remember that your life's happiness

depends on your decision. Never mind me!"



"But I do not know, Father!"



"There's no need to talk! He receives his orders and will marry

you or anybody; but you are free to choose.... Go to your room,

think it over, and come back in an hour and tell me in his presence:

yes or no. I know you will pray over it. Well, pray if you like, but

you had better think it over. Go! Yes or no, yes or no, yes or no!" he

still shouted when the princess, as if lost in a fog, had already

staggered out of the study.



Her fate was decided and happily decided. But what her father had

said about Mademoiselle Bourienne was dreadful. It was untrue to be

sure, but still it was terrible, and she could not help thinking of

it. She was going straight on through the conservatory, neither seeing

nor hearing anything, when suddenly the well-known whispering of

Mademoiselle Bourienne aroused her. She raised her eyes, and two steps

away saw Anatole embracing the Frenchwoman and whispering something to

her. With a horrified expression on his handsome face, Anatole

looked at Princess Mary, but did not at once take his arm from the

waist of Mademoiselle Bourienne who had not yet seen her.



"Who's that? Why? Wait a moment!" Anatole's face seemed to say.

Princess Mary looked at them in silence. She could not understand

it. At last Mademoiselle Bourienne gave a scream and ran away. Anatole

bowed to Princess Mary with a gay smile, as if inviting her to join in

a laugh at this strange incident, and then shrugging his shoulders

went to the door that led to his own apartments.



An hour later, Tikhon came to call Princess Mary to the old

prince; he added that Prince Vasili was also there. When Tikhon came

to her Princess Mary was sitting on the sofa in her room, holding

the weeping Mademoiselle Bourienne in her arms and gently stroking her

hair. The princess' beautiful eyes with all their former calm radiance

were looking with tender affection and pity at Mademoiselle

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Bourienne's pretty face.



"No, Princess, I have lost your affection forever!" said

Mademoiselle Bourienne.



"Why? I love you more than ever," said Princess Mary, "and I will

try to do all I can for your happiness."



"But you despise me. You who are so pure can never understand

being so carried away by passion. Oh, only my poor mother..."



"I quite understand," answered Princess Mary, with a sad smile.

"Calm yourself, my dear. I will go to my father," she said, and went

out.



Prince Vasili, with one leg thrown high over the other and a

snuffbox in his hand, was sitting there with a smile of deep emotion

on his face, as if stirred to his heart's core and himself

regretting and laughing at his own sensibility, when Princess Mary

entered. He hurriedly took a pinch of snuff.



"Ah, my dear, my dear!" he began, rising and taking her by both

hands. Then, sighing, he added: "My son's fate is in your hands.

Decide, my dear, good, gentle Marie, whom I have always loved as a

daughter!"



He drew back and a real tear appeared in his eye.



"Fr... fr..." snorted Prince Bolkonski. "The prince is making a

proposition to you in his pupil's--I mean, his son's--name. Do you

wish or not to be Prince Anatole Kuragin's wife? Reply: yes or no," he

shouted, "and then I shall reserve the right to state my opinion also.

Yes, my opinion, and only my opinion," added Prince Bolkonski, turning

to Prince Vasili and answering his imploring look. "Yes, or no?"



"My desire is never to leave you, Father, never to separate my

life from yours. I don't wish to marry," she answered positively,

glancing at Prince Vasili and at her father with her beautiful eyes.



"Humbug! Nonsense! Humbug, humbug, humbug!" cried Prince

Bolkonski, frowning and taking his daughter's hand; he did not kiss

her, but only bending his forehead to hers just touched it, and

pressed her hand so that she winced and uttered a cry.



Prince Vasili rose.



"My dear, I must tell you that this is a moment I shall never, never

forget. But, my dear, will you not give us a little hope of touching

this heart, so kind and generous? Say 'perhaps'... The future is so

long. Say 'perhaps.'"



"Prince, what I have said is all there is in my heart. I thank you

for the honor, but I shall never be your son's wife."



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"Well, so that's finished, my dear fellow! I am very glad to have

seen you. Very glad! Go back to your rooms, Princess. Go!" said the

old prince. "Very, very glad to have seen you," repeated he,

embracing Prince Vasili.



"My vocation is a different one," thought Princess Mary. "My

vocation is to be happy with another kind of happiness, the

happiness of love and self-sacrifice. And cost what it may, I will

arrange poor Amelie's happiness, she loves him so passionately, and so

passionately repents. I will do all I can to arrange the match between

them. If he is not rich I will give her the means; I will ask my

father and Andrew. I shall be so happy when she is his wife. She is so

unfortunate, a stranger, alone, helpless! And, oh God, how

passionately she must love him if she could so far forget herself!

Perhaps I might have done the same!..." thought Princess Mary.









CHAPTER VI





It was long since the Rostovs had news of Nicholas. Not till

midwinter was the count at last handed a letter addressed in his son's

handwriting. On receiving it, he ran on tiptoe to his study in alarm

and haste, trying to escape notice, closed the door, and began to read

the letter.



Anna Mikhaylovna, who always knew everything that passed in the

house, on hearing of the arrival of the letter went softly into the

room and found the count with it in his hand, sobbing and laughing

at the same time.



Anna Mikhaylovna, though her circumstances had improved, was still

living with the Rostovs.



"My dear friend?" said she, in a tone of pathetic inquiry,

prepared to sympathize in any way.



The count sobbed yet more.



"Nikolenka... a letter... wa... a... s... wounded... my darling

boy... the countess... promoted to be an officer... thank God... How

tell the little countess!"



Anna Mikhaylovna sat down beside him, with her own handkerchief

wiped the tears from his eyes and from the letter, then having dried

her own eyes she comforted the count, and decided that at dinner and

till teatime she would prepare the countess, and after tea, with God's

help, would inform her.



At dinner Anna Mikhaylovna talked the whole time about the war

news and about Nikolenka, twice asked when the last letter had been

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received from him, though she knew that already, and remarked that

they might very likely be getting a letter from him that day. Each

time that these hints began to make the countess anxious and she

glanced uneasily at the count and at Anna Mikhaylovna, the latter very

adroitly turned the conversation to insignificant matters. Natasha,

who, of the whole family, was the most gifted with a capacity to

feel any shades of intonation, look, and expression, pricked up her

ears from the beginning of the meal and was certain that there was

some secret between her father and Anna Mikhaylovna, that it had

something to do with her brother, and that Anna Mikhaylovna was

preparing them for it. Bold as she was, Natasha, who knew how

sensitive her mother was to anything relating to Nikolenka, did not

venture to ask any questions at dinner, but she was too excited to eat

anything and kept wriggling about on her chair regardless of her

governess' remarks. After dinner, she rushed head long after Anna

Mikhaylovna and, dashing at her, flung herself on her neck as soon

as she overtook her in the sitting room.



"Auntie, darling, do tell me what it is!"



"Nothing, my dear."



"No, dearest, sweet one, honey, I won't give up--I know you know

something."



Anna Mikhaylovna shook her head.



"You are a little slyboots," she said.



"A letter from Nikolenka! I'm sure of it!" exclaimed Natasha,

reading confirmation in Anna Mikhaylovna's face.



"But for God's sake, be careful, you know how it may affect your

mamma."



"I will, I will, only tell me! You won't? Then I will go and tell at

once."



Anna Mikhaylovna, in a few words, told her the contents of the

letter, on condition that she should tell no one.



"No, on my true word of honor," said Natasha, crossing herself,

"I won't tell anyone!" and she ran off at once to Sonya.



"Nikolenka... wounded... a letter," she announced in gleeful

triumph.



"Nicholas!" was all Sonya said, instantly turning white.



Natasha, seeing the impression the of her brother's wound produced

on Sonya, felt for the first time the sorrowful side of the news.



She rushed to Sonya, hugged her, and began to cry.



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"A little wound, but he has been made an officer; he is well now, he

wrote himself," said she through her tears.



"There now! It's true that all you women are crybabies," remarked

Petya, pacing the room with large, resolute strides. "Now I'm very

glad, very glad indeed, that my brother has distinguished himself

so. You are all blubberers and understand nothing."



Natasha smiled through her tears.



"You haven't read the letter?" asked Sonya.



"No, but she said that it was all over and that he's now an

officer."



"Thank God!" said Sonya, crossing herself. "But perhaps she deceived

you. Let us go to Mamma."



Petya paced the room in silence for a time.



"If I'd been in Nikolenka's place I would have killed even more of

those Frenchmen," he said. "What nasty brutes they are! I'd have

killed so many that there'd have been a heap of them."



"Hold your tongue, Petya, what a goose you are!"



"I'm not a goose, but they are who cry about trifles," said Petya.



"Do you remember him?" Natasha suddenly asked, after a moment's

silence.



Sonya smiled.



"Do I remember Nicholas?"



"No, Sonya, but do you remember so that you remember him

perfectly, remember everything?" said Natasha, with an expressive

gesture, evidently wishing to give her words a very definite

meaning. "I remember Nikolenka too, I remember him well," she said.

"But I don't remember Boris. I don't remember him a bit."



"What! You don't remember Boris?" asked Sonya in surprise.



"It's not that I don't remember--I know what he is like, but not

as I remember Nikolenka. Him--I just shut my eyes and remember, but

Boris... No!" (She shut her eyes.)"No! there's nothing at all."



"Oh, Natasha!" said Sonya, looking ecstatically and earnestly at her

friend as if she did not consider her worthy to hear what she meant to

say and as if she were saying it to someone else, with whom joking was

out of the question, "I am in love with your brother once for all and,

whatever may happen to him or to me, shall never cease to love him

as long as I live."



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Natasha looked at Sonya with wondering and inquisitive eyes, and

said nothing. She felt that Sonya was speaking the truth, that there

was such love as Sonya was speaking of. But Natasha had not yet felt

anything like it. She believed it could be, but did not understand it.



"Shall you write to him?" she asked.



Sonya became thoughtful. The question of how to write to Nicholas,

and whether she ought to write, tormented her. Now that he was already

an officer and a wounded hero, would it be right to remind him of

herself and, as it might seem, of the obligations to her he had

taken on himself?



"I don't know. I think if he writes, I will write too," she said,

blushing.



"And you won't feel ashamed to write to him?"



Sonya smiled.



"No."



"And I should be ashamed to write to Boris. I'm not going to."



"Why should you be ashamed?"



"Well, I don't know. It's awkward and would make me ashamed."



"And I know why she'd be ashamed," said Petya, offended by Natasha's

previous remark. "It's because she was in love with that fat one in

spectacles" (that was how Petya described his namesake, the new

Count Bezukhov) "and now she's in love with that singer" (he meant

Natasha's Italian singing master), "that's why she's ashamed!"



"Petya, you're a stupid!" said Natasha.



"Not more stupid than you, madam," said the nine-year-old Petya,

with the air of an old brigadier.



The countess had been prepared by Anna Mikhaylovna's hints at

dinner. On retiring to her own room, she sat in an armchair, her

eyes fixed on a miniature portrait of her son on the lid of a

snuffbox, while the tears kept coming into her eyes. Anna Mikhaylovna,

with the letter, came on tiptoe to the countess' door and paused.



"Don't come in," she said to the old count who was following her.

"Come later." And she went in, closing the door behind her.



The count put his ear to the keyhole and listened.



At first he heard the sound of indifferent voices, then Anna

Mikhaylovna's voice alone in a long speech, then a cry, then

silence, then both voices together with glad intonations, and then

footsteps. Anna Mikhaylovna opened the door. Her face wore the proud

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expression of a surgeon who has just performed a difficult operation

and admits the public to appreciate his skill.



"It is done!" she said to the count, pointing triumphantly to the

countess, who sat holding in one hand the snuffbox with its portrait

and in the other the letter, and pressing them alternately to her

lips.



When she saw the count, she stretched out her arms to him,

embraced his bald head, over which she again looked at the letter

and the portrait, and in order to press them again to her lips, she

slightly pushed away the bald head. Vera, Natasha, Sonya, and Petya

now entered the room, and the reading of the letter began. After a

brief description of the campaign and the two battles in which he

had taken part, and his promotion, Nicholas said that he kissed his

father's and mother's hands asking for their blessing, and that he

kissed Vera, Natasha, and Petya. Besides that, he sent greetings to

Monsieur Schelling, Madame Schoss, and his old nurse, and asked them

to kiss for him "dear Sonya, whom he loved and thought of just the

same as ever." When she heard this Sonya blushed so that tears came

into her eyes and, unable to bear the looks turned upon her, ran

away into the dancing hall, whirled round it at full speed with her

dress puffed out like a balloon, and, flushed and smiling, plumped

down on the floor. The countess was crying.



"Why are you crying, Mamma?" asked Vera. "From all he says one

should be glad and not cry."



This was quite true, but the count, the countess, and Natasha looked

at her reproachfully. "And who is it she takes after?" thought the

countess.



Nicholas' letter was read over hundreds of times, and those who were

considered worthy to hear it had to come to the countess, for she

did not let it out of her hands. The tutors came, and the nurses,

and Dmitri, and several acquaintances, and the countess reread the

letter each time with fresh pleasure and each time discovered in it

fresh proofs of Nikolenka's virtues. How strange, how extraordinary,

how joyful it seemed, that her son, the scarcely perceptible motion of

whose tiny limbs she had felt twenty years ago within her, that son

about whom she used to have quarrels with the too indulgent count,

that son who had first learned to say "pear" and then "granny," that

this son should now be away in a foreign land amid strange

surroundings, a manly warrior doing some kind of man's work of his

own, without help or guidance. The universal experience of ages,

showing that children do grow imperceptibly from the cradle to

manhood, did not exist for the countess. Her son's growth toward

manhood, at each of its stages, had seemed as extraordinary to her

as if there had never existed the millions of human beings who grew up

in the same way. As twenty years before, it seemed impossible that the

little creature who lived somewhere under her heart would ever cry,

suck her breast, and begin to speak, so now she could not believe that

that little creature could be this strong, brave man, this model son

and officer that, judging by this letter, he now was.

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"What a style! How charmingly he describes!" said she, reading the

descriptive part of the letter. "And what a soul! Not a word about

himself.... Not a word! About some Denisov or other, though he

himself, I dare say, is braver than any of them. He says nothing about

his sufferings. What a heart! How like him it is! And how he has

remembered everybody! Not forgetting anyone. I always said when he was

only so high--I always said...."



For more than a week preparations were being made, rough drafts of

letters to Nicholas from all the household were written and copied

out, while under the supervision of the countess and the solicitude of

the count, money and all things necessary for the uniform and

equipment of the newly commissioned officer were collected. Anna

Mikhaylovna, practical woman that she was, had even managed by favor

with army authorities to secure advantageous means of communication

for herself and her son. She had opportunities of sending her

letters to the Grand Duke Constantine Pavlovich, who commanded the

Guards. The Rostovs supposed that The Russian Guards, Abroad, was

quite a definite address, and that if a letter reached the Grand

Duke in command of the Guards there was no reason why it should not

reach the Pavlograd regiment, which was presumably somewhere in the

same neighborhood. And so it was decided to send the letters and money

by the Grand Duke's courier to Boris and Boris was to forward them

to Nicholas. The letters were from the old count, the countess, Petya,

Vera, Natasha, and Sonya, and finally there were six thousand rubles

for his outfit and various other things the old count sent to his son.









CHAPTER VII





On the twelfth of November, Kutuzov's active army, in camp before

Olmutz, was preparing to be reviewed next day by the two Emperors--the

Russian and the Austrian. The Guards, just arrived from Russia,

spent the night ten miles from Olmutz and next morning were to come

straight to the review, reaching the field at Olmutz by ten o'clock.



That day Nicholas Rostov received a letter from Boris, telling him

that the Ismaylov regiment was quartered for the night ten miles

from Olmutz and that he wanted to see him as he had a letter and money

for him. Rostov was particularly in need of money now that the troops,

after their active service, were stationed near Olmutz and the camp

swarmed with well-provisioned sutlers and Austrian Jews offering all

sorts of tempting wares. The Pavlograds held feast after feast,

celebrating awards they had received for the campaign, and made

expeditions to Olmutz to visit a certain Caroline the Hungarian, who

had recently opened a restaurant there with girls as waitresses.

Rostov, who had just celebrated his promotion to a cornetcy and bought

Denisov's horse, Bedouin, was in debt all round, to his comrades and

the sutlers. On receiving Boris' letter he rode with a fellow

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officer to Olmutz, dined there, drank a bottle of wine, and then set

off alone to the Guards' camp to find his old playmate. Rostov had not

yet had time to get his uniform. He had on a shabby cadet jacket,

decorated with a soldier's cross, equally shabby cadet's riding

breeches lined with worn leather, and an officer's saber with a

sword knot. The Don horse he was riding was one he had bought from a

Cossack during the campaign, and he wore a crumpled hussar cap stuck

jauntily back on one side of his head. As he rode up to the camp he

thought how he would impress Boris and all his comrades of the

Guards by his appearance--that of a fighting hussar who had been under

fire.



The Guards had made their whole march as if on a pleasure trip,

parading their cleanliness and discipline. They had come by easy

stages, their knapsacks conveyed on carts, and the Austrian

authorities had provided excellent dinners for the officers at every

halting place. The regiments had entered and left the town with

their bands playing, and by the Grand Duke's orders the men had

marched all the way in step (a practice on which the Guards prided

themselves), the officers on foot and at their proper posts. Boris had

been quartered, and had marched all the way, with Berg who was already

in command of a company. Berg, who had obtained his captaincy during

the campaign, had gained the confidence of his superiors by his

promptitude and accuracy and had arranged his money matters very

satisfactorily. Boris, during the campaign, had made the

acquaintance of many persons who might prove useful to him, and by a

letter of recommendation he had brought from Pierre had become

acquainted with Prince Andrew Bolkonski, through whom he hoped to

obtain a post on the commander in chief's staff. Berg and Boris,

having rested after yesterday's march, were sitting, clean and

neatly dressed, at a round table in the clean quarters allotted to

them, playing chess. Berg held a smoking pipe between his knees.

Boris, in the accurate way characteristic of him, was building a

little pyramid of chessmen with his delicate white fingers while

awaiting Berg's move, and watched his opponent's face, evidently

thinking about the game as he always thought only of whatever he was

engaged on.



"Well, how are you going to get out of that?" he remarked.



"We'll try to," replied Berg, touching a pawn and then removing

his hand.



At that moment the door opened.



"Here he is at last!" shouted Rostov. "And Berg too! Oh, you

petisenfans, allay cushay dormir!" he exclaimed, imitating his Russian

nurse's French, at which he and Boris used to laugh long ago.



"Dear me, how you have changed!"



Boris rose to meet Rostov, but in doing so did not omit to steady

and replace some chessmen that were falling. He was about to embrace

his friend, but Nicholas avoided him. With that peculiar feeling of

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youth, that dread of beaten tracks, and wish to express itself in a

manner different from that of its elders which is often insincere,

Nicholas wished to do something special on meeting his friend. He

wanted to pinch him, push him, do anything but kiss him--a thing

everybody did. But notwithstanding this, Boris embraced him in a

quiet, friendly way and kissed him three times.



They had not met for nearly half a year and, being at the age when

young men take their first steps on life's road, each saw immense

changes in the other, quite a new reflection of the society in which

they had taken those first steps. Both had changed greatly since

they last met and both were in a hurry to show the changes that had

taken place in them.



"Oh, you damned dandies! Clean and fresh as if you'd been to a fete,

not like us sinners of the line," cried Rostov, with martial swagger

and with baritone notes in his voice, new to Boris, pointing to his

own mud-bespattered breeches. The German landlady, hearing Rostov's

loud voice, popped her head in at the door.



"Eh, is she pretty?" he asked with a wink.



"Why do you shout so? You'll frighten them!" said Boris. "I did

not expect you today," he added. "I only sent you the note yesterday

by Bolkonski--an adjutant of Kutuzov's, who's a friend of mine. I

did not think he would get it to you so quickly.... Well, how are you?

Been under fire already?" asked Boris.



Without answering, Rostov shook the soldier's Cross of St. George

fastened to the cording of his uniform and, indicating a bandaged arm,

glanced at Berg with a smile.



"As you see," he said.



"Indeed? Yes, yes!" said Boris, with a smile. "And we too have had a

splendid march. You know, of course, that His Imperial Highness rode

with our regiment all the time, so that we had every comfort and every

advantage. What receptions we had in Poland! What dinners and balls! I

can't tell you. And the Tsarevich was very gracious to all our

officers."



And the two friends told each other of their doings, the one of

his hussar revels and life in the fighting line, the other of the

pleasures and advantages of service under members of the Imperial

family.



"Oh, you Guards!" said Rostov. "I say, send for some wine."



Boris made a grimace.



"If you really want it," said he.



He went to his bed, drew a purse from under the clean pillow, and

sent for wine.

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"Yes, and I have some money and a letter to give you," he added.



Rostov took the letter and, throwing the money on the sofa, put both

arms on the table and began to read. After reading a few lines, he

glanced angrily at Berg, then, meeting his eyes, hid his face behind

the letter.



"Well, they've sent you a tidy sum," said Berg, eying the heavy

purse that sank into the sofa. "As for us, Count, we get along on

our pay. I can tell you for myself..."



"I say, Berg, my dear fellow," said Rostov, "when you get a letter

from home and meet one of your own people whom you want to talk

everything over with, and I happen to be there, I'll go at once, to be

out of your way! Do go somewhere, anywhere... to the devil!" he

exclaimed, and immediately seizing him by the shoulder and looking

amiably into his face, evidently wishing to soften the rudeness of his

words, he added, "Don't be hurt, my dear fellow; you know I speak from

my heart as to an old acquaintance."



"Oh, don't mention it, Count! I quite understand," said Berg,

getting up and speaking in a muffled and guttural voice.



"Go across to our hosts: they invited you," added Boris.



Berg put on the cleanest of coats, without a spot or speck of

dust, stood before a looking glass and brushed the hair on his temples

upwards, in the way affected by the Emperor Alexander, and, having

assured himself from the way Rostov looked at it that his coat had

been noticed, left the room with a pleasant smile.



"Oh dear, what a beast I am!" muttered Rostov, as he read the

letter.



"Why?"



"Oh, what a pig I am, not to have written and to have given them

such a fright! Oh, what a pig I am!" he repeated, flushing suddenly.

"Well, have you sent Gabriel for some wine? All right let's have

some!"



In the letter from his parents was enclosed a letter of

recommendation to Bagration which the old countess at Anna

Mikhaylovna's advice had obtained through an acquaintance and sent

to her son, asking him to take it to its destination and make use of

it.



"What nonsense! Much I need it!" said Rostov, throwing the letter

under the table.



"Why have you thrown that away?" asked Boris.



"It is some letter of recommendation... what the devil do I want

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it for!"



"Why 'What the devil'?" said Boris, picking it up and reading the

address. "This letter would be of great use to you."



"I want nothing, and I won't be anyone's adjutant."



"Why not?" inquired Boris.



"It's a lackey's job!"



"You are still the same dreamer, I see," remarked Boris, shaking his

head.



"And you're still the same diplomatist! But that's not the

point... Come, how are you?" asked Rostov.



"Well, as you see. So far everything's all right, but I confess I

should much like to be an adjutant and not remain at the front."



"Why?"



"Because when once a man starts on military service, he should try

to make as successful a career of it as possible."



"Oh, that's it!" said Rostov, evidently thinking of something else.



He looked intently and inquiringly into his friend's eyes, evidently

trying in vain to find the answer to some question.



Old Gabriel brought in the wine.



"Shouldn't we now send for Berg?" asked Boris. "He would drink

with you. I can't."



"Well, send for him... and how do you get on with that German?"

asked Rostov, with a contemptuous smile.



"He is a very, very nice, honest, and pleasant fellow," answered

Boris.



Again Rostov looked intently into Boris' eyes and sighed. Berg

returned, and over the bottle of wine conversation between the three

officers became animated. The Guardsmen told Rostov of their march and

how they had been made much of in Russia, Poland, and abroad. They

spoke of the sayings and doings of their commander, the Grand Duke,

and told stories of his kindness and irascibility. Berg, as usual,

kept silent when the subject did not relate to himself, but in

connection with the stories of the Grand Duke's quick temper he

related with gusto how in Galicia he had managed to deal with the

Grand Duke when the latter made a tour of the regiments and was

annoyed at the irregularity of a movement. With a pleasant smile

Berg related how the Grand Duke had ridden up to him in a violent

passion, shouting: "Arnauts!" ("Arnauts" was the Tsarevich's

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favorite expression when he was in a rage) and called for the

company commander.



"Would you believe it, Count, I was not at all alarmed, because I

knew I was right. Without boasting, you know, I may say that I know

the Army Orders by heart and know the Regulations as well as I do

the Lord's Prayer. So, Count, there never is any negligence in my

company, and so my conscience was at ease. I came forward...." (Berg

stood up and showed how he presented himself, with his hand to his

cap, and really it would have been difficult for a face to express

greater respect and self-complacency than his did.) "Well, he

stormed at me, as the saying is, stormed and stormed and stormed! It

was not a matter of life but rather of death, as the saying is.

'Albanians!' and 'devils!' and 'To Siberia!'" said Berg with a

sagacious smile. "I knew I was in the right so I kept silent; was

not that best, Count?... 'Hey, are you dumb?' he shouted. Still I

remained silent. And what do you think, Count? The next day it was not

even mentioned in the Orders of the Day. That's what keeping one's

head means. That's the way, Count," said Berg, lighting his pipe and

emitting rings of smoke.



"Yes, that was fine," said Rostov, smiling.



But Boris noticed that he was preparing to make fun of Berg, and

skillfully changed the subject. He asked him to tell them how and

where he got his wound. This pleased Rostov and he began talking about

it, and as he went on became more and more animated. He told them of

his Schon Grabern affair, just as those who have taken part in a

battle generally do describe it, that is, as they would like it to

have been, as they have heard it described by others, and as sounds

well, but not at all as it really was. Rostov was a truthful young man

and would on no account have told a deliberate lie. He began his story

meaning to tell everything just as it happened, but imperceptibly,

involuntarily, and inevitably he lapsed into falsehood. If he had told

the truth to his hearers--who like himself had often heard stories

of attacks and had formed a definite idea of what an attack was and

were expecting to hear just such a story--they would either not have

believed him or, still worse, would have thought that Rostov was

himself to blame since what generally happens to the narrators of

cavalry attacks had not happened to him. He could not tell them simply

that everyone went at a trot and that he fell off his horse and

sprained his arm and then ran as hard as he could from a Frenchman

into the wood. Besides, to tell everything as it really happened, it

would have been necessary to make an effort of will to tell only

what happened. It is very difficult to tell the truth, and young

people are rarely capable of it. His hearers expected a story of how

beside himself and all aflame with excitement, he had flown like a

storm at the square, cut his way in, slashed right and left, how his

saber had tasted flesh and he had fallen exhausted, and so on. And

so he told them all that.



In the middle of his story, just as he was saying: "You cannot

imagine what a strange frenzy one experiences during an attack,"

Prince Andrew, whom Boris was expecting, entered the room. Prince

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Andrew, who liked to help young men, was flattered by being asked

for his assistance and being well disposed toward Boris, who had

managed to please him the day before, he wished to do what the young

man wanted. Having been sent with papers from Kutuzov to the

Tsarevich, he looked in on Boris, hoping to find him alone. When he

came in and saw an hussar of the line recounting his military exploits

(Prince Andrew could not endure that sort of man), he gave Boris a

pleasant smile, frowned as with half-closed eyes he looked at

Rostov, bowed slightly and wearily, and sat down languidly on the

sofa: he felt it unpleasant to have dropped in on bad company.

Rostov flushed up on noticing this, but he did not care, this was a

mere stranger. Glancing, however, at Boris, he saw that he too

seemed ashamed of the hussar of the line.



In spite of Prince Andrew's disagreeable, ironical tone, in spite of

the contempt with which Rostov, from his fighting army point of

view, regarded all these little adjutants on the staff of whom the

newcomer was evidently one, Rostov felt confused, blushed, and

became silent. Boris inquired what news there might be on the staff,

and what, without indiscretion, one might ask about our plans.



"We shall probably advance," replied Bolkonski, evidently

reluctant to say more in the presence of a stranger.



Berg took the opportunity to ask, with great politeness, whether, as

was rumored, the allowance of forage money to captains of companies

would be doubled. To this Prince Andrew answered with a smile that

he could give no opinion on such an important government order, and

Berg laughed gaily.



"As to your business," Prince Andrew continued, addressing Boris,

"we will talk of it later" (and he looked round at Rostov). "Come to

me after the review and we will do what is possible."



And, having glanced round the room, Prince Andrew turned to

Rostov, whose state of unconquerable childish embarrassment now

changing to anger he did not condescend to notice, and said: "I

think you were talking of the Schon Grabern affair? Were you there?"



"I was there," said Rostov angrily, as if intending to insult the

aide-de-camp.



Bolkonski noticed the hussar's state of mind, and it amused him.

With a slightly contemptuous smile, he said: "Yes, there are many

stories now told about that affair!"



"Yes, stories!" repeated Rostov loudly, looking with eyes suddenly

grown furious, now at Boris, now at Bolkonski. "Yes, many stories! But

our stories are the stories of men who have been under the enemy's

fire! Our stories have some weight, not like the stories of those

fellows on the staff who get rewards without doing anything!"



"Of whom you imagine me to be one?" said Prince Andrew, with a quiet

and particularly amiable smile.

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A strange feeling of exasperation and yet of respect for this

man's self-possession mingled at that moment in Rostov's soul.



"I am not talking about you," he said, "I don't know you and,

frankly, I don't want to. I am speaking of the staff in general."



"And I will tell you this," Prince Andrew interrupted in a tone of

quiet authority, "you wish to insult me, and I am ready to agree

with you that it would be very easy to do so if you haven't sufficient

self-respect, but admit that the time and place are very badly chosen.

In a day or two we shall all have to take part in a greater and more

serious duel, and besides, Drubetskoy, who says he is an old friend of

yours, is not at all to blame that my face has the misfortune to

displease you. However," he added rising, "you know my name and

where to find me, but don't forget that I do not regard either

myself or you as having been at all insulted, and as a man older

than you, my advice is to let the matter drop. Well then, on Friday

after the review I shall expect you, Drubetskoy. Au revoir!" exclaimed

Prince Andrew, and with a bow to them both he went out.



Only when Prince Andrew was gone did Rostov think of what he ought

to have said. And he was still more angry at having omitted to say it.

He ordered his horse at once and, coldly taking leave of Boris, rode

home. Should he go to headquarters next day and challenge that

affected adjutant, or really let the matter drop, was the question

that worried him all the way. He thought angrily of the pleasure he

would have at seeing the fright of that small and frail but proud

man when covered by his pistol, and then he felt with surprise that of

all the men he knew there was none he would so much like to have for a

friend as that very adjutant whom he so hated.









CHAPTER VIII





The day after Rostov had been to see Boris, a review was held of the

Austrian and Russian troops, both those freshly arrived from Russia

and those who had been campaigning under Kutuzov. The two Emperors,

the Russian with his heir the Tsarevich, and the Austrian with the

Archduke, inspected the allied army of eighty thousand men.



From early morning the smart clean troops were on the move,

forming up on the field before the fortress. Now thousands of feet and

bayonets moved and halted at the officers' command, turned with

banners flying, formed up at intervals, and wheeled round other

similar masses of infantry in different uniforms; now was heard the

rhythmic beat of hoofs and the jingling of showy cavalry in blue, red,

and green braided uniforms, with smartly dressed bandsmen in front

mounted on black, roan, or gray horses; then again, spreading out with

the brazen clatter of the polished shining cannon that quivered on the

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gun carriages and with the smell of linstocks, came the artillery

which crawled between the infantry and cavalry and took up its

appointed position. Not only the generals in full parade uniforms,

with their thin or thick waists drawn in to the utmost, their red

necks squeezed into their stiff collars, and wearing scarves and all

their decorations, not only the elegant, pomaded officers, but every

soldier with his freshly washed and shaven face and his weapons

clean and polished to the utmost, and every horse groomed till its

coat shone like satin and every hair of its wetted mane lay smooth-

felt that no small matter was happening, but an important and solemn

affair. Every general and every soldier was conscious of his own

insignificance, aware of being but a drop in that ocean of men, and

yet at the same time was conscious of his strength as a part of that

enormous whole.



From early morning strenuous activities and efforts had begun and by

ten o'clock all had been brought into due order. The ranks were

drown up on the vast field. The whole army was extended in three

lines: the cavalry in front, behind it the artillery, and behind

that again the infantry.



A space like a street was left between each two lines of troops. The

three parts of that army were sharply distinguished: Kutuzov's

fighting army (with the Pavlograds on the right flank of the front);

those recently arrived from Russia, both Guards and regiments of the

line; and the Austrian troops. But they all stood in the same lines,

under one command, and in a like order.



Like wind over leaves ran an excited whisper: "They're coming!

They're coming!" Alarmed voices were heard, and a stir of final

preparation swept over all the troops.



From the direction of Olmutz in front of them, a group was seen

approaching. And at that moment, though the day was still, a light

gust of wind blowing over the army slightly stirred the streamers on

the lances and the unfolded standards fluttered against their

staffs. It looked as if by that slight motion the army itself was

expressing its joy at the approach of the Emperors. One voice was

heard shouting: "Eyes front!" Then, like the crowing of cocks at

sunrise, this was repeated by others from various sides and all became

silent.



In the deathlike stillness only the tramp of horses was heard.

This was the Emperors' suites. The Emperors rode up to the flank,

and the trumpets of the first cavalry regiment played the general

march. It seemed as though not the trumpeters were playing, but as

if the army itself, rejoicing at the Emperors' approach, had naturally

burst into music. Amid these sounds, only the youthful kindly voice of

the Emperor Alexander was clearly heard. He gave the words of

greeting, and the first regiment roared "Hurrah!" so deafeningly,

continuously, and joyfully that the men themselves were awed by

their multitude and the immensity of the power they constituted.



Rostov, standing in the front lines of Kutuzov's army which the Tsar

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approached first, experienced the same feeling as every other man in

that army: a feeling of self-forgetfulness, a proud consciousness of

might, and a passionate attraction to him who was the cause of this

triumph.



He felt that at a single word from that man all this vast mass

(and he himself an insignificant atom in it) would go through fire and

water, commit crime, die, or perform deeds of highest heroism, and

so he could not but tremble and his heart stand still at the imminence

of that word.



"Hurrah! Hurrah! Hurrah!" thundered from all sides, one regiment

after another greeting the Tsar with the strains of the march, and

then "Hurrah!"... Then the general march, and again "Hurrah!

Hurrah!" growing ever stronger and fuller and merging into a deafening

roar.



Till the Tsar reached it, each regiment in its silence and

immobility seemed like a lifeless body, but as soon as he came up it

became alive, its thunder joining the roar of the whole line along

which he had already passed. Through the terrible and deafening roar

of those voices, amid the square masses of troops standing

motionless as if turned to stone, hundreds of riders composing the

suites moved carelessly but symmetrically and above all freely, and in

front of them two men--the Emperors. Upon them the undivided,

tensely passionate attention of that whole mass of men was

concentrated.



The handsome young Emperor Alexander, in the uniform of the Horse

Guards, wearing a cocked hat with its peaks front and back, with his

pleasant face and resonant though not loud voice, attracted everyone's

attention.



Rostov was not far from the trumpeters, and with his keen sight

had recognized the Tsar and watched his approach. When he was within

twenty paces, and Nicholas could clearly distinguish every detail of

his handsome, happy young face, he experienced a feeling tenderness

and ecstasy such as he had never before known. Every trait and every

movement of the Tsar's seemed to him enchanting.



Stopping in front of the Pavlograds, the Tsar said something in

French to the Austrian Emperor and smiled.



Seeing that smile, Rostov involuntarily smiled himself and felt a

still stronger flow of love for his sovereign. He longed to show

that love in some way and knowing that this was impossible was ready

to cry. The Tsar called the colonel of the regiment and said a few

words to him.



"Oh God, what would happen to me if the Emperor spoke to me?"

thought Rostov. "I should die of happiness!"



The Tsar addressed the officers also: "I thank you all, gentlemen, I

thank you with my whole heart." To Rostov every word sounded like a

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voice from heaven. How gladly would he have died at once for his Tsar!



"You have earned the St. George's standards and will be worthy of

them."



"Oh, to die, to die for him," thought Rostov.



The Tsar said something more which Rostov did not hear, and the

soldiers, straining their lungs, shouted "Hurrah!"



Rostov too, bending over his saddle, shouted "Hurrah!" with all

his might, feeling that he would like to injure himself by that shout,

if only to express his rapture fully.



The Tsar stopped a few minutes in front of the hussars as if

undecided.



"How can the Emperor be undecided?" thought Rostov, but then even

this indecision appeared to him majestic and enchanting, like

everything else the Tsar did.



That hesitation lasted only an instant. The Tsar's foot, in the

narrow pointed boot then fashionable, touched the groin of the

bobtailed bay mare he rode, his hand in a white glove gathered up

the reins, and he moved off accompanied by an irregularly swaying

sea of aides-de-camp. Farther and farther he rode away, stopping at

other regiments, till at last only his white plumes were visible to

Rostov from amid the suites that surrounded the Emperors.



Among the gentlemen of the suite, Rostov noticed Bolkonski,

sitting his horse indolently and carelessly. Rostov recalled their

quarrel of yesterday and the question presented itself whether he

ought or ought not to challenge Bolkonski. "Of course not!" he now

thought. "Is it worth thinking or speaking of it at such a moment?

At a time of such love, such rapture, and such self-sacrifice, what do

any of our quarrels and affronts matter? I love and forgive

everybody now."



When the Emperor had passed nearly all the regiments, the troops

began a ceremonial march past him, and Rostov on Bedouin, recently

purchased from Denisov, rode past too, at the rear of his squadron-

that is, alone and in full view of the Emperor.



Before he reached him, Rostov, who was a splendid horseman,

spurred Bedouin twice and successfully put him to the showy trot in

which the animal went when excited. Bending his foaming muzzle to

his chest, his tail extended, Bedouin, as if also conscious of the

Emperor's eye upon him, passed splendidly, lifting his feet with a

high and graceful action, as if flying through the air without

touching the ground.



Rostov himself, his legs well back and his stomach drawn in and

feeling himself one with his horse, rode past the Emperor with a

frowning but blissful face "like a vewy devil," as Denisov expressed

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it.



"Fine fellows, the Pavlograds!" remarked the Emperor.



"My God, how happy I should be if he ordered me to leap into the

fire this instant!" thought Rostov.



When the review was over, the newly arrived officers, and also

Kutuzov's, collected in groups and began to talk about the awards,

about the Austrians and their uniforms, about their lines, about

Bonaparte, and how badly the latter would fare now, especially if

the Essen corps arrived and Prussia took our side.



But the talk in every group was chiefly about the Emperor Alexander.

His every word and movement was described with ecstasy.



They all had but one wish: to advance as soon as possible against

the enemy under the Emperor's command. Commanded by the Emperor

himself they could not fail to vanquish anyone, be it whom it might:

so thought Rostov and most of the officers after the review.



All were then more confident of victory than the winning of two

battles would have made them.









CHAPTER IX





The day after the review, Boris, in his best uniform and with his

comrade Berg's best wishes for success, rode to Olmutz to see

Bolkonski, wishing to profit by his friendliness and obtain for

himself the best post he could--preferably that of adjutant to some

important personage, a position in the army which seemed to him most

attractive. "It is all very well for Rostov, whose father sends him

ten thousand rubles at a time, to talk about not wishing to cringe

to anybody and not be anyone's lackey, but I who have nothing but my

brains have to make a career and must not miss opportunities, but must

avail myself of them!" he reflected.



He did not find Prince Andrew in Olmutz that day, but the appearance

of the town where the headquarters and the diplomatic corps were

stationed and the two Emperors were living with their suites,

households, and courts only strengthened his desire to belong to

that higher world.



He knew no one, and despite his smart Guardsman's uniform, all these

exalted personages passing in the streets in their elegant carriages

with their plumes, ribbons, and medals, both courtiers and military

men, seemed so immeasurably above him, an insignificant officer of the

Guards, that they not only did not wish to, but simply could not, be

aware of his existence. At the quarters of the commander in chief,

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Kutuzov, where he inquired for Bolkonski, all the adjutants and even

the orderlies looked at him as if they wished to impress on him that a

great many officers like him were always coming there and that

everybody was heartily sick of them. In spite of this, or rather

because of it, next day, November 15, after dinner he again went to

Olmutz and, entering the house occupied by Kutuzov, asked for

Bolkonski. Prince Andrew was in and Boris was shown into a large

hall probably formerly used for dancing, but in which five beds now

stood, and furniture of various kinds: a table, chairs, and a

clavichord. One adjutant, nearest the door, was sitting at the table

in a Persian dressing gown, writing. Another, the red, stout

Nesvitski, lay on a bed with his arms under his head, laughing with an

officer who had sat down beside him. A third was playing a Viennese

waltz on the clavichord, while a fourth, lying on the clavichord, sang

the tune. Bolkonski was not there. None of these gentlemen changed his

position on seeing Boris. The one who was writing and whom Boris

addressed turned round crossly and told him Bolkonski was on duty

and that he should go through the door on the left into the

reception room if he wished to see him. Boris thanked him and went

to the reception room, where he found some ten officers and generals.



When he entered, Prince Andrew, his eyes drooping contemptuously

(with that peculiar expression of polite weariness which plainly says,

"If it were not my duty I would not talk to you for a moment"), was

listening to an old Russian general with decorations, who stood very

erect, almost on tiptoe, with a soldier's obsequious expression on his

purple face, reporting something.



"Very well, then, be so good as to wait," said Prince Andrew to

the general, in Russian, speaking with the French intonation he

affected when he wished to speak contemptuously, and noticing Boris,

Prince Andrew, paying no more heed to the general who ran after him

imploring him to hear something more, nodded and turned to him with

a cheerful smile.



At that moment Boris clearly realized what he had before surmised,

that in the army, besides the subordination and discipline

prescribed in the military code, which he and the others knew in the

regiment, there was another, more important, subordination, which made

this tight-laced, purple-faced general wait respectfully while Captain

Prince Andrew, for his own pleasure, chose to chat with Lieutenant

Drubetskoy. More than ever was Boris resolved to serve in future not

according to the written code, but under this unwritten law. He felt

now that merely by having been recommended to Prince Andrew he had

already risen above the general who at the front had the power to

annihilate him, a lieutenant of the Guards. Prince Andrew came up to

him and took his hand.



"I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing

about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the

dispositions. When Germans start being accurate, there's no end to

it!"



Boris smiled, as if he understood what Prince Andrew was alluding to

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as something generally known. But it the first time he had heard

Weyrother's name, or even the term "dispositions."



"Well, my dear fellow, so you still want to be an adjutant? I have

been thinking about you."



"Yes, I was thinking"--for some reason Boris could not help

blushing--"of asking the commander in chief. He has had a letter

from Prince Kuragin about me. I only wanted to ask because I fear

the Guards won't be in action," he added as if in apology.



"All right, all right. We'll talk it over," replied Prince Andrew.

"Only let me report this gentleman's business, and I shall be at

your disposal."



While Prince Andrew went to report about the purple-faced general,

that gentleman--evidently not sharing Boris' conception of the

advantages of the unwritten code of subordination--looked so fixedly

at the presumptuous lieutenant who had prevented his finishing what he

had to say to the adjutant that Boris felt uncomfortable. He turned

away and waited impatiently for Prince Andrew's return from the

commander in chief's room.



"You see, my dear fellow, I have been thinking about you," said

Prince Andrew when they had gone into the large room where the

clavichord was. "It's no use your going to the commander in chief.

He would say a lot of pleasant things, ask you to dinner" ("That would

not be bad as regards the unwritten code," thought Boris), "but

nothing more would come of it. There will soon be a battalion of us

aides-de-camp and adjutants! But this is what we'll do: I have a

good friend, an adjutant general and an excellent fellow, Prince

Dolgorukov; and though you may not know it, the fact is that now

Kutuzov with his staff and all of us count for nothing. Everything

is now centered round the Emperor. So we will go to Dolgorukov; I have

to go there anyhow and I have already spoken to him about you. We

shall see whether he cannot attach you to himself or find a place

for you somewhere nearer the sun."



Prince Andrew always became specially keen when he had to guide a

young man and help him to worldly success. Under cover of obtaining

help of this kind for another, which from pride he would never

accept for himself, he kept in touch with the circle which confers

success and which attracted him. He very readily took up Boris'

cause and went with him to Dolgorukov.



It was late in the evening when they entered the palace at Olmutz

occupied by the Emperors and their retinues.



That same day a council of war had been held in which all the

members of the Hofkriegsrath and both Emperors took part. At that

council, contrary to the views of the old generals Kutuzov and

Prince Schwartzenberg, it had been decided to advance immediately

and give battle to Bonaparte. The council of war was just over when

Prince Andrew accompanied by Boris arrived at the palace to find

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Dolgorukov. Everyone at headquarters was still under the spell of

the day's council, at which the party of the young had triumphed.

The voices of those who counseled delay and advised waiting for

something else before advancing had been so completely silenced and

their arguments confuted by such conclusive evidence of the advantages

of attacking that what had been discussed at the council--the coming

battle and the victory that would certainly result from it--no

longer seemed to be in the future but in the past. All the

advantages were on our side. Our enormous forces, undoubtedly superior

to Napoleon's, were concentrated in one place, the troops inspired

by the Emperors' presence were eager for action. The strategic

position where the operations would take place was familiar in all its

details to the Austrian General Weyrother: a lucky accident had

ordained that the Austrian army should maneuver the previous year on

the very fields where the French had now to be fought; the adjacent

locality was known and shown in every detail on the maps, and

Bonaparte, evidently weakened, was undertaking nothing.



Dolgorukov, one of the warmest advocates of an attack, had just

returned from the council, tired and exhausted but eager and proud

of the victory that had been gained. Prince Andrew introduced his

protege, but Prince Dolgorukov politely and firmly pressing his hand

said nothing to Boris and, evidently unable to suppress the thoughts

which were uppermost in his mind at that moment, addressed Prince

Andrew in French.



"Ah, my dear fellow, what a battle we have gained! God grant that

the one that will result from it will be as victorious! However,

dear fellow," he said abruptly and eagerly, "I must confess to

having been unjust to the Austrians and especially to Weyrother.

What exactitude, what minuteness, what knowledge of the locality, what

foresight for every eventuality, every possibility even to the

smallest detail! No, my dear fellow, no conditions better than our

present ones could have been devised. This combination of Austrian

precision with Russian valor--what more could be wished for?"



"So the attack is definitely resolved on?" asked Bolkonski.



"And do you know, my dear fellow, it seems to me that Bonaparte

has decidedly lost bearings, you know that a letter was received

from him today for the Emperor." Dolgorukov smiled significantly.



"Is that so? And what did he say?" inquired Bolkonski.



"What can he say? Tra-di-ri-di-ra and so on... merely to gain

time. I tell you he is in our hands, that's certain! But what was most

amusing," he continued, with a sudden, good-natured laugh, "was that

we could not think how to address the reply! If not as 'Consul' and of

course not as 'Emperor,' it seemed to me it should be to 'General

Bonaparte.'"



"But between not recognizing him as Emperor and calling him

General Bonaparte, there is a difference," remarked Bolkonski.



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"That's just it," interrupted Dolgorukov quickly, laughing. "You

know Bilibin--he's a very clever fellow. He suggested addressing him

as 'Usurper and Enemy of Mankind.'"



Dolgorukov laughed merrily.



"Only that?" said Bolkonski.



"All the same, it was Bilibin who found a suitable form for the

address. He is a wise and clever fellow."



"What was it?"



"To the Head of the French Government... Au chef du gouvernement

francais," said Dolgorukov, with grave satisfaction. "Good, wasn't

it?"



"Yes, but he will dislike it extremely," said Bolkonski.



"Oh yes, very much! My brother knows him, he's dined with him--the

present Emperor--more than once in Paris, and tells me he never met

a more cunning or subtle diplomatist--you know, a combination of

French adroitness and Italian play-acting! Do you know the tale

about him and Count Markov? Count Markov was the only man who knew how

to handle him. You know the story of the handkerchief? It is

delightful!"



And the talkative Dolgorukov, turning now to Boris, now to Prince

Andrew, told how Bonaparte wishing to test Markov, our ambassador,

purposely dropped a handkerchief in front of him and stood looking

at Markov, probably expecting Markov to pick it up for him, and how

Markov immediately dropped his own beside it and picked it up

without touching Bonaparte's.



"Delightful!" said Bolkonski. "But I have come to you, Prince, as

a petitioner on behalf of this young man. You see..." but before

Prince Andrew could finish, an aide-de-camp came in to summon

Dolgorukov to the Emperor.



"Oh, what a nuisance," said Dolgorukov, getting up hurriedly and

pressing the hands of Prince Andrew and Boris. "You know I should be

very glad to do all in my power both for you and for this dear young

man." Again he pressed the hand of the latter with an expression of

good-natured, sincere, and animated levity. "But you see... another

time!"



Boris was excited by the thought of being so close to the higher

powers as he felt himself to be at that moment. He was conscious

that here he was in contact with the springs that set in motion the

enormous movements of the mass of which in his regiment he felt

himself a tiny, obedient, and insignificant atom. They followed Prince

Dolgorukov out into the corridor and met--coming out of the door of

the Emperor's room by which Dolgorukov had entered--a short man in

civilian clothes with a clever face and sharply projecting jaw

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which, without spoiling his face, gave him a peculiar vivacity and

shiftiness of expression. This short man nodded to Dolgorukov as to an

intimate friend and stared at Prince Andrew with cool intensity,

walking straight toward him and evidently expecting him to bow or to

step out of his way. Prince Andrew did neither: a look of animosity

appeared on his face and the other turned away and went down the

side of the corridor.



"Who was that?" asked Boris.



"He is one of the most remarkable, but to me most unpleasant of men-

the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Prince Adam Czartoryski.... It is

such men as he who decide the fate of nations," added Bolkonski with a

sigh he could not suppress, as they passed out of the palace.



Next day, the army began its campaign, and up to the very battle

of Austerlitz, Boris was unable to see either Prince Andrew or

Dolgorukov again and remained for a while with the Ismaylov regiment.









CHAPTER X





At dawn on the sixteenth of November, Denisov's squadron, in which

Nicholas Rostov served and which was in Prince Bagration's detachment,

moved from the place where it had spent the night, advancing into

action as arranged, and after going behind other columns for about two

thirds of a mile was stopped on the highroad. Rostov saw the

Cossacks and then the first and second squadrons of hussars and

infantry battalions and artillery pass by and go forward and then

Generals Bagration and Dolgorukov ride past with their adjutants.

All the fear before action which he had experienced as previously, all

the inner struggle to conquer that fear, all his dreams of

distinguishing himself as a true hussar in this battle, had been

wasted. Their squadron remained in reserve and Nicholas Rostov spent

that day in a dull and wretched mood. At nine in the morning, he heard

firing in front and shouts of hurrah, and saw wounded being brought

back (there were not many of them), and at last he saw how a whole

detachment of French cavalry was brought in, convoyed by a sontnya

of Cossacks. Evidently the affair was over and, though not big, had

been a successful engagement. The men and officers returning spoke

of a brilliant victory, of the occupation of the town of Wischau and

the capture of a whole French squadron. The day was bright and sunny

after a sharp night frost, and the cheerful glitter of that autumn day

was in keeping with the news of victory which was conveyed, not only

by the tales of those who had taken part in it, but also by the joyful

expression on the faces of soldiers, officers, generals, and

adjutants, as they passed Rostov going or coming. And Nicholas, who

had vainly suffered all the dread that precedes a battle and had spent

that happy day in inactivity, was all the more depressed.



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"Come here, Wostov. Let's dwink to dwown our gwief!" shouted

Denisov, who had settled down by the roadside with a flask and some

food.



The officers gathered round Denisov's canteen, eating and talking.



"There! They are bringing another!" cried one of the officers,

indicating a captive French dragoon who was being brought in on foot

by two Cossacks.



One of them was leading by the bridle a fine large French horse he

had taken from the prisoner.



"Sell us that horse!" Denisov called out to the Cossacks.



"If you like, your honor!"



The officers got up and stood round the Cossacks and their prisoner.

The French dragoon was a young Alsatian who spoke French with a German

accent. He was breathless with agitation, his face was red, and when

he heard some French spoken he at once began speaking to the officers,

addressing first one, then another. He said he would not have been

taken, it was not his fault but the corporal's who had sent him to

seize some horsecloths, though he had told him the Russians were

there. And at every word he added: "But don't hurt my little horse!"

and stroked the animal. It was plain that he did not quite grasp where

he was. Now he excused himself for having been taken prisoner and now,

imagining himself before his own officers, insisted on his soldierly

discipline and zeal in the service. He brought with him into our

rearguard all the freshness of atmosphere of the French army, which

was so alien to us.



The Cossacks sold the horse for two gold pieces, and Rostov, being

the richest of the officers now that he had received his money, bought

it.



"But don't hurt my little horse!" said the Alsatian good-naturedly

to Rostov when the animal was handed over to the hussar.



Rostov smilingly reassured the dragoon and gave him money.



"Alley! Alley!" said the Cossack, touching the prisoner's arm to

make him go on.



"The Emperor! The Emperor!" was suddenly heard among the hussars.



All began to run and bustle, and Rostov saw coming up the road

behind him several riders with white plumes in their hats. In a moment

everyone was in his place, waiting.



Rostov did not know or remember how he ran to his place and mounted.

Instantly his regret at not having been in action and his dejected

mood amid people of whom he was weary had gone, instantly every

thought of himself had vanished. He was filled with happiness at his

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nearness to the Emperor. He felt that this nearness by itself made

up to him for the day he had lost. He was happy as a lover when the

longed-for moment of meeting arrives. Not daring to look round and

without looking round, he was ecstatically conscious of his

approach. He felt it not only from the sound of the hoofs of the

approaching cavalcade, but because as he drew near everything grew

brighter, more joyful, more significant, and more festive around

him. Nearer and nearer to Rostov came that sun shedding beams of

mild and majestic light around, and already he felt himself

enveloped in those beams, he heard his voice, that kindly, calm, and

majestic voice that was yet so simple! And as if in accord with

Rostov's feeling, there was a deathly stillness amid which was heard

the Emperor's voice.



"The Pavlograd hussars?" he inquired.



"The reserves, sire!" replied a voice, a very human one compared

to that which had said: "The Pavlograd hussars?"



The Emperor drew level with Rostov and halted. Alexander's face

was even more beautiful than it had been three days before at the

review. It shone with such gaiety and youth, such innocent youth, that

it suggested the liveliness of a fourteen-year-old boy, and yet it was

the face of the majestic Emperor. Casually, while surveying the

squadron, the Emperor's eyes met Rostov's and rested on them for not

more than two seconds. Whether or no the Emperor understood what was

going on in Rostov's soul (it seemed to Rostov that he understood

everything), at any rate his light-blue eyes gazed for about two

seconds into Rostov's face. A gentle, mild light poured from them.

Then all at once he raised his eyebrows, abruptly touched his horse

with his left foot, and galloped on.



The younger Emperor could not restrain his wish to be present at the

battle and, in spite of the remonstrances of his courtiers, at

twelve o'clock left the third column with which he had been and

galloped toward the vanguard. Before he came up with the hussars,

several adjutants met him with news of the successful result of the

action.



This battle, which consisted in the capture of a French squadron,

was represented as a brilliant victory over the French, and so the

Emperor and the whole army, especially while the smoke hung over the

battlefield, believed that the French had been defeated and were

retreating against their will. A few minutes after the Emperor had

passed, the Pavlograd division was ordered to advance. In Wischau

itself, a petty German town, Rostov saw the Emperor again. In the

market place, where there had been some rather heavy firing before the

Emperor's arrival, lay several killed and wounded soldiers whom

there had not been time to move. The Emperor, surrounded by his

suite of officers and courtiers, was riding a bobtailed chestnut mare,

a different one from that which he had ridden at the review, and

bending to one side he gracefully held a gold lorgnette to his eyes

and looked at a soldier who lay prone, with blood on his uncovered

head. The wounded soldier was so dirty, coarse, and revolting that his

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proximity to the Emperor shocked Rostov. Rostov saw how the

Emperor's rather round shoulders shuddered as if a cold shiver had run

down them, how his left foot began convulsively tapping the horse's

side with the spur, and how the well-trained horse looked round

unconcerned and did not stir. An adjutant, dismounting, lifted the

soldier under the arms to place him on a stretcher that had been

brought. The soldier groaned.



"Gently, gently! Can't you do it more gently?" said the Emperor

apparently suffering more than the dying soldier, and he rode away.



Rostov saw tears filling the Emperor's eyes and heard him, as he was

riding away, say to Czartoryski: "What a terrible thing war is: what a

terrible thing! Quelle terrible chose que la guerre!"



The troops of the vanguard were stationed before Wischau, within

sight of the enemy's lines, which all day long had yielded ground to

us at the least firing. The Emperor's gratitude was announced to the

vanguard, rewards were promised, and the men received a double

ration of vodka. The campfires crackled and the soldiers' songs

resounded even more merrily than on the previous night. Denisov

celebrated his promotion to the rank of major, and Rostov, who had

already drunk enough, at the end of the feast proposed the Emperor's

health. "Not 'our Sovereign, the Emperor,' as they say at official

dinners," said he, "but the health of our Sovereign, that good,

enchanting, and great man! Let us drink to his health and to the

certain defeat of the French!"



"If we fought before," he said, "not letting the French pass, as

at Schon Grabern, what shall we not do now when he is at the front? We

will all die for him gladly! Is it not so, gentlemen? Perhaps I am not

saying it right, I have drunk a good deal--but that is how I feel, and

so do you too! To the health of Alexander the First! Hurrah!"



"Hurrah!" rang the enthusiastic voices of the officers.



And the old cavalry captain, Kirsten, shouted enthusiastically and

no less sincerely than the twenty-year-old Rostov.



When the officers had emptied and smashed their glasses, Kirsten

filled others and, in shirt sleeves and breeches, went glass in hand

to the soldiers' bonfires and with his long gray mustache, his white

chest showing under his open shirt, he stood in a majestic pose in the

light of the campfire, waving his uplifted arm.



"Lads! here's to our Sovereign, the Emperor, and victory over our

enemies! Hurrah!" he exclaimed in his dashing, old, hussar's baritone.



The hussars crowded round and responded heartily with loud shouts.



Late that night, when all had separated, Denisov with his short hand

patted his favorite, Rostov, on the shoulder.



"As there's no one to fall in love with on campaign, he's fallen

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in love with the Tsar," he said.



"Denisov, don't make fun of it!" cried Rostov. "It is such a

lofty, beautiful feeling, such a..."



"I believe it, I believe it, fwiend, and I share and appwove..."



"No, you don't understand!"



And Rostov got up and went wandering among the campfires, dreaming

of what happiness it would be to die--not in saving the Emperor's life

(he did not even dare to dream of that), but simply to die before

his eyes. He really was in love with the Tsar and the glory of the

Russian arms and the hope of future triumph. And he was not the only

man to experience that feeling during those memorable days preceding

the battle of Austerlitz: nine tenths of the men in the Russian army

were then in love, though less ecstatically, with their Tsar and the

glory of the Russian arms.









CHAPTER XI





The next day the Emperor stopped at Wischau, and Villier, his

physician, was repeatedly summoned to see him. At headquarters and

among the troops near by the news spread that the Emperor was

unwell. He ate nothing and had slept badly that night, those around

him reported. The cause of this indisposition was the strong

impression made on his sensitive mind by the sight of the killed and

wounded.



At daybreak on the seventeenth, a French officer who had come with a

flag of truce, demanding an audience with the Russian Emperor, was

brought into Wischau from our outposts. This officer was Savary. The

Emperor had only just fallen asleep and so Savary had to wait. At

midday he was admitted to the Emperor, and an hour later he rode off

with Prince Dolgorukov to the advanced post of the French army.



It was rumored that Savary had been sent to propose to Alexander a

meeting with Napoleon. To the joy and pride of the whole army, a

personal interview was refused, and instead of the Sovereign, Prince

Dolgorukov, the victor at Wischau, was sent with Savary to negotiate

with Napoleon if, contrary to expectations, these negotiations were

actuated by a real desire for peace.



Toward evening Dolgorukov came back, went straight to the Tsar,

and remained alone with him for a long time.



On the eighteenth and nineteenth of November, the army advanced

two days' march and the enemy's outposts after a brief interchange

of shots retreated. In the highest army circles from midday on the

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nineteenth, a great, excitedly bustling activity began which lasted

till the morning of the twentieth, when the memorable battle of

Austerlitz was fought.



Till midday on the nineteenth, the activity--the eager talk, running

to and fro, and dispatching of adjutants--was confined to the

Emperor's headquarters. But on the afternoon of that day, this

activity reached Kutuzov's headquarters and the staffs of the

commanders of columns. By evening, the adjutants had spread it to

all ends and parts of the army, and in the night from the nineteenth

to the twentieth, the whole eighty thousand allied troops rose from

their bivouacs to the hum of voices, and the army swayed and started

in one enormous mass six miles long.



The concentrated activity which had begun at the Emperor's

headquarters in the morning and had started the whole movement that

followed was like the first movement of the main wheel of a large

tower clock. One wheel slowly moved, another was set in motion, and

a third, and wheels began to revolve faster and faster, levers and

cogwheels to work, chimes to play, figures to pop out, and the hands

to advance with regular motion as a result of all that activity.



Just as in the mechanism of a clock, so in the mechanism of the

military machine, an impulse once given leads to the final result; and

just as indifferently quiescent till the moment when motion is

transmitted to them are the parts of the mechanism which the impulse

has not yet reached. Wheels creak on their axles as the cogs engage

one another and the revolving pulleys whirr with the rapidity of their

movement, but a neighboring wheel is as quiet and motionless as though

it were prepared to remain so for a hundred years; but the moment

comes when the lever catches it and obeying the impulse that wheel

begins to creak and joins in the common motion the result and aim of

which are beyond its ken.



Just as in a clock, the result of the complicated motion of

innumerable wheels and pulleys is merely a slow and regular movement

of the hands which show the time, so the result of all the complicated

human activities of 160,000 Russians and French--all their passions,

desires, remorse, humiliations, sufferings, outbursts of pride,

fear, and enthusiasm--was only the loss of the battle of Austerlitz,

the so-called battle of the three Emperors--that is to say, a slow

movement of the hand on the dial of human history.



Prince Andrew was on duty that day and in constant attendance on the

commander in chief.



At six in the evening, Kutuzov went to the Emperor's headquarters

and after staying but a short time with the Tsar went to see the grand

marshal of the court, Count Tolstoy.



Bolkonski took the opportunity to go in to get some details of the

coming action from Dolgorukov. He felt that Kutuzov was upset and

dissatisfied about something and that at headquarters they were

dissatisfied with him, and also that at the Emperor's headquarters

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everyone adopted toward him the tone of men who know something

others do not know: he therefore wished to speak to Dolgorukov.



"Well, how d'you do, my dear fellow?" said Dolgorukov, who was

sitting at tea with Bilibin. "The fete is for tomorrow. How is your

old fellow? Out of sorts?"



"I won't say he is out of sorts, but I fancy he would like to be

heard."



"But they heard him at the council of war and will hear him when

he talks sense, but to temporize and wait for something now when

Bonaparte fears nothing so much as a general battle is impossible."



"Yes, you have seen him?" said Prince Andrew. "Well, what is

Bonaparte like? How did he impress you?"



"Yes, I saw him, and am convinced that he fears nothing so much as a

general engagement," repeated Dolgorukov, evidently prizing this

general conclusion which he had arrived at from his interview with

Napoleon. "If he weren't afraid of a battle why did he ask for that

interview? Why negotiate, and above all why retreat, when to retreat

is so contrary to his method of conducting war? Believe me, he is

afraid, afraid of a general battle. His hour has come! Mark my words!"



"But tell me, what is he like, eh?" said Prince Andrew again.



"He is a man in a gray overcoat, very anxious that I should call him

'Your Majesty,' but who, to his chagrin, got no title from me!

That's the sort of man he is, and nothing more," replied Dolgorukov,

looking round at Bilibin with a smile.



"Despite my great respect for old Kutuzov," he continued, "we should

be a nice set of fellows if we were to wait about and so give him a

chance to escape, or to trick us, now that we certainly have him in

our hands! No, we mustn't forget Suvorov and his rule--not to put

yourself in a position to be attacked, but yourself to attack. Believe

me in war the energy of young men often shows the way better than

all the experience of old Cunctators."



"But in what position are we going to attack him? I have been at the

outposts today and it is impossible to say where his chief forces

are situated," said Prince Andrew.



He wished to explain to Dolgorukov a plan of attack he had himself

formed.



"Oh, that is all the same," Dolgorukov said quickly, and getting

up he spread a map on the table. "All eventualities have been

foreseen. If he is standing before Brunn..."



And Prince Dolgorukov rapidly but indistinctly explained Weyrother's

plan of a flanking movement.



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Prince Andrew began to reply and to state his own plan, which

might have been as good as Weyrother's, but for the disadvantage

that Weyrother's had already been approved. As soon as Prince Andrew

began to demonstrate the defects of the latter and the merits of his

own plan, Prince Dolgorukov ceased to listen to him and gazed

absent-mindedly not at the map, but at Prince Andrew's face.



"There will be a council of war at Kutuzov's tonight, though; you

can say all this there," remarked Dolgorukov.



"I will do so," said Prince Andrew, moving away from the map.



"Whatever are you bothering about, gentlemen?" said Bilibin, who,

till then, had listened with an amused smile to their conversation and

now was evidently ready with a joke. "Whether tomorrow brings

victory or defeat, the glory of our Russian arms is secure. Except

your Kutuzov, there is not a single Russian in command of a column!

The commanders are: Herr General Wimpfen, le Comte de Langeron, le

Prince de Lichtenstein, le Prince, de Hohenlohe, and finally

Prishprish, and so on like all those Polish names."



"Be quiet, backbiter!" said Dolgorukov. "It is not true; there are

now two Russians, Miloradovich, and Dokhturov, and there would be a

third, Count Arakcheev, if his nerves were not too weak."



"However, I think General Kutuzov has come out," said Prince Andrew.

"I wish you good luck and success, gentlemen!" he added and went out

after shaking hands with Dolgorukov and Bilibin.



On the way home, Prince Andrew could not refrain from asking

Kutuzov, who was sitting silently beside him, what he thought of

tomorrow's battle.



Kutuzov looked sternly at his adjutant and, after a pause,

replied: "I think the battle will be lost, and so I told Count Tolstoy

and asked him to tell the Emperor. What do you think he replied? 'But,

my dear general, I am engaged with rice and cutlets, look after

military matters yourself!' Yes... That was the answer I got!"









CHAPTER XII





Shortly after nine o'clock that evening, Weyrother drove with his

plans to Kutuzov's quarters where the council of war was to be held.

All the commanders of columns were summoned to the commander in

chief's and with the exception of Prince Bagration, who declined to

come, were all there at the appointed time.



Weyrother, who was in full control of the proposed battle, by his

eagerness and briskness presented a marked contrast to the

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dissatisfied and drowsy Kutuzov, who reluctantly played the part of

chairman and president of the council of war. Weyrother evidently felt

himself to be at the head of a movement that had already become

unrestrainable. He was like a horse running downhill harnessed to a

heavy cart. Whether he was pulling it or being pushed by it he did not

know, but rushed along at headlong speed with no time to consider what

this movement might lead to. Weyrother had been twice that evening

to the enemy's picket line to reconnoiter personally, and twice to the

Emperors, Russian and Austrian, to report and explain, and to his

headquarters where he had dictated the dispositions in German, and

now, much exhausted, he arrived at Kutuzov's.



He was evidently so busy that he even forgot to be polite to the

commander in chief. He interrupted him, talked rapidly and

indistinctly, without looking at the man he was addressing, and did

not reply to questions put to him. He was bespattered with mud and had

a pitiful, weary, and distracted air, though at the same time he was

haughty and self-confident.



Kutuzov was occupying a nobleman's castle of modest dimensions

near Ostralitz. In the large drawing room which had become the

commander in chief's office were gathered Kutuzov himself,

Weyrother, and the members of the council of war. They were drinking

tea, and only awaited Prince Bagration to begin the council. At last

Bagration's orderly came with the news that the prince could not

attend. Prince Andrew came in to inform the commander in chief of this

and, availing himself of permission previously given him by Kutuzov to

be present at the council, he remained in the room.



"Since Prince Bagration is not coming, we may begin," said

Weyrother, hurriedly rising from his seat and going up to the table on

which an enormous map of the environs of Brunn was spread out.



Kutuzov, with his uniform unbuttoned so that his fat neck bulged

over his collar as if escaping, was sitting almost asleep in a low

chair, with his podgy old hands resting symmetrically on its arms.

At the sound of Weyrother's voice, he opened his one eye with an

effort.



"Yes, yes, if you please! It is already late," said he, and

nodding his head he let it droop and again closed his eye.



If at first the members of the council thought that Kutuzov was

pretending to sleep, the sounds his nose emitted during the reading

that followed proved that the commander in chief at that moment was

absorbed by a far more serious matter than a desire to show his

contempt for the dispositions or anything else--he was engaged in

satisfying the irresistible human need for sleep. He really was

asleep. Weyrother, with the gesture of a man too busy to lose a

moment, glanced at Kutuzov and, having convinced himself that he was

asleep, took up a paper and in a loud, monotonous voice began to

read out the dispositions for the impending battle, under a heading

which he also read out:



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"Dispositions for an attack on the enemy position behind Kobelnitz

and Sokolnitz, November 30, 1805."



The dispositions were very complicated and difficult. They began

as follows:



"As the enemy's left wing rests on wooded hills and his right

extends along Kobelnitz and Sokolnitz behind the ponds that are there,

while we, on the other hand, with our left wing by far outflank his

right, it is advantageous to attack the enemy's latter wing especially

if we occupy the villages of Sokolnitz and Kobelnitz, whereby we can

both fall on his flank and pursue him over the plain between

Schlappanitz and the Thuerassa forest, avoiding the defiles of

Schlappanitz and Bellowitz which cover the enemy's front. For this

object it is necessary that... The first column marches... The

second column marches... The third column marches..." and so on,

read Weyrother.



The generals seemed to listen reluctantly to the difficult

dispositions. The tall, fair-haired General Buxhowden stood, leaning

his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on a burning candle, and

seemed not to listen or even to wish to be thought to listen.

Exactly opposite Weyrother, with his glistening wide-open eyes fixed

upon him and his mustache twisted upwards, sat the ruddy

Miloradovich in a military pose, his elbows turned outwards, his hands

on his knees, and his shoulders raised. He remained stubbornly silent,

gazing at Weyrother's face, and only turned away his eyes when the

Austrian chief of staff finished reading. Then Miloradovich looked

round significantly at the other generals. But one could not tell from

that significant look whether he agreed or disagreed and was satisfied

or not with the arrangements. Next to Weyrother sat Count Langeron

who, with a subtle smile that never left his typically southern French

face during the whole time of the reading, gazed at his delicate

fingers which rapidly twirled by its corners a gold snuffbox on

which was a portrait. In the middle of one of the longest sentences,

he stopped the rotary motion of the snuffbox, raised his head, and

with inimical politeness lurking in the corners of his thin lips

interrupted Weyrother, wishing to say something. But the Austrian

general, continuing to read, frowned angrily and jerked his elbows, as

if to say: "You can tell me your views later, but now be so good as to

look at the map and listen." Langeron lifted his eyes with an

expression of perplexity, turned round to Miloradovich as if seeking

an explanation, but meeting the latter's impressive but meaningless

gaze drooped his eyes sadly and again took to twirling his snuffbox.



"A geography lesson!" he muttered as if to himself, but loud

enough to be heard.



Przebyszewski, with respectful but dignified politeness, held his

hand to his ear toward Weyrother, with the air of a man absorbed in

attention. Dohkturov, a little man, sat opposite Weyrother, with an

assiduous and modest mien, and stooping over the outspread map

conscientiously studied the dispositions and the unfamiliar

locality. He asked Weyrother several times to repeat words he had

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not clearly heard and the difficult names of villages. Weyrother

complied and Dohkturov noted them down.



When the reading which lasted more than an hour was over, Langeron

again brought his snuffbox to rest and, without looking at Weyrother

or at anyone in particular, began to say how difficult it was to carry

out such a plan in which the enemy's position was assumed to be known,

whereas it was perhaps not known, since the enemy was in movement.

Langeron's objections were valid but it was obvious that their chief

aim was to show General Weyrother--who had read his dispositions

with as much self-confidence as if he were addressing school children-

that he had to do, not with fools, but with men who could teach him

something in military matters.



When the monotonous sound of Weyrother's voice ceased, Kutuzov

opened his eye as a miller wakes up when the soporific drone of the

mill wheel is interrupted. He listened to what Langeron said, as if

remarking, "So you are still at that silly business!" quickly closed

his eye again, and let his head sink still lower.



Langeron, trying as virulently as possible to sting Weyrother's

vanity as author of the military plan, argued that Bonaparte might

easily attack instead of being attacked, and so render the whole of

this plan perfectly worthless. Weyrother met all objections with a

firm and contemptuous smile, evidently prepared beforehand to meet all

objections be they what they might.



"If he could attack us, he would have done so today," said he.



"So you think he is powerless?" said Langeron.



"He has forty thousand men at most," replied Weyrother, with the

smile of a doctor to whom an old wife wishes to explain the

treatment of a case.



"In that case he is inviting his doom by awaiting our attack,"

said Langeron, with a subtly ironical smile, again glancing round

for support to Miloradovich who was near him.



But Miloradovich was at that moment evidently thinking of anything

rather than of what the generals were disputing about.



"Ma foi!" said he, "tomorrow we shall see all that on the

battlefield."



Weyrother again gave that smile which seemed to say that to him it

was strange and ridiculous to meet objections from Russian generals

and to have to prove to them what he had not merely convinced

himself of, but had also convinced the sovereign Emperors of.



"The enemy has quenched his fires and a continual noise is heard

from his camp," said he. "What does that mean? Either he is

retreating, which is the only thing we need fear, or he is changing

his position." (He smiled ironically.) "But even if he also took up

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a position in the Thuerassa, he merely saves us a great deal of

trouble and all our arrangements to the minutest detail remain the

same."



"How is that?..." began Prince Andrew, who had for long been waiting

an opportunity to express his doubts.



Kutuzov here woke up, coughed heavily, and looked round at the

generals.



"Gentlemen, the dispositions for tomorrow--or rather for today,

for it is past midnight--cannot now be altered," said he. "You have

heard them, and we shall all do our duty. But before a battle, there

is nothing more important..." he paused, "than to have a good sleep."



He moved as if to rise. The generals bowed and retired. It was

past midnight. Prince Andrew went out.





The council of war, at which Prince Andrew had not been able to

express his opinion as he had hoped to, left on him a vague and uneasy

impression. Whether Dolgorukov and Weyrother, or Kutuzov, Langeron,

and the others who did not approve of the plan of attack, were

right--he did not know. "But was it really not possible for Kutuzov to

state his views plainly to the Emperor? Is it possible that on account

of court and personal considerations tens of thousands of lives, and

my life, my life," he thought, "must be risked?"



"Yes, it is very likely that I shall be killed tomorrow," he

thought. And suddenly, at this thought of death, a whole series of

most distant, most intimate, memories rose in his imagination: he

remembered his last parting from his father and his wife; he

remembered the days when he first loved her. He thought of her

pregnancy and felt sorry for her and for himself, and in a nervously

emotional and softened mood he went out of the hut in which he was

billeted with Nesvitski and began to walk up and down before it.



The night was foggy and through the fog the moonlight gleamed

mysteriously. "Yes, tomorrow, tomorrow!" he thought. "Tomorrow

everything may be over for me! All these memories will be no more,

none of them will have any meaning for me. Tomorrow perhaps, even

certainly, I have a presentiment that for the first time I shall

have to show all I can do." And his fancy pictured the battle, its

loss, the concentration of fighting at one point, and the hesitation

of all the commanders. And then that happy moment, that Toulon for

which he had so long waited, presents itself to him at last. He firmly

and clearly expresses his opinion to Kutuzov, to Weyrother, and to the

Emperors. All are struck by the justness of his views, but no one

undertakes to carry them out, so he takes a regiment, a division-

stipulates that no one is to interfere with his arrangements--leads

his division to the decisive point, and gains the victory alone.

"But death and suffering?" suggested another voice. Prince Andrew,

however, did not answer that voice and went on dreaming of his

triumphs. The dispositions for the next battle are planned by him

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alone. Nominally he is only an adjutant on Kutuzov's staff, but he

does everything alone. The next battle is won by him alone. Kutuzov is

removed and he is appointed... "Well and then?" asked the other voice.

"If before that you are not ten times wounded, killed, or betrayed,

well... what then?..." "Well then," Prince Andrew answered himself, "I

don't know what will happen and don't want to know, and can't, but

if I want this--want glory, want to be known to men, want to be

loved by them, it is not my fault that I want it and want nothing

but that and live only for that. Yes, for that alone! I shall never

tell anyone, but, oh God! what am I to do if I love nothing but fame

and men's esteem? Death, wounds, the loss of family--I fear nothing.

And precious and dear as many persons are to me--father, sister, wife-

those dearest to me--yet dreadful and unnatural as it seems, I would

give them all at once for a moment of glory, of triumph over men, of

love from men I don't know and never shall know, for the love of these

men here," he thought, as he listened to voices in Kutuzov's

courtyard. The voices were those of the orderlies who were packing up;

one voice, probably a coachman's, was teasing Kutuzov's old cook

whom Prince Andrew knew, and who was called Tit. He was saying,

"Tit, I say, Tit!"



"Well?" returned the old man.



"Go, Tit, thresh a bit!" said the wag.



"Oh, go to the devil!" called out a voice, drowned by the laughter

of the orderlies and servants.



"All the same, I love and value nothing but triumph over them all, I

value this mystic power and glory that is floating here above me in

this mist!"









CHAPTER XIII





That same night, Rostov was with a platoon on skirmishing duty in

front of Bagration's detachment. His hussars were placed along the

line in couples and he himself rode along the line trying to master

the sleepiness that kept coming over him. An enormous space, with

our army's campfires dimly glowing in the fog, could be seen behind

him; in front of him was misty darkness. Rostov could see nothing,

peer as he would into that foggy distance: now something gleamed gray,

now there was something black, now little lights seemed to glimmer

where the enemy ought to be, now he fancied it was only something in

his own eyes. His eyes kept closing, and in his fancy appeared--now

the Emperor, now Denisov, and now Moscow memories--and he again

hurriedly opened his eyes and saw close before him the head and ears

of the horse he was riding, and sometimes, when he came within six

paces of them, the black figures of hussars, but in the distance was

still the same misty darkness. "Why not?... It might easily happen,"

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thought Rostov, "that the Emperor will meet me and give me an order as

he would to any other officer; he'll say: 'Go and find out what's

there.' There are many stories of his getting to know an officer in

just such a chance way and attaching him to himself! What if he gave

me a place near him? Oh, how I would guard him, how I would tell him

the truth, how I would unmask his deceivers!" And in order to

realize vividly his love devotion to the sovereign, Rostov pictured to

himself an enemy or a deceitful German, whom he would not only kill

with pleasure but whom he would slap in the face before the Emperor.

Suddenly a distant shout aroused him. He started and opened his eyes.



"Where am I? Oh yes, in the skirmishing line... pass and

watchword--shaft, Olmutz. What a nuisance that our squadron will be in

reserve tomorrow," he thought. "I'll ask leave to go to the front,

this may be my only chance of seeing the Emperor. It won't be long now

before I am off duty. I'll take another turn and when I get back

I'll go to the general and ask him." He readjusted himself in the

saddle and touched up his horse to ride once more round his hussars.

It seemed to him that it was getting lighter. To the left he saw a

sloping descent lit up, and facing it a black knoll that seemed as

steep as a wall. On this knoll there was a white patch that Rostov

could not at all make out: was it a glade in the wood lit up by the

moon, or some unmelted snow, or some white houses? He even thought

something moved on that white spot. "I expect it's snow... that

spot... a spot--une tache," he thought. "There now... it's not a

tache... Natasha... sister, black eyes... Na... tasha... (Won't she be

surprised when I tell her how I've seen the Emperor?) Natasha...

take my sabretache..."--"Keep to the right, your honor, there are

bushes here," came the voice of an hussar, past whom Rostov was riding

in the act of falling asleep. Rostov lifted his head that had sunk

almost to his horse's mane and pulled up beside the hussar. He was

succumbing to irresistible, youthful, childish drowsiness. "But what

was I thinking? I mustn't forget. How shall I speak to the Emperor?

No, that's not it--that's tomorrow. Oh yes! Natasha... sabretache...

saber them...Whom? The hussars... Ah, the hussars with mustaches.

Along the Tverskaya Street rode the hussar with mustaches... I thought

about him too, just opposite Guryev's house... Old Guryev.... Oh,

but Denisov's a fine fellow. But that's all nonsense. The chief

thing is that the Emperor is here. How he looked at me and wished to

say something, but dared not.... No, it was I who dared not. But

that's nonsense, the chief thing is not to forget the important

thing I was thinking of. Yes, Na-tasha, sabretache, oh, yes, yes!

That's right!" And his head once more sank to his horse's neck. All at

once it seemed to him that he was being fired at. "What? What?

What?... Cut them down! What?..." said Rostov, waking up. At the

moment he opened his eyes he heard in front of him, where the

enemy was, the long-drawn shouts of thousands of voices. His horse and

the horse of the hussar near him pricked their ears at these shouts.

Over there, where the shouting came from, a fire flared up and went

out again, then another, and all along the French line on the hill

fires flared up and the shouting grew louder and louder. Rostov

could hear the sound of French words but could not distinguish them.

The din of many voices was too great; all he could hear was: "ahahah!"

and "rrrr!"

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"What's that? What do you make of it?" said Rostov to the hussar

beside him. "That must be the enemy's camp!"



The hussar did not reply.



"Why, don't you hear it?" Rostov asked again, after waiting for a

reply.



"Who can tell, your honor?" replied the hussar reluctantly.



"From the direction, it must be the enemy," repeated Rostov.



"It may be he or it may be nothing," muttered the hussar. "It's

dark... Steady!" he cried to his fidgeting horse.



Rostov's horse was also getting restive: it pawed the frozen ground,

pricking its ears at the noise and looking at the lights. The shouting

grew still louder and merged into a general roar that only an army

of several thousand men could produce. The lights spread farther and

farther, probably along the line of the French camp. Rostov no

longer wanted to sleep. The gay triumphant shouting of the enemy

army had a stimulating effect on him. "Vive l'Empereur! L'Empereur!"

he now heard distinctly.



"They can't be far off, probably just beyond the stream," he said to

the hussar beside him.



The hussar only sighed without replying and coughed angrily. The

sound of horse's hoofs approaching at a trot along the line of hussars

was heard, and out of the foggy darkness the figure of a sergeant of

hussars suddenly appeared, looming huge as an elephant.



"Your honor, the generals!" said the sergeant, riding up to Rostov.



Rostov, still looking round toward the fires and the shouts, rode

with the sergeant to meet some mounted men who were riding along the

line. One was on a white horse. Prince Bagration and Prince Dolgorukov

with their adjutants had come to witness the curious phenomenon of the

lights and shouts in the enemy's camp. Rostov rode up to Bagration,

reported to him, and then joined the adjutants listening to what the

generals were saying.



"Believe me," said Prince Dolgorukov, addressing Bagration, "it is

nothing but a trick! He has retreated and ordered the rearguard to

kindle fires and make a noise to deceive us."



"Hardly," said Bagration. "I saw them this evening on that knoll; if

they had retreated they would have withdrawn from that too....

Officer!" said Bagration to Rostov, "are the enemy's skirmishers still

there?"



"They were there this evening, but now I don't know, your

excellency. Shall I go with some of my hussars to see?" replied

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Rostov.



Bagration stopped and, before replying, tried to see Rostov's face

in the mist.



"Well, go and see," he said, after a pause.



"Yes, sir."



Rostov spurred his horse, called to Sergeant Fedchenko and two other

hussars, told them to follow him, and trotted downhill in the

direction from which the shouting came. He felt both frightened and

pleased to be riding alone with three hussars into that mysterious and

dangerous misty distance where no one had been before him. Bagration

called to him from the hill not to go beyond the stream, but Rostov

pretended not to hear him and did not stop but rode on and on,

continually mistaking bushes for trees and gullies for men and

continually discovering his mistakes. Having descended the hill at a

trot, he no longer saw either our own or the enemy's fires, but

heard the shouting of the French more loudly and distinctly. In the

valley he saw before him something like a river, but when he reached

it he found it was a road. Having come out onto the road he reined

in his horse, hesitating whether to ride along it or cross it and ride

over the black field up the hillside. To keep to the road which

gleamed white in the mist would have been safer because it would be

easier to see people coming along it. "Follow me!" said he, crossed

the road, and began riding up the hill at a gallop toward the point

where the French pickets had been standing that evening.



"Your honor, there he is!" cried one of the hussars behind him.

And before Rostov had time to make out what the black thing was that

had suddenly appeared in the fog, there was a flash, followed by a

report, and a bullet whizzing high up in the mist with a plaintive

sound passed out of hearing. Another musket missed fire but flashed in

the pan. Rostov turned his horse and galloped back. Four more

reports followed at intervals, and the bullets passed somewhere in the

fog singing in different tones. Rostov reined in his horse, whose

spirits had risen, like his own, at the firing, and went back at a

footpace. "Well, some more! Some more!" a merry voice was saying in

his soul. But no more shots came.



Only when approaching Bagration did Rostov let his horse gallop

again, and with his hand at the salute rode up to the general.



Dolgorukov was still insisting that the French had retreated and had

only lit fires to deceive us.



"What does that prove?" he was saying as Rostov rode up. "They might

retreat and leave the pickets."



"It's plain that they have not all gone yet, Prince," said

Bagration. "Wait till tomorrow morning, we'll find out everything

tomorrow."



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"The picket is still on the hill, your excellency, just where it was

in the evening," reported Rostov, stooping forward with his hand at

the salute and unable to repress the smile of delight induced by his

ride and especially by the sound of the bullets.



"Very good, very good," said Bagration. "Thank you, officer."



"Your excellency," said Rostov, "may I ask a favor?"



"What is it?"



"Tomorrow our squadron is to be in reserve. May I ask to be attached

to the first squadron?"



"What's your name?"



"Count Rostov."



"Oh, very well, you may stay in attendance on me."



"Count Ilya Rostov's son?" asked Dolgorukov.



But Rostov did not reply.



"Then I may reckon on it, your excellency?"



"I will give the order."



"Tomorrow very likely I may be sent with some message to the

Emperor," thought Rostov.



"Thank God!"





The fires and shouting in the enemy's army were occasioned by the

fact that while Napoleon's proclamation was being read to the troops

the Emperor himself rode round his bivouacs. The soldiers, on seeing

him, lit wisps of straw and ran after him, shouting, "Vive

l'Empereur!" Napoleon's proclamation was as follows:





Soldiers! The Russian army is advancing against you to avenge the

Austrian army of Ulm. They are the same battalions you broke at

Hollabrunn and have pursued ever since to this place. The position

we occupy is a strong one, and while they are marching to go round

me on the right they will expose a flank to me. Soldiers! I will

myself direct your battalions. I will keep out of fire if you with

your habitual valor carry disorder and confusion into the enemy's

ranks, but should victory be in doubt, even for a moment, you will see

your Emperor exposing himself to the first blows of the enemy, for

there must be no doubt of victory, especially on this day when what is

at stake is the honor of the French infantry, so necessary to the

honor of our nation.



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Do not break your ranks on the plea of removing the wounded! Let

every man be fully imbued with the thought that we must defeat these

hirelings of England, inspired by such hatred of our nation! This

victory will conclude our campaign and we can return to winter

quarters, where fresh French troops who are being raised in France

will join us, and the peace I shall conclude will be worthy of my

people, of you, and of myself.



NAPOLEON









CHAPTER XIV





At five in the morning it was still quite dark. The troops of the

center, the reserves, and Bagration's right flank had not yet moved,

but on the left flank the columns of infantry, cavalry, and artillery,

which were to be the first to descend the heights to attack the French

right flank and drive it into the Bohemian mountains according to

plan, were already up and astir. The smoke of the campfires, into

which they were throwing everything superfluous, made the eyes

smart. It was cold and dark. The officers were hurriedly drinking

tea and breakfasting, the soldiers, munching biscuit and beating a

tattoo with their feet to warm themselves, gathering round the fires

throwing into the flames the remains of sheds, chairs, tables, wheels,

tubs, and everything that they did not want or could not carry away

with them. Austrian column guides were moving in and out among the

Russian troops and served as heralds of the advance. As soon as an

Austrian officer showed himself near a commanding officer's

quarters, the regiment began to move: the soldiers ran from the fires,

thrust their pipes into their boots, their bags into the carts, got

their muskets ready, and formed rank. The officers buttoned up their

coats, buckled on their swords and pouches, and moved along the

ranks shouting. The train drivers and orderlies harnessed and packed

the wagons and tied on the loads. The adjutants and battalion and

regimental commanders mounted, crossed themselves, gave final

instructions, orders, and commissions to the baggage men who

remained behind, and the monotonous tramp of thousands of feet

resounded. The column moved forward without knowing where and

unable, from the masses around them, the smoke and the increasing fog,

to see either the place they were leaving or that to which they were

going.



A soldier on the march is hemmed in and borne along by his

regiment as much as a sailor is by his ship. However far he has

walked, whatever strange, unknown, and dangerous places he reaches,

just as a sailor is always surrounded by the same decks, masts, and

rigging of his ship, so the soldier always has around him the same

comrades, the same ranks, the same sergeant major Ivan Mitrich, the

same company dog Jack, and the same commanders. The sailor rarely

cares to know the latitude in which his ship is sailing, but on the

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day of battle--heaven knows how and whence--a stern note of which

all are conscious sounds in the moral atmosphere of an army,

announcing the approach of something decisive and solemn, and

awakening in the men an unusual curiosity. On the day of battle the

soldiers excitedly try to get beyond the interests of their

regiment, they listen intently, look about, and eagerly ask concerning

what is going on around them.



The fog had grown so dense that though it was growing light they

could not see ten paces ahead. Bushes looked like gigantic trees and

level ground like cliffs and slopes. Anywhere, on any side, one

might encounter an enemy invisible ten paces off. But the columns

advanced for a long time, always in the same fog, descending and

ascending hills, avoiding gardens and enclosures, going over new and

unknown ground, and nowhere encountering the enemy. On the contrary,

the soldiers became aware that in front, behind, and on all sides,

other Russian columns were moving in the same direction. Every soldier

felt glad to know that to the unknown place where he was going, many

more of our men were going too.



"There now, the Kurskies have also gone past," was being said in the

ranks.



"It's wonderful what a lot of our troops have gathered, lads! Last

night I looked at the campfires and there was no end of them. A

regular Moscow!"



Though none of the column commanders rode up to the ranks or

talked to the men (the commanders, as we saw at the council of war,

were out of humor and dissatisfied with the affair, and so did not

exert themselves to cheer the men but merely carried out the

orders), yet the troops marched gaily, as they always do when going

into action, especially to an attack. But when they had marched for

about an hour in the dense fog, the greater part of the men had to

halt and an unpleasant consciousness of some dislocation and blunder

spread through the ranks. How such a consciousness is communicated

is very difficult to define, but it certainly is communicated very

surely, and flows rapidly, imperceptibly, and irrepressibly, as

water does in a creek. Had the Russian army been alone without any

allies, it might perhaps have been a long time before this

consciousness of mismanagement became a general conviction, but as

it was, the disorder was readily and naturally attributed to the

stupid Germans, and everyone was convinced that a dangerous muddle had

been occasioned by the sausage eaters.



"Why have we stopped? Is the way blocked? Or have we already come up

against the French?"



"No, one can't hear them. They'd be firing if we had."



"They were in a hurry enough to start us, and now here we stand in

the middle of a field without rhyme or reason. It's all those damned

Germans' muddling! What stupid devils!"



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"Yes, I'd send them on in front, but no fear, they're crowding up

behind. And now here we stand hungry."



"I say, shall we soon be clear? They say the cavalry are blocking

the way," said an officer.



"Ah, those damned Germans! They don't know their own country!"

said another.



"What division are you?" shouted an adjutant, riding up.



"The Eighteenth."



"Then why are you here? You should have gone on long ago, now you

won't get there till evening."



"What stupid orders! They don't themselves know what they are

doing!" said the officer and rode off.



Then a general rode past shouting something angrily, not in Russian.



"Tafa-lafa! But what he's jabbering no one can make out," said a

soldier, mimicking the general who had ridden away. "I'd shoot them,

the scoundrels!"



"We were ordered to be at the place before nine, but we haven't

got halfway. Fine orders!" was being repeated on different sides.



And the feeling of energy with which the troops had started began to

turn into vexation and anger at the stupid arrangements and at the

Germans.



The cause of the confusion was that while the Austrian cavalry was

moving toward our left flank, the higher command found that our center

was too far separated from our right flank and the cavalry were all

ordered to turn back to the right. Several thousand cavalry crossed in

front of the infantry, who had to wait.



At the front an altercation occurred between an Austrian guide and a

Russian general. The general shouted a demand that the cavalry

should be halted, the Austrian argued that not he, but the higher

command, was to blame. The troops meanwhile stood growing listless and

dispirited. After an hour's delay they at last moved on, descending

the hill. The fog that was dispersing on the hill lay still more

densely below, where they were descending. In front in the fog a

shot was heard and then another, at first irregularly at varying

intervals--trata... tat--and then more and more regularly and rapidly,

and the action at the Goldbach Stream began.



Not expecting to come on the enemy down by the stream, and having

stumbled on him in the fog, hearing no encouraging word from their

commanders, and with a consciousness of being too late spreading

through the ranks, and above all being unable to see anything in front

or around them in the thick fog, the Russians exchanged shots with the

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enemy lazily and advanced and again halted, receiving no timely orders

from the officers or adjutants who wandered about in the fog in

those unknown surroundings unable to find their own regiments. In this

way the action began for the first, second, and third columns, which

had gone down into the valley. The fourth column, with which Kutuzov

was, stood on the Pratzen Heights.



Below, where the fight was beginning, there was still thick fog;

on the higher ground it was clearing, but nothing could be seen of

what was going on in front. Whether all the enemy forces were, as we

supposed, six miles away, or whether they were near by in that sea

of mist, no one knew till after eight o'clock.



It was nine o'clock in the morning. The fog lay unbroken like a

sea down below, but higher up at the village of Schlappanitz where

Napoleon stood with his marshals around him, it was quite light. Above

him was a clear blue sky, and the sun's vast orb quivered like a

huge hollow, crimson float on the surface of that milky sea of mist.

The whole French army, and even Napoleon himself with his staff,

were not on the far side of the streams and hollows of Sokolnitz and

Schlappanitz beyond which we intended to take up our position and

begin the action, but were on this side, so close to our own forces

that Napoleon with the naked eye could distinguish a mounted man

from one on foot. Napoleon, in the blue cloak which he had worn on his

Italian campaign, sat on his small gray Arab horse a little in front

of his marshals. He gazed silently at the hills which seemed to rise

out of the sea of mist and on which the Russian troops were moving

in the distance, and he listened to the sounds of firing in the

valley. Not a single muscle of his face--which in those days was still

thin--moved. His gleaming eyes were fixed intently on one spot. His

predictions were being justified. Part of the Russian force had

already descended into the valley toward the ponds and lakes and

part were leaving these Pratzen Heights which he intended to attack

and regarded as the key to the position. He saw over the mist that

in a hollow between two hills near the village of Pratzen, the Russian

columns, their bayonets glittering, were moving continuously in one

direction toward the valley and disappearing one after another into

the mist. From information he had received the evening before, from

the sound of wheels and footsteps heard by the outposts during the

night, by the disorderly movement of the Russian columns, and from all

indications, he saw clearly that the allies believed him to be far

away in front of them, and that the columns moving near Pratzen

constituted the center of the Russian army, and that that center was

already sufficiently weakened to be successfully attacked. But still

he did not begin the engagement.



Today was a great day for him--the anniversary of his coronation.

Before dawn he had slept for a few hours, and refreshed, vigorous, and

in good spirits, he mounted his horse and rode out into the field in

that happy mood in which everything seems possible and everything

succeeds. He sat motionless, looking at the heights visible above

the mist, and his cold face wore that special look of confident,

self-complacent happiness that one sees on the face of a boy happily

in love. The marshals stood behind him not venturing to distract his

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attention. He looked now at the Pratzen Heights, now at the sun

floating up out of the mist.



When the sun had entirely emerged from the fog, and fields and

mist were aglow with dazzling light--as if he had only awaited this to

begin the action--he drew the glove from his shapely white hand,

made a sign with it to the marshals, and ordered the action to

begin. The marshals, accompanied by adjutants, galloped off in

different directions, and a few minutes later the chief forces of

the French army moved rapidly toward those Pratzen Heights which

were being more and more denuded by Russian troops moving down the

valley to their left.









CHAPTER XV





At eight o'clock Kutuzov rode to Pratzen at the head of the fourth

column, Miloradovich's, the one that was to take the place of

Przebyszewski's and Langeron's columns which had already gone down

into the valley. He greeted the men of the foremost regiment and

gave them the order to march, thereby indicating that he intended to

lead that column himself. When he had reached the village of Pratzen

he halted. Prince Andrew was behind, among the immense number

forming the commander in chief's suite. He was in a state of

suppressed excitement and irritation, though controlledly calm as a

man is at the approach of a long-awaited moment. He was firmly

convinced that this was the day of his Toulon, or his bridge of

Arcola. How it would come about he did not know, but he felt sure it

would do so. The locality and the position of our troops were known to

him as far as they could be known to anyone in our army. His own

strategic plan, which obviously could not now be carried out, was

forgotten. Now, entering into Weyrother's plan, Prince Andrew

considered possible contingencies and formed new projects such as

might call for his rapidity of perception and decision.



To the left down below in the mist, the musketry fire of unseen

forces could be heard. It was there Prince Andrew thought the fight

would concentrate. "There we shall encounter difficulties, and there,"

thought he, "I shall be sent with a brigade or division, and there,

standard in hand, I shall go forward and break whatever is in front of

me."



He could not look calmly at the standards of the passing battalions.

Seeing them he kept thinking, "That may be the very standard with

which I shall lead the army."



In the morning all that was left of the night mist on the heights

was a hoar frost now turning to dew, but in the valleys it still lay

like a milk-white sea. Nothing was visible in the valley to the left

into which our troops had descended and from whence came the sounds of

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firing. Above the heights was the dark clear sky, and to the right the

vast orb of the sun. In front, far off on the farther shore of that

sea of mist, some wooded hills were discernible, and it was there

the enemy probably was, for something could be descried. On the

right the Guards were entering the misty region with a sound of

hoofs and wheels and now and then a gleam of bayonets; to the left

beyond the village similar masses of cavalry came up and disappeared

in the sea of mist. In front and behind moved infantry. The

commander in chief was standing at the end of the village letting

the troops pass by him. That morning Kutuzov seemed worn and

irritable. The infantry passing before him came to a halt without

any command being given, apparently obstructed by something in front.



"Do order them to form into battalion columns and go round the

village!" he said angrily to a general who had ridden up. "Don't you

understand, your excellency, my dear sir, that you must not defile

through narrow village streets when we are marching against the

enemy?"



"I intended to re-form them beyond the village, your excellency,"

answered the general.



Kutuzov laughed bitterly.



"You'll make a fine thing of it, deploying in sight of the enemy!

Very fine!"



"The enemy is still far away, your excellency. According to the

dispositions..."



"The dispositions!" exclaimed Kutuzov bitterly. "Who told you

that?... Kindly do as you are ordered."



"Yes, sir."



"My dear fellow," Nesvitski whispered to Prince Andrew, "the old man

is as surly as a dog."



An Austrian officer in a white uniform with green plumes in his

hat galloped up to Kutuzov and asked in the Emperor's name had the

fourth column advanced into action.



Kutuzov turned round without answering and his eye happened to

fall upon Prince Andrew, who was beside him. Seeing him, Kutuzov's

malevolent and caustic expression softened, as if admitting that

what was being done was not his adjutant's fault, and still not

answering the Austrian adjutant, he addressed Bolkonski.



"Go, my dear fellow, and see whether the third division has passed

the village. Tell it to stop and await my orders."



Hardly had Prince Andrew started than he stopped him.



"And ask whether sharpshooters have been posted," he added. "What

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are they doing? What are they doing?" he murmured to himself, still

not replying to the Austrian.



Prince Andrew galloped off to execute the order.



Overtaking the battalions that continued to advance, he stopped

the third division and convinced himself that there really were no

sharpshooters in front of our columns. The colonel at the head of

the regiment was much surprised at the commander in chief's order to

throw out skirmishers. He had felt perfectly sure that there were

other troops in front of him and that the enemy must be at least six

miles away. There was really nothing to be seen in front except a

barren descent hidden by dense mist. Having given orders in the

commander in chief's name to rectify this omission, Prince Andrew

galloped back. Kutuzov still in the same place, his stout body resting

heavily in the saddle with the lassitude of age, sat yawning wearily

with closed eyes. The troops were no longer moving, but stood with the

butts of their muskets on the ground.



"All right, all right!" he said to Prince Andrew, and turned to a

general who, watch in hand, was saying it was time they started as all

the left-flank columns had already descended.



"Plenty of time, your excellency," muttered Kutuzov in the midst

of a yawn. "Plenty of time," he repeated.



Just then at a distance behind Kutuzov was heard the sound of

regiments saluting, and this sound rapidly came nearer along the whole

extended line of the advancing Russian columns. Evidently the person

they were greeting was riding quickly. When the soldiers of the

regiment in front of which Kutuzov was standing began to shout, he

rode a little to one side and looked round with a frown. Along the

road from Pratzen galloped what looked like a squadron of horsemen

in various uniforms. Two of them rode side by side in front, at full

gallop. One in a black uniform with white plumes in his hat rode a

bobtailed chestnut horse, the other who was in a white uniform rode

a black one. These were the two Emperors followed by their suites.

Kutuzov, affecting the manners of an old soldier at the front, gave

the command "Attention!" and rode up to the Emperors with a salute.

His whole appearance and manner were suddenly transformed. He put on

the air of a subordinate who obeys without reasoning. With an

affectation of respect which evidently struck Alexander

unpleasantly, he rode up and saluted.



This unpleasant impression merely flitted over the young and happy

face of the Emperor like a cloud of haze across a clear sky and

vanished. After his illness he looked rather thinner that day than

on the field of Olmutz where Bolkonski had seen him for the first time

abroad, but there was still the same bewitching combination of majesty

and mildness in his fine gray eyes, and on his delicate lips the

same capacity for varying expression and the same prevalent appearance

of goodhearted innocent youth.



At the Olmutz review he had seemed more majestic; here he seemed

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brighter and more energetic. He was slightly flushed after galloping

two miles, and reining in his horse he sighed restfully and looked

round at the faces of his suite, young and animated as his own.

Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Prince Volkonsky, Strogonov, and the others,

all richly dressed gay young men on splendid, well-groomed, fresh,

only slightly heated horses, exchanging remarks and smiling, had

stopped behind the Emperor. The Emperor Francis, a rosy, long faced

young man, sat very erect on his handsome black horse, looking about

him in a leisurely and preoccupied manner. He beckoned to one of his

white adjutants and asked some question--"Most likely he is asking

at what o'clock they started," thought Prince Andrew, watching his old

acquaintance with a smile he could not repress as he recalled his

reception at Brunn. In the Emperors' suite were the picked young

orderly officers of the Guard and line regiments, Russian and

Austrian. Among them were grooms leading the Tsar's beautiful relay

horses covered with embroidered cloths.



As when a window is opened a whiff of fresh air from the fields

enters a stuffy room, so a whiff of youthfulness, energy, and

confidence of success reached Kutuzov's cheerless staff with the

galloping advent of all these brilliant young men.



"Why aren't you beginning, Michael Ilarionovich?" said the Emperor

Alexander hurriedly to Kutuzov, glancing courteously at the same

time at the Emperor Francis.



"I am waiting, Your Majesty," answered Kutuzov, bending forward

respectfully.



The Emperor, frowning slightly, bent his ear forward as if he had

not quite heard.



"Waiting, Your Majesty," repeated Kutuzov. (Prince Andrew noted that

Kutuzov's upper lip twitched unnaturally as he said the word

"waiting.") "Not all the columns have formed up yet, Your Majesty."



The Tsar heard but obviously did not like the reply; he shrugged his

rather round shoulders and glanced at Novosiltsev who was near him, as

if complaining of Kutuzov.



"You know, Michael Ilarionovich, we are not on the

Empress' Field where a parade does not begin till all the troops are

assembled," said the Tsar with another glance at the Emperor

Francis, as if inviting him if not to join in at least to listen to

what he was saying. But the Emperor Francis continued to look about

him and did not listen.



"That is just why I do not begin, sire," said Kutuzov in a

resounding voice, apparently to preclude the possibility of not

being heard, and again something in his face twitched--"That is just

why I do not begin, sire, because we are not on parade and not on

the Empress' Field." said clearly and distinctly.



In the Emperor's suite all exchanged rapid looks that expressed

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dissatisfaction and reproach. "Old though he may be, he should not, he

certainly should not, speak like that," their glances seemed to say.



The Tsar looked intently and observantly into Kutuzov's eye

waiting to hear whether he would say anything more. But Kutuzov,

with respectfully bowed head, seemed also to be waiting. The silence

lasted for about a minute.



"However, if you command it, Your Majesty," said Kutuzov, lifting

his head and again assuming his former tone of a dull, unreasoning,

but submissive general.



He touched his horse and having called Miloradovich, the commander

of the column, gave him the order to advance.



The troops again began to move, and two battalions of the Novgorod

and one of the Apsheron regiment went forward past the Emperor.



As this Apsheron battalion marched by, the red-faced Miloradovich,

without his greatcoat, with his Orders on his breast and an enormous

tuft of plumes in his cocked hat worn on one side with its corners

front and back, galloped strenuously forward, and with a dashing

salute reined in his horse before the Emperor.



"God be with you, general!" said the Emperor.



"Ma foi, sire, nous ferons ce qui sera dans notre possibilite,

sire,"* he answered gaily, raising nevertheless ironic smiles among

the gentlemen of the Tsar's suite by his poor French.





*"Indeed, Sire, we shall do everything it is possible to do, Sire."





Miloradovich wheeled his horse sharply and stationed himself a

little behind the Emperor. The Apsheron men, excited by the Tsar's

presence, passed in step before the Emperors and their suites at a

bold, brisk pace.



"Lads!" shouted Miloradovich in a loud, self-confident, and cheery

voice, obviously so elated by the sound of firing, by the prospect

of battle, and by the sight of the gallant Apsherons, his comrades

in Suvorov's time, now passing so gallantly before the Emperors,

that he forgot the sovereigns' presence. "Lads, it's not the first

village you've had to take," cried he.



"Glad to do our best!" shouted the soldiers.



The Emperor's horse started at the sudden cry. This horse that had

carried the sovereign at reviews in Russia bore him also here on the

field of Austerlitz, enduring the heedless blows of his left foot

and pricking its ears at the sound of shots just as it had done on the

Empress' Field, not understanding the significance of the firing,

nor of the nearness of the Emperor Francis' black cob, nor of all that

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was being said, thought, and felt that day by its rider.



The Emperor turned with a smile to one of his followers and made a

remark to him, pointing to the gallant Apsherons.









CHAPTER XVI





Kutuzov accompanied by his adjutants rode at a walking pace behind

the carabineers.



When he had gone less than half a mile in the rear of the column

he stopped at a solitary, deserted house that had probably once been

an inn, where two roads parted. Both of them led downhill and troops

were marching along both.



The fog had begun to clear and enemy troops were already dimly

visible about a mile and a half off on the opposite heights. Down

below, on the left, the firing became more distinct. Kutuzov had

stopped and was speaking to an Austrian general. Prince Andrew, who

was a little behind looking at them, turned to an adjutant to ask

him for a field glass.



"Look, look!" said this adjutant, looking not at the troops in the

distance, but down the hill before him. "It's the French!"



The two generals and the adjutant took hold of the field glass,

trying to snatch it from one another. The expression on all their

faces suddenly changed to one of horror. The French were supposed to

be a mile and a half away, but had suddenly and unexpectedly

appeared just in front of us.



"It's the enemy?... No!... Yes, see it is!... for certain.... But

how is that?" said different voices.



With the naked eye Prince Andrew saw below them to the right, not

more than five hundred paces from where Kutuzov was standing, a

dense French column coming up to meet the Apsherons.



"Here it is! The decisive moment has arrived. My turn has come,"

thought Prince Andrew, and striking his horse he rode up to Kutuzov.



"The Apsherons must be stopped, your excellency," cried he. But at

that very instant a cloud of smoke spread all round, firing was

heard quite close at hand, and a voice of naive terror barely two

steps from Prince Andrew shouted, "Brothers! All's lost!" And at

this as if at a command, everyone began to run.



Confused and ever-increasing crowds were running back to where

five minutes before the troops had passed the Emperors. Not only would

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it have been difficult to stop that crowd, it was even impossible

not to be carried back with it oneself. Bolkonski only tried not to

lose touch with it, and looked around bewildered and unable to grasp

what was happening in front of him. Nesvitski with an angry face,

red and unlike himself, was shouting to Kutuzov that if he did not

ride away at once he would certainly be taken prisoner. Kutuzov

remained in the same place and without answering drew out a

handkerchief. Blood was flowing from his cheek. Prince Andrew forced

his way to him.



"You are wounded?" he asked, hardly able to master the trembling

of his lower jaw.



"The wound is not here, it is there!" said Kutuzov, pressing the

handkerchief to his wounded cheek and pointing to the fleeing

soldiers. "Stop them!" he shouted, and at the same moment, probably

realizing that it was impossible to stop them, spurred his horse and

rode to the right.



A fresh wave of the flying mob caught him and bore him back with it.



The troops were running in such a dense mass that once surrounded by

them it was difficult to get out again. One was shouting, "Get on! Why

are you hindering us?" Another in the same place turned round and

fired in the air; a third was striking the horse Kutuzov himself rode.

Having by a great effort got away to the left from that flood of

men, Kutuzov, with his suite diminished by more than half, rode toward

a sound of artillery fire near by. Having forced his way out of the

crowd of fugitives, Prince Andrew, trying to keep near Kutuzov, saw on

the slope of the hill amid the smoke a Russian battery that was

still firing and Frenchmen running toward it. Higher up stood some

Russian infantry, neither moving forward to protect the battery nor

backward with the fleeing crowd. A mounted general separated himself

from the infantry and approached Kutuzov. Of Kutuzov's suite only four

remained. They were all pale and exchanged looks in silence.



"Stop those wretches!" gasped Kutuzov to the regimental commander,

pointing to the flying soldiers; but at that instant, as if to

punish him for those words, bullets flew hissing across the regiment

and across Kutuzov's suite like a flock of little birds.



The French had attacked the battery and, seeing Kutuzov, were firing

at him. After this volley the regimental commander clutched at his

leg; several soldiers fell, and a second lieutenant who was holding

the flag let it fall from his hands. It swayed and fell, but caught on

the muskets of the nearest soldiers. The soldiers started firing

without orders.



"Oh! Oh! Oh!" groaned Kutuzov despairingly and looked around....

"Bolkonski!" he whispered, his voice trembling from a consciousness of

the feebleness of age, "Bolkonski!" he whispered, pointing to the

disordered battalion and at the enemy, "what's that?"



But before he had finished speaking, Prince Andrew, feeling tears of

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shame and anger choking him, had already leapt from his horse and

run to the standard.



"Forward, lads!" he shouted in a voice piercing as a child's.



"Here it is!" thought he, seizing the staff of the standard and

hearing with pleasure the whistle of bullets evidently aimed at him.

Several soldiers fell.



"Hurrah!" shouted Prince Andrew, and, scarcely able to hold up the

heavy standard, he ran forward with full confidence that the whole

battalion would follow him.



And really he only ran a few steps alone. One soldier moved and then

another and soon the whole battalion ran forward shouting "Hurrah!"

and overtook him. A sergeant of the battalion ran up and took the flag

that was swaying from its weight in Prince Andrew's hands, but he

was immediately killed. Prince Andrew again seized the standard and,

dragging it by the staff, ran on with the battalion. In front he saw

our artillerymen, some of whom were fighting, while others, having

abandoned their guns, were running toward him. He also saw French

infantry soldiers who were seizing the artillery horses and turning

the guns round. Prince Andrew and the battalion were already within

twenty paces of the cannon. He heard the whistle of bullets above

him unceasingly and to right and left of him soldiers continually

groaned and dropped. But he did not look at them: he looked only at

what was going on in front of him--at the battery. He now saw

clearly the figure of a red-haired gunner with his shako knocked awry,

pulling one end of a mop while a French soldier tugged at the other.

He could distinctly see the distraught yet angry expression on the

faces of these two men, who evidently did not realize what they were

doing.



"What are they about?" thought Prince Andrew as he gazed at them.

"Why doesn't the red-haired gunner run away as he is unarmed? Why

doesn't the Frenchman stab him? He will not get away before the

Frenchman remembers his bayonet and stabs him...."



And really another French soldier, trailing his musket, ran up to

the struggling men, and the fate of the red-haired gunner, who had

triumphantly secured the mop and still did not realize what awaited

him, was about to be decided. But Prince Andrew did not see how it

ended. It seemed to him as though one of the soldiers near him hit him

on the head with the full swing of a bludgeon. It hurt a little, but

the worst of it was that the pain distracted him and prevented his

seeing what he had been looking at.



"What's this? Am I falling? My legs are giving way," thought he, and

fell on his back. He opened his eyes, hoping to see how the struggle

of the Frenchmen with the gunners ended, whether the red-haired gunner

had been killed or not and whether the cannon had been captured or

saved. But he saw nothing. Above him there was now nothing but the

sky--the lofty sky, not clear yet still immeasurably lofty, with

gray clouds gliding slowly across it. "How quiet, peaceful, and

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solemn; not at all as I ran," thought Prince Andrew--"not as we ran,

shouting and fighting, not at all as the gunner and the Frenchman with

frightened and angry faces struggled for the mop: how differently do

those clouds glide across that lofty infinite sky! How was it I did

not see that lofty sky before? And how happy I am to have found it

at last! Yes! All is vanity, all falsehood, except that infinite

sky. There is nothing, nothing, but that. But even it does not

exist, there is nothing but quiet and peace. Thank God!..."









CHAPTER XVII





On our right flank commanded by Bagration, at nine o'clock the

battle had not yet begun. Not wishing to agree to Dolgorukov's

demand to commence the action, and wishing to avert responsibility

from himself, Prince Bagration proposed to Dolgorukov to send to

inquire of the commander in chief. Bagration knew that as the distance

between the two flanks was more than six miles, even if the

messenger were not killed (which he very likely would be), and found

the commander in chief (which would be very difficult), he would not

be able to get back before evening.



Bagration cast his large, expressionless, sleepy eyes round his

suite, and the boyish face Rostov, breathless with excitement and

hope, was the first to catch his eye. He sent him.



"And if I should meet His Majesty before I meet the commander in

chief, your excellency?" said Rostov, with his hand to his cap.



"You can give the message to His Majesty," said Dolgorukov,

hurriedly interrupting Bagration.



On being relieved from picket duty Rostov had managed to get a few

hours' sleep before morning and felt cheerful, bold, and resolute,

with elasticity of movement, faith in his good fortune, and

generally in that state of mind which makes everything seem

possible, pleasant, and easy.



All his wishes were being fulfilled that morning: there was to be

a general engagement in which he was taking part, more than that, he

was orderly to the bravest general, and still more, he was going

with a message to Kutuzov, perhaps even to the sovereign himself.

The morning was bright, he had a good horse under him, and his heart

was full of joy and happiness. On receiving the order he gave his

horse the rein and galloped along the line. At first he rode along the

line of Bagration's troops, which had not yet advanced into action but

were standing motionless; then he came to the region occupied by

Uvarov's cavalry and here he noticed a stir and signs of preparation

for battle; having passed Uvarov's cavalry he clearly heard the

sound of cannon and musketry ahead of him. The firing grew louder

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and louder.



In the fresh morning air were now heard, not two or three musket

shots at irregular intervals as before, followed by one or two

cannon shots, but a roll of volleys of musketry from the slopes of the

hill before Pratzen, interrupted by such frequent reports of cannon

that sometimes several of them were not separated from one another but

merged into a general roar.



He could see puffs of musketry smoke that seemed to chase one

another down the hillsides, and clouds of cannon smoke rolling,

spreading, and mingling with one another. He could also, by the

gleam of bayonets visible through the smoke, make out moving masses of

infantry and narrow lines of artillery with green caissons.



Rostov stopped his horse for a moment on a hillock to see what was

going on, but strain his attention as he would he could not understand

or make out anything of what was happening: there in the smoke men

of some sort were moving about, in front and behind moved lines of

troops; but why, whither, and who they were, it was impossible to make

out. These sights and sounds had no depressing or intimidating

effect on him; on the contrary, they stimulated his energy and

determination.



"Go on! Go on! Give it them!" he mentally exclaimed at these sounds,

and again proceeded to gallop along the line, penetrating farther

and farther into the region where the army was already in action.



"How it will be there I don't know, but all will be well!" thought

Rostov.



After passing some Austrian troops he noticed that the next part

of the line (the Guards) was already in action.



"So much the better! I shall see it close," he thought.



He was riding almost along the front line. A handful of men came

galloping toward him. They were our Uhlans who with disordered ranks

were returning from the attack. Rostov got out of their way,

involuntarily noticed that one of them was bleeding, and galloped on.



"That is no business of mine," he thought. He had not ridden many

hundred yards after that before he saw to his left, across the whole

width of the field, an enormous mass of cavalry in brilliant white

uniforms, mounted on black horses, trotting straight toward him and

across his path. Rostov put his horse to full gallop to get out of the

way of these men, and he would have got clear had they continued at

the same speed, but they kept increasing their pace, so that some of

the horses were already galloping. Rostov heard the thud of their

hoofs and the jingle of their weapons and saw their horses, their

figures, and even their faces, more and more distinctly. They were our

Horse Guards, advancing to attack the French cavalry that was coming

to meet them.



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The Horse Guards were galloping, but still holding in their

horses. Rostov could already see their faces and heard the command:

"Charge!" shouted by an officer who was urging his thoroughbred to

full speed. Rostov, fearing to be crushed or swept into the attack

on the French, galloped along the front as hard as his horse could go,

but still was not in time to avoid them.



The last of the Horse Guards, a huge pockmarked fellow, frowned

angrily on seeing Rostov before him, with whom he would inevitably

collide. This Guardsman would certainly have bowled Rostov and his

Bedouin over (Rostov felt himself quite tiny and weak compared to

these gigantic men and horses) had it not occurred to Rostov to

flourish his whip before the eyes of the Guardsman's horse. The

heavy black horse, sixteen hands high, shied, throwing back its

ears; but the pockmarked Guardsman drove his huge spurs in

violently, and the horse, flourishing its tail and extending its neck,

galloped on yet faster. Hardly had the Horse Guards passed Rostov

before he heard them shout, "Hurrah!" and looking back saw that

their foremost ranks were mixed up with some foreign cavalry with

red epaulets, probably French. He could see nothing more, for

immediately afterwards cannon began firing from somewhere and smoke

enveloped everything.



At that moment, as the Horse Guards, having passed him,

disappeared in the smoke, Rostov hesitated whether to gallop after

them or to go where he was sent. This was the brilliant charge of

the Horse Guards that amazed the French themselves. Rostov was

horrified to hear later that of all that mass of huge and handsome

men, of all those brilliant, rich youths, officers and cadets, who had

galloped past him on their thousand-ruble horses, only eighteen were

left after the charge.



"Why should I envy them? My chance is not lost, and maybe I shall

see the Emperor immediately!" thought Rostov and galloped on.



When he came level with the Foot Guards he noticed that about them

and around them cannon balls were flying, of which he was aware not so

much because he heard their sound as because he saw uneasiness on

the soldiers' faces and unnatural warlike solemnity on those of the

officers.



Passing behind one of the lines of a regiment of Foot Guards he

heard a voice calling him by name.



"Rostov!"



"What?" he answered, not recognizing Boris.



"I say, we've been in the front line! Our regiment attacked!" said

Boris with the happy smile seen on the faces of young men who have

been under fire for the first time.



Rostov stopped.



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"Have you?" he said. "Well, how did it go?"



"We drove them back!" said Boris with animation, growing

talkative. "Can you imagine it?" and he began describing how the

Guards, having taken up their position and seeing troops before

them, thought they were Austrians, and all at once discovered from the

cannon balls discharged by those troops that they were themselves in

the front line and had unexpectedly to go into action. Rostov

without hearing Boris to the end spurred his horse.



"Where are you off to?" asked Boris.



"With a message to His Majesty."



"There he is!" said Boris, thinking Rostov had said "His

Highness," and pointing to the Grand Duke who with his high

shoulders and frowning brows stood a hundred paces away from them in

his helmet and Horse Guards' jacket, shouting something to a pale,

white uniformed Austrian officer.



"But that's the Grand Duke, and I want the commander in chief or the

Emperor," said Rostov, and was about to spur his horse.



"Count! Count!" shouted Berg who ran up from the other side as eager

as Boris. "Count! I am wounded in my right hand" (and he showed his

bleeding hand with a handkerchief tied round it) "and I remained at

the front. I held my sword in my left hand, Count. All our family--the

von Bergs--have been knights!"



He said something more, but Rostov did not wait to hear it and

rode away.



Having passed the Guards and traversed an empty space, Rostov, to

avoid again getting in front of the first line as he had done when the

Horse Guards charged, followed the line of reserves, going far round

the place where the hottest musket fire and cannonade were heard.

Suddenly he heard musket fire quite close in front of him and behind

our troops, where he could never have expected the enemy to be.



"What can it be?" he thought. "The enemy in the rear of our army?

Impossible!" And suddenly he was seized by a panic of fear for himself

and for the issue of the whole battle. "But be that what it may," he

reflected, "there is no riding round it now. I must look for the

commander in chief here, and if all is lost it is for me to perish

with the rest."



The foreboding of evil that had suddenly come over Rostov was more

and more confirmed the farther he rode into the region behind the

village of Pratzen, which was full of troops of all kinds.



"What does it mean? What is it? Whom are they firing at? Who is

firing?" Rostov kept asking as he came up to Russian and Austrian

soldiers running in confused crowds across his path.



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"The devil knows! They've killed everybody! It's all up now!" he was

told in Russian, German, and Czech by the crowd of fugitives who

understood what was happening as little as he did.



"Kill the Germans!" shouted one.



"May the devil take them--the traitors!"



"Zum Henker diese Russen!"* muttered a German.





*"Hang these Russians!"





Several wounded men passed along the road, and words of abuse,

screams, and groans mingled in a general hubbub, then the firing

died down. Rostov learned later that Russian and Austrian soldiers had

been firing at one another.



"My God! What does it all mean?" thought he. "And here, where at any

moment the Emperor may see them.... But no, these must be only a

handful of scoundrels. It will soon be over, it can't be that, it

can't be! Only to get past them quicker, quicker!"



The idea of defeat and flight could not enter Rostov's head.

Though he saw French cannon and French troops on the Pratzen Heights

just where he had been ordered to look for the commander in chief,

he could not, did not wish to, believe that.









CHAPTER XVIII





Rostov had been ordered to look for Kutuzov and the Emperor near the

village of Pratzen. But neither they nor a single commanding officer

were there, only disorganized crowds of troops of various kinds. He

urged on his already weary horse to get quickly past these crowds, but

the farther he went the more disorganized they were. The highroad on

which he had come out was thronged with caleches, carriages of all

sorts, and Russian and Austrian soldiers of all arms, some wounded and

some not. This whole mass droned and jostled in confusion under the

dismal influence of cannon balls flying from the French batteries

stationed on the Pratzen Heights.



"Where is the Emperor? Where is Kutuzov?" Rostov kept asking

everyone he could stop, but got no answer from anyone.



At last seizing a soldier by his collar he forced him to answer.



"Eh, brother! They've all bolted long ago!" said the soldier,

laughing for some reason and shaking himself free.

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Having left that soldier who was evidently drunk, Rostov stopped the

horse of a batman or groom of some important personage and began to

question him. The man announced that the Tsar had been driven in a

carriage at full speed about an hour before along that very road and

that he was dangerously wounded.



"It can't be!" said Rostov. "It must have been someone else."



"I saw him myself." replied the man with a self-confident smile of

derision. "I ought to know the Emperor by now, after the times I've

seen him in Petersburg. I saw him just as I see you.... There he sat

in the carriage as pale as anything. How they made the four black

horses fly! Gracious me, they did rattle past! It's time I knew the

Imperial horses and Ilya Ivanych. I don't think Ilya drives anyone

except the Tsar!"



Rostov let go of the horse and was about to ride on, when a

wounded officer passing by addressed him:



"Who is it you want?" he asked. "The commander in chief? He was

killed by a cannon ball--struck in the breast before our regiment."



"Not killed--wounded!" another officer corrected him.



"Who? Kutuzov?" asked Rostov.



"Not Kutuzov, but what's his name--well, never mind... there are not

many left alive. Go that way, to that village, all the commanders

are there," said the officer, pointing to the village of Hosjeradek,

and he walked on.



Rostov rode on at a footpace not knowing why or to whom he was now

going. The Emperor was wounded, the battle lost. It was impossible

to doubt it now. Rostov rode in the direction pointed out to him, in

which he saw turrets and a church. What need to hurry? What was he now

to say to the Tsar or to Kutuzov, even if they were alive and

unwounded?



"Take this road, your honor, that way you will be killed at once!" a

soldier shouted to him. "They'd kill you there!"



"Oh, what are you talking about?" said another. "Where is he to

go? That way is nearer."



Rostov considered, and then went in the direction where they said he

would be killed.



"It's all the same now. If the Emperor is wounded, am I to try to

save myself?" he thought. He rode on to the region where the

greatest number of men had perished in fleeing from Pratzen. The

French had not yet occupied that region, and the Russians--the

uninjured and slightly wounded--had left it long ago. All about the

field, like heaps of manure on well-kept plowland, lay from ten to

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fifteen dead and wounded to each couple of acres. The wounded crept

together in twos and threes and one could hear their distressing

screams and groans, sometimes feigned--or so it seemed to Rostov. He

put his horse to a trot to avoid seeing all these suffering men, and

he felt afraid--afraid not for his life, but for the courage he needed

and which he knew would not stand the sight of these unfortunates.



The French, who had ceased firing at this field strewn with dead and

wounded where there was no one left to fire at, on seeing an

adjutant riding over it trained a gun on him and fired several

shots. The sensation of those terrible whistling sounds and of the

corpses around him merged in Rostov's mind into a single feeling of

terror and pity for himself. He remembered his mother's last letter.

"What would she feel," thought he, "if she saw me here now on this

field with the cannon aimed at me?"



In the village of Hosjeradek there were Russian troops retiring from

the field of battle, who though still in some confusion were less

disordered. The French cannon did not reach there and the musketry

fire sounded far away. Here everyone clearly saw and said that the

battle was lost. No one whom Rostov asked could tell him where the

Emperor or Kutuzov was. Some said the report that the Emperor was

wounded was correct, others that it was not, and explained the false

rumor that had spread by the fact that the Emperor's carriage had

really galloped from the field of battle with the pale and terrified

Ober-Hofmarschal Count Tolstoy, who had ridden out to the

battlefield with others in the Emperor's suite. One officer told

Rostov that he had seen someone from headquarters behind the village

to the left, and thither Rostov rode, not hoping to find anyone but

merely to ease his conscience. When he had ridden about two miles

and had passed the last of the Russian troops, he saw, near a

kitchen garden with a ditch round it, two men on horseback facing

the ditch. One with a white plume in his hat seemed familiar to

Rostov; the other on a beautiful chestnut horse (which Rostov

fancied he had seen before) rode up to the ditch, struck his horse

with his spurs, and giving it the rein leaped lightly over. Only a

little earth crumbled from the bank under the horse's hind hoofs.

Turning the horse sharply, he again jumped the ditch, and

deferentially addressed the horseman with the white plumes,

evidently suggesting that he should do the same. The rider, whose

figure seemed familiar to Rostov and involuntarily riveted his

attention, made a gesture of refusal with his head and hand and by

that gesture Rostov instantly recognized his lamented and adored

monarch.



"But it can't be he, alone in the midst of this empty field!"

thought Rostov. At that moment Alexander turned his head and Rostov

saw the beloved features that were so deeply engraved on his memory.

The Emperor was pale, his cheeks sunken and his eyes hollow, but the

charm, the mildness of his features, was all the greater. Rostov was

happy in the assurance that the rumors about the Emperor being wounded

were false. He was happy to be seeing him. He knew that he might and

even ought to go straight to him and give the message Dolgorukov had

ordered him to deliver.

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But as a youth in love trembles, is unnerved, and dares not utter

the thoughts he has dreamed of for nights, but looks around for help

or a chance of delay and flight when the longed-for moment comes and

he is alone with her, so Rostov, now that he had attained what he

had longed for more than anything else in the world, did not know

how to approach the Emperor, and a thousand reasons occurred to him

why it would be inconvenient, unseemly, and impossible to do so.



"What! It is as if I were glad of a chance to take advantage of

his being alone and despondent! A strange face may seem unpleasant

or painful to him at this moment of sorrow; besides, what can I say to

him now, when my heart fails me and my mouth feels dry at the mere

sight of him?" Not one of the innumerable speeches addressed to the

Emperor that he had composed in his imagination could he now recall.

Those speeches were intended for quite other conditions, they were for

the most part to be spoken at a moment of victory and triumph,

generally when he was dying of wounds and the sovereign had thanked

him for heroic deeds, and while dying he expressed the love his

actions had proved.



"Besides how can I ask the Emperor for his instructions for the

right flank now that it is nearly four o'clock and the battle is lost?

No, certainly I must not approach him, I must not intrude on his

reflections. Better die a thousand times than risk receiving an unkind

look or bad opinion from him," Rostov decided; and sorrowfully and

with a heart full despair he rode away, continually looking back at

the Tsar, who still remained in the same attitude of indecision.



While Rostov was thus arguing with himself and riding sadly away,

Captain von Toll chanced to ride to the same spot, and seeing the

Emperor at once rode up to him, offered his services, and assisted him

to cross the ditch on foot. The Emperor, wishing to rest and feeling

unwell, sat down under an apple tree and von Toll remained beside him.

Rostov from a distance saw with envy and remorse how von Toll spoke

long and warmly to the Emperor and how the Emperor, evidently weeping,

covered his eyes with his hand and pressed von Toll's hand.



"And I might have been in his place!" thought Rostov, and hardly

restraining his tears of pity for the Emperor, he rode on in utter

despair, not knowing where to or why he was now riding.



His despair was all the greater from feeling that his own weakness

was the cause his grief.



He might... not only might but should, have gone up to the

sovereign. It was a unique chance to show his devotion to the

Emperor and he had not made use of it.... "What have I done?"

thought he. And he turned round and galloped back to the place where

he had seen the Emperor, but there was no one beyond the ditch now.

Only some carts and carriages were passing by. From one of the drivers

he learned that Kutuzov's staff were not far off, in the village the

vehicles were going to. Rostov followed them. In front of him walked

Kutuzov's groom leading horses in horsecloths. Then came a cart, and

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behind that walked an old, bandy-legged domestic serf in a peaked

cap and sheepskin coat.



"Tit! I say, Tit!" said the groom.



"What?" answered the old man absent-mindedly.



"Go, Tit! Thresh a bit!"



"Oh, you fool!" said the old man, spitting angrily. Some time passed

in silence, and then the same joke was repeated.





Before five in the evening the battle had been lost at all points.

More than a hundred cannon were already in the hands of the French.



Przebyszewski and his corps had laid down their arms. Other

columns after losing half their men were retreating in disorderly

confused masses.



The remains of Langeron's and Dokhturov's mingled forces were

crowding around the dams and banks of the ponds near the village of

Augesd.



After five o'clock it was only at the Augesd Dam that a hot

cannonade (delivered by the French alone) was still to be heard from

numerous batteries ranged on the slopes of the Pratzen Heights,

directed at our retreating forces.



In the rearguard, Dokhturov and others rallying some battalions kept

up a musketry fire at the French cavalry that was pursuing our troops.

It was growing dusk. On the narrow Augesd Dam where for so many

years the old miller had been accustomed to sit in his tasseled cap

peacefully angling, while his grandson, with shirt sleeves rolled

up, handled the floundering silvery fish in the watering can, on

that dam over which for so many years Moravians in shaggy caps and

blue jackets had peacefully driven their two-horse carts loaded with

wheat and had returned dusty with flour whitening their carts--on that

narrow dam amid the wagons and the cannon, under the horses' hoofs and

between the wagon wheels, men disfigured by fear of death now

crowded together, crushing one another, dying, stepping over the dying

and killing one another, only to move on a few steps and be killed

themselves in the same way.



Every ten seconds a cannon ball flew compressing the air around,

or a shell burst in the midst of that dense throng, killing some and

splashing with blood those near them.



Dolokhov--now an officer--wounded in the arm, and on foot, with

the regimental commander on horseback and some ten men of his company,

represented all that was left of that whole regiment. Impelled by

the crowd, they had got wedged in at the approach to the dam and,

jammed in on all sides, had stopped because a horse in front had

fallen under a cannon and the crowd were dragging it out. A cannon

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ball killed someone behind them, another fell in front and splashed

Dolokhov with blood. The crowd, pushing forward desperately,

squeezed together, moved a few steps, and again stopped.



"Move on a hundred yards and we are certainly saved, remain here

another two minutes and it is certain death," thought each one.



Dolokhov who was in the midst of the crowd forced his way to the

edge of the dam, throwing two soldiers off their feet, and ran onto

the slippery ice that covered the millpool.



"Turn this way!" he shouted, jumping over the ice which creaked

under him; "turn this way!" he shouted to those with the gun. "It

bears!..."



The ice bore him but it swayed and creaked, and it was plain that it

would give way not only under a cannon or a crowd, but very soon

even under his weight alone. The men looked at him and pressed to

the bank, hesitating to step onto the ice. The general on horseback at

the entrance to the dam raised his hand and opened his mouth to

address Dolokhov. Suddenly a cannon ball hissed so low above the crowd

that everyone ducked. It flopped into something moist, and the general

fell from his horse in a pool of blood. Nobody gave him a look or

thought of raising him.



"Get onto the ice, over the ice! Go on! Turn! Don't you hear? Go

on!" innumerable voices suddenly shouted after the ball had struck the

general, the men themselves not knowing what, or why, they were

shouting.



One of the hindmost guns that was going onto the dam turned off onto

the ice. Crowds of soldiers from the dam began running onto the frozen

pond. The ice gave way under one of the foremost soldiers, and one leg

slipped into the water. He tried to right himself but fell in up to

his waist. The nearest soldiers shrank back, the gun driver stopped

his horse, but from behind still came the shouts: "Onto the ice, why

do you stop? Go on! Go on!" And cries of horror were heard in the

crowd. The soldiers near the gun waved their arms and beat the

horses to make them turn and move on. The horses moved off the bank.

The ice, that had held under those on foot, collapsed in a great mass,

and some forty men who were on it dashed, some forward and some

back, drowning one another.



Still the cannon balls continued regularly to whistle and flop

onto the ice and into the water and oftenest of all among the crowd

that covered the dam, the pond, and the bank.









CHAPTER XIX





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On the Pratzen Heights, where he had fallen with the flagstaff in

his hand, lay Prince Andrew Bolkonski bleeding profusely and

unconsciously uttering a gentle, piteous, and childlike moan.



Toward evening he ceased moaning and became quite still. He did

not know how long his unconsciousness lasted. Suddenly he again felt

that he was alive and suffering from a burning, lacerating pain in his

head.



"Where is it, that lofty sky that I did not know till now, but saw

today?" was his first thought. "And I did not know this suffering

either," he thought. "Yes, I did not know anything, anything at all

till now. But where am I?"



He listened and heard the sound of approaching horses, and voices

speaking French. He opened his eyes. Above him again was the same

lofty sky with clouds that had risen and were floating still higher,

and between them gleamed blue infinity. He did not turn his head and

did not see those who, judging by the sound of hoofs and voices, had

ridden up and stopped near him.



It was Napoleon accompanied by two aides-de-camp. Bonaparte riding

over the battlefield had given final orders to strengthen the

batteries firing at the Augesd Dam and was looking at the killed and

wounded left on the field.



"Fine men!" remarked Napoleon, looking at a dead Russian

grenadier, who, with his face buried in the ground and a blackened

nape, lay on his stomach with an already stiffened arm flung wide.



"The ammunition for the guns in position is exhausted, Your

Majesty," said an adjutant who had come from the batteries that were

firing at Augesd.



"Have some brought from the reserve," said Napoleon, and having gone

on a few steps he stopped before Prince Andrew, who lay on his back

with the flagstaff that had been dropped beside him. (The flag had

already been taken by the French as a trophy.)



"That's a fine death!" said Napoleon as he gazed at Bolkonski.



Prince Andrew understood that this was said of him and that it was

Napoleon who said it. He heard the speaker addressed as Sire. But he

heard the words as he might have heard the buzzing of a fly. Not

only did they not interest him, but he took no notice of them and at

once forgot them. His head was burning, he felt himself bleeding to

death, and he saw above him the remote, lofty, and everlasting sky. He

knew it was Napoleon--his hero--but at that moment Napoleon seemed

to him such a small, insignificant creature compared with what was

passing now between himself and that lofty infinite sky with the

clouds flying over it. At that moment it meant nothing to him who

might be standing over him, or what was said of him; he was only

glad that people were standing near him and only wished that they

would help him and bring him back to life, which seemed to him so

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beautiful now that he had today learned to understand it so

differently. He collected all his strength, to stir and utter a sound.

He feebly moved his leg and uttered a weak, sickly groan which aroused

his own pity.



"Ah! He is alive," said Napoleon. "Lift this young man up and

carry him to the dressing station."



Having said this, Napoleon rode on to meet Marshal Lannes, who,

hat in hand, rode up smiling to the Emperor to congratulate him on the

victory.



Prince Andrew remembered nothing more: he lost consciousness from

the terrible pain of being lifted onto the stretcher, the jolting

while being moved, and the probing of his wound at the dressing

station. He did not regain consciousness till late in the day, when

with other wounded and captured Russian officers he was carried to the

hospital. During this transfer he felt a little stronger and was

able to look about him and even speak.



The first words he heard on coming to his senses were those of a

French convoy officer, who said rapidly: "We must halt here: the

Emperor will pass here immediately; it will please him to see these

gentlemen prisoners."



"There are so many prisoners today, nearly the whole Russian army,

that he is probably tired of them," said another officer.



"All the same! They say this one is the commander of all the Emperor

Alexander's Guards," said the first one, indicating a Russian

officer in the white uniform of the Horse Guards.



Bolkonski recognized Prince Repnin whom he had met in Petersburg

society. Beside him stood a lad of nineteen, also a wounded officer of

the Horse Guards.



Bonaparte, having come up at a gallop, stopped his horse.



"Which is the senior?" he asked, on seeing the prisoners.



They named the colonel, Prince Repnin.



"You are the commander of the Emperor Alexander's regiment of

Horse Guards?" asked Napoleon.



"I commanded a squadron," replied Repnin.



"Your regiment fulfilled its duty honorably," said Napoleon.



"The praise of a great commander is a soldier's highest reward,"

said Repnin.



"I bestow it with pleasure," said Napoleon. "And who is that young

man beside you?"

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Prince Repnin named Lieutenant Sukhtelen.



After looking at him Napoleon smiled.



"He's very young to come to meddle with us."



"Youth is no hindrance to courage," muttered Sukhtelen in a

failing voice.



"A splendid reply!" said Napoleon. "Young man, you will go far!"



Prince Andrew, who had also been brought forward before the

Emperor's eyes to complete the show of prisoners, could not fail to

attract his attention. Napoleon apparently remembered seeing him on

the battlefield and, addressing him, again used the epithet "young

man" that was connected in his memory with Prince Andrew.



"Well, and you, young man," said he. "How do you feel, mon brave?"



Though five minutes before, Prince Andrew had been able to say a few

words to the soldiers who were carrying him, now with his eyes fixed

straight on Napoleon, he was silent.... So insignificant at that

moment seemed to him all the interests that engrossed Napoleon, so

mean did his hero himself with his paltry vanity and joy in victory

appear, compared to the lofty, equitable, and kindly sky which he

had seen and understood, that he could not answer him.



Everything seemed so futile and insignificant in comparison with the

stern and solemn train of thought that weakness from loss of blood,

suffering, and the nearness of death aroused in him. Looking into

Napoleon's eyes Prince Andrew thought of the insignificance of

greatness, the unimportance of life which no one could understand, and

the still greater unimportance of death, the meaning of which no one

alive could understand or explain.



The Emperor without waiting for an answer turned away and said to

one of the officers as he went: "Have these gentlemen attended to

and taken to my bivouac; let my doctor, Larrey, examine their

wounds. Au revoir, Prince Repnin!" and he spurred his horse and

galloped away.



His face shone with self-satisfaction and pleasure.



The soldiers who had carried Prince Andrew had noticed and taken the

little gold icon Princess Mary had hung round her brother's neck,

but seeing the favor the Emperor showed the prisoners, they now

hastened to return the holy image.



Prince Andrew did not see how and by whom it was replaced, but the

little icon with its thin gold chain suddenly appeared upon his

chest outside his uniform.



"It would be good," thought Prince Andrew, glancing at the icon

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his sister had hung round his neck with such emotion and reverence,

"it would be good if everything were as clear and simple as it seems

to Mary. How good it would be to know where to seek for help in this

life, and what to expect after it beyond the grave! How happy and calm

I should be if I could now say: 'Lord, have mercy on me!'... But to

whom should I say that? Either to a Power indefinable,

incomprehensible, which I not only cannot address but which I cannot

even express in words--the Great All or Nothing-" said he to

himself, "or to that God who has been sewn into this amulet by Mary!

There is nothing certain, nothing at all except the unimportance of

everything I understand, and the greatness of something

incomprehensible but all-important."



The stretchers moved on. At every jolt he again felt unendurable

pain; his feverishness increased and he grew delirious. Visions of his

father, wife, sister, and future son, and the tenderness he had felt

the night before the battle, the figure of the insignificant little

Napoleon, and above all this the lofty sky, formed the chief

subjects of his delirious fancies.



The quiet home life and peaceful happiness of Bald Hills presented

itself to him. He was already enjoying that happiness when that little

Napoleon had suddenly appeared with his unsympathizing look of

shortsighted delight at the misery of others, and doubts and

torments had followed, and only the heavens promised peace. Toward

morning all these dreams melted and merged into the chaos and darkness

of unconciousness and oblivion which in the opinion of Napoleon's

doctor, Larrey, was much more likely to end in death than in

convalescence.



"He is a nervous, bilious subject," said Larrey, "and will not

recover."



And Prince Andrew, with others fatally wounded, was left to the care

of the inhabitants of the district.









BOOK FOUR: 1806







CHAPTER I





Early in the year 1806 Nicholas Rostov returned home on leave.

Denisov was going home to Voronezh and Rostov persuaded him to

travel with him as far as Moscow and to stay with him there. Meeting a

comrade at the last post station but one before Moscow, Denisov had

drunk three bottles of wine with him and, despite the jolting ruts

across the snow-covered road, did not once wake up on the way to

Moscow, but lay at the bottom of the sleigh beside Rostov, who grew

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more and more impatient the nearer they got to Moscow.



"How much longer? How much longer? Oh, these insufferable streets,

shops, bakers' signboards, street lamps, and sleighs!" thought Rostov,

when their leave permits had been passed at the town gate and they had

entered Moscow.



"Denisov! We're here! He's asleep," he added, leaning forward with

his whole body as if in that position he hoped to hasten the speed

of the sleigh.



Denisov gave no answer.



"There's the corner at the crossroads, where the cabman, Zakhar, has

his stand, and there's Zakhar himself and still the same horse! And

here's the little shop where we used to buy gingerbread! Can't you

hurry up? Now then!"



"Which house is it?" asked the driver.



"Why, that one, right at the end, the big one. Don't you see? That's

our house," said Rostov. "Of course, it's our house! Denisov, Denisov!

We're almost there!"



Denisov raised his head, coughed, and made no answer.



"Dmitri," said Rostov to his valet on the box, "those lights are

in our house, aren't they?"



"Yes, sir, and there's a light in your father's study."



"Then they've not gone to bed yet? What do you think? Mind now,

don't forget to put out my new coat," added Rostov, fingering his

new mustache. "Now then, get on," he shouted to the driver. "Do wake

up, Vaska!" he went on, turning to Denisov, whose head was again

nodding. "Come, get on! You shall have three rubles for vodka--get

on!" Rostov shouted, when the sleigh was only three houses from his

door. It seemed to him the horses were not moving at all. At last

the sleigh bore to the right, drew up at an entrance, and Rostov saw

overhead the old familiar cornice with a bit of plaster broken off,

the porch, and the post by the side of the pavement. He sprang out

before the sleigh stopped, and ran into the hall. The house stood cold

and silent, as if quite regardless of who had come to it. There was no

one in the hall. "Oh God! Is everyone all right?" he thought, stopping

for a moment with a sinking heart, and then immediately starting to

run along the hall and up the warped steps of the familiar

staircase. The well-known old door handle, which always angered the

countess when it was not properly cleaned, turned as loosely as

ever. A solitary tallow candle burned in the anteroom.



Old Michael was asleep on the chest. Prokofy, the footman, who was

so strong that he could lift the back of the carriage from behind, sat

plaiting slippers out of cloth selvedges. He looked up at the

opening door and his expression of sleepy indifference suddenly

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changed to one of delighted amazement.



"Gracious heavens! The young count!" he cried, recognizing his young

master. "Can it be? My treasure!" and Prokofy, trembling with

excitement, rushed toward the drawing-room door, probably in order

to announce him, but, changing his mind, came back and stooped to kiss

the young man's shoulder.



"All well?" asked Rostov, drawing away his arm.



"Yes, God be thanked! Yes! They've just finished supper. Let me have

a look at you, your excellency."



"Is everything quite all right?"



"The Lord be thanked, yes!"



Rostov, who had completely forgotten Denisov, not wishing anyone

to forestall him, threw off his fur coat and ran on tiptoe through the

large dark ballroom. All was the same: there were the same old card

tables and the same chandelier with a cover over it; but someone had

already seen the young master, and, before he had reached the

drawing room, something flew out from a side door like a tornado and

began hugging and kissing him. Another and yet another creature of the

same kind sprang from a second door and a third; more hugging, more

kissing, more outcries, and tears of joy. He could not distinguish

which was Papa, which Natasha, and which Petya. Everyone shouted,

talked, and kissed him at the same time. Only his mother was not

there, he noticed that.



"And I did not know... Nicholas... My darling!..."



"Here he is... our own... Kolya,* dear fellow... How he has

changed!... Where are the candles?... Tea!..."





*Nicholas.





"And me, kiss me!"



"Dearest... and me!"



Sonya, Natasha, Petya, Anna Mikhaylovna, Vera, and the old count

were all hugging him, and the serfs, men and maids, flocked into the

room, exclaiming and oh-ing and ah-ing.



Petya, clinging to his legs, kept shouting, "And me too!"



Natasha, after she had pulled him down toward her and covered his

face with kisses, holding him tight by the skirt of his coat, sprang

away and pranced up and down in one place like a goat and shrieked

piercingly.



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All around were loving eyes glistening with tears of joy, and all

around were lips seeking a kiss.



Sonya too, all rosy red, clung to his arm and, radiant with bliss,

looked eagerly toward his eyes, waiting for the look for which she

longed. Sonya now was sixteen and she was very pretty, especially at

this moment of happy, rapturous excitement. She gazed at him, not

taking her eyes off him, and smiling and holding her breath. He gave

her a grateful look, but was still expectant and looking for

someone. The old countess had not yet come. But now steps were heard

at the door, steps so rapid that they could hardly be his mother's.



Yet it was she, dressed in a new gown which he did not know, made

since he had left. All the others let him go, and he ran to her.

When they met, she fell on his breast, sobbing. She could not lift her

face, but only pressed it to the cold braiding of his hussar's jacket.

Denisov, who had come into the room unnoticed by anyone, stood there

and wiped his eyes at the sight.



"Vasili Denisov, your son's friend," he said, introducing himself to

the count, who was looking inquiringly at him.



"You are most welcome! I know, I know," said the count, kissing

and embracing Denisov. "Nicholas wrote us... Natasha, Vera, look! Here

is Denisov!"



The same happy, rapturous faces turned to the shaggy figure of

Denisov.



"Darling Denisov!" screamed Natasha, beside herself with rapture,

springing to him, putting her arms round him, and kissing him. This

escapade made everybody feel confused. Denisov blushed too, but smiled

and, taking Natasha's hand, kissed it.



Denisov was shown to the room prepared for him, and the Rostovs

all gathered round Nicholas in the sitting room.



The old countess, not letting go of his hand and kissing it every

moment, sat beside him: the rest, crowding round him, watched every

movement, word, or look of his, never taking their blissfully

adoring eyes off him. His brother and sisters struggled for the places

nearest to him and disputed with one another who should bring him

his tea, handkerchief, and pipe.



Rostov was very happy in the love they showed him; but the first

moment of meeting had been so beatific that his present joy seemed

insufficient, and he kept expecting something more, more and yet more.



Next morning, after the fatigues of their journey, the travelers

slept till ten o'clock.



In the room next their bedroom there was a confusion of sabers,

satchels, sabretaches, open portmanteaus, and dirty boots. Two freshly

cleaned pairs with spurs had just been placed by the wall. The

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servants were bringing in jugs and basins, hot water for shaving,

and their well-brushed clothes. There was a masculine odor and a smell

of tobacco.



"Hallo, Gwiska--my pipe!" came Vasili Denisov's husky voice.

"Wostov, get up!"



Rostov, rubbing his eyes that seemed glued together, raised his

disheveled head from the hot pillow.



"Why, is it late?"



"Late! It's nearly ten o'clock," answered Natasha's voice. A

rustle of starched petticoats and the whispering and laughter of

girls' voices came from the adjoining room. The door was opened a

crack and there was a glimpse of something blue, of ribbons, black

hair, and merry faces. It was Natasha, Sonya, and Petya, who had

come to see whether they were getting up.



"Nicholas! Get up!" Natasha's voice was again heard at the door.



"Directly!"



Meanwhile, Petya, having found and seized the sabers in the outer

room, with the delight boys feel at the sight of a military elder

brother, and forgetting that it was unbecoming for the girls to see

men undressed, opened the bedroom door.



"Is this your saber?" he shouted.



The girls sprang aside. Denisov hid his hairy legs under the

blanket, looking with a scared face at his comrade for help. The door,

having let Petya in, closed again. A sound of laughter came from

behind it.



"Nicholas! Come out in your dressing gown!" said Natasha's voice.



"Is this your saber?" asked Petya. "Or is it yours?" he said,

addressing the black-mustached Denisov with servile deference.



Rostov hurriedly put something on his feet, drew on his dressing

gown, and went out. Natasha had put on one spurred boot and was just

getting her foot into the other. Sonya, when he came in, was

twirling round and was about to expand her dresses into a balloon

and sit down. They were dressed alike, in new pale-blue frocks, and

were both fresh, rosy, and bright. Sonya ran away, but Natasha, taking

her brother's arm, led him into the sitting room, where they began

talking. They hardly gave one another time to ask questions and give

replies concerning a thousand little matters which could not

interest anyone but themselves. Natasha laughed at every word he

said or that she said herself, not because what they were saying was

amusing, but because she felt happy and was unable to control her

joy which expressed itself by laughter.



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"Oh, how nice, how splendid!" she said to everything.



Rostov felt that, under the influence of the warm rays of love, that

childlike smile which had not once appeared on his face since he

left home now for the first time after eighteen months again

brightened his soul and his face.



"No, but listen," she said, "now you are quite a man, aren't you?

I'm awfully glad you're my brother." She touched his mustache. "I want

to know what you men are like. Are you the same as we? No?"



"Why did Sonya run away?" asked Rostov.



"Ah, yes! That's a whole long story! How are you going to speak to

her--thou or you?"



"As may happen," said Rostov.



"No, call her you, please! I'll tell you all about it some other

time. No, I'll tell you now. You know Sonya's my dearest friend.

Such a friend that I burned my arm for her sake. Look here!"



She pulled up her muslin sleeve and showed him a red scar on her

long, slender, delicate arm, high above the elbow on that part that is

covered even by a ball dress.



"I burned this to prove my love for her. I just heated a ruler in

the fire and pressed it there!"



Sitting on the sofa with the little cushions on its arms, in what

used to be his old schoolroom, and looking into Natasha's wildly

bright eyes, Rostov re-entered that world of home and childhood

which had no meaning for anyone else, but gave him some of the best

joys of his life; and the burning of an arm with a ruler as a proof of

love did not seem to him senseless, he understood and was not

surprised at it.



"Well, and is that all?" he asked.



"We are such friends, such friends! All that ruler business was just

nonsense, but we are friends forever. She, if she loves anyone, does

it for life, but I don't understand that, I forget quickly."



"Well, what then?"



"Well, she loves me and you like that."



Natasha suddenly flushed.



"Why, you remember before you went away?... Well, she says you are

to forget all that.... She says: 'I shall love him always, but let him

be free.' Isn't that lovely and noble! Yes, very noble? Isn't it?"

asked Natasha, so seriously and excitedly that it was evident that

what she was now saying she had talked of before, with tears.

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Rostov became thoughtful.



"I never go back on my word," he said. "Besides, Sonya is so

charming that only a fool would renounce such happiness."



"No, no!" cried Natasha, "she and I have already talked it over.

We knew you'd say so. But it won't do, because you see, if you say

that--if you consider yourself bound by your promise--it will seem

as if she had not meant it seriously. It makes it as if you were

marrying her because you must, and that wouldn't do at all."



Rostov saw that it had been well considered by them. Sonya had

already struck him by her beauty on the preceding day. Today, when

he had caught a glimpse of her, she seemed still more lovely. She

was a charming girl of sixteen, evidently passionately in love with

him (he did not doubt that for an instant). Why should he not love her

now, and even marry her, Rostov thought, but just now there were so

many other pleasures and interests before him! "Yes, they have taken a

wise decision," he thought, "I must remain free."



"Well then, that's excellent," said he. "We'll talk it over later

on. Oh, how glad I am to have you!"



"Well, and are you still true to Boris?" he continued.



"Oh, what nonsense!" cried Natasha, laughing. "I don't think about

him or anyone else, and I don't want anything of the kind."



"Dear me! Then what are you up now?"



"Now?" repeated Natasha, and a happy smile lit up her face. "Have

you seen Duport?"



"No."



"Not seen Duport--the famous dancer? Well then, you won't

understand. That's what I'm up to."



Curving her arms, Natasha held out her skirts as dancers do, ran

back a few steps, turned, cut a caper, brought her little feet sharply

together, and made some steps on the very tips of her toes.



"See, I'm standing! See!" she said, but could not maintain herself

on her toes any longer. "So that's what I'm up to! I'll never marry

anyone, but will be a dancer. Only don't tell anyone."



Rostov laughed so loud and merrily that Denisov, in his bedroom,

felt envious and Natasha could not help joining in.



"No, but don't you think it's nice?" she kept repeating.



"Nice! And so you no longer wish to marry Boris?"



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Natasha flared up. "I don't want to marry anyone. And I'll tell

him so when I see him!"



"Dear me!" said Rostov.



"But that's all rubbish," Natasha chattered on. "And is Denisov

nice?" she asked.



"Yes, indeed!"



"Oh, well then, good-by: go and dress. Is he very terrible,

Denisov?"



"Why terrible?" asked Nicholas. "No, Vaska is a splendid fellow."



"You call him Vaska? That's funny! And is he very nice?"



"Very."



"Well then, be quick. We'll all have breakfast together."



And Natasha rose and went out of the room on tiptoe, like a ballet

dancer, but smiling as only happy girls of fifteen can smile. When

Rostov met Sonya in the drawing room, he reddened. He did not know how

to behave with her. The evening before, in the first happy moment of

meeting, they had kissed each other, but today they felt it could

not be done; he felt that everybody, including his mother and sisters,

was looking inquiringly at him and watching to see how he would behave

with her. He kissed her hand and addressed her not as thou but as you-

Sonya. But their eyes met and said thou, and exchanged tender

kisses. Her looks asked him to forgive her for having dared, by

Natasha's intermediacy, to remind him of his promise, and then thanked

him for his love. His looks thanked her for offering him his freedom

and told her that one way or another he would never cease to love her,

for that would be impossible.



"How strange it is," said Vera, selecting a moment when all were

silent, "that Sonya and Nicholas now say you to one another and meet

like strangers."



Vera's remark was correct, as her remarks always were, but, like

most of her observations, it made everyone feel uncomfortable, not

only Sonya, Nicholas, and Natasha, but even the old countess, who-

dreading this love affair which might hinder Nicholas from making a

brilliant match--blushed like a girl.



Denisov, to Rostov's surprise, appeared in the drawing room with

pomaded hair, perfumed, and in a new uniform, looking just as smart as

he made himself when going into battle, and he was more amiable to the

ladies and gentlemen than Rostov had ever expected to see him.









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CHAPTER II





On his return to Moscow from the army, Nicholas Rostov was

welcomed by his home circle as the best of sons, a hero, and their

darling Nikolenka; by his relations as a charming, attractive, and

polite young man; by his acquaintances as a handsome lieutenant of

hussars, a good dancer, and one of the best matches in the city.



The Rostovs knew everybody in Moscow. The old count had money enough

that year, as all his estates had been remortgaged, and so Nicholas,

acquiring a trotter of his own, very stylish riding breeches of the

latest cut, such as no one else yet had in Moscow, and boots of the

latest fashion, with extremely pointed toes and small silver spurs,

passed his time very gaily. After a short period of adapting himself

to the old conditions of life, Nicholas found it very pleasant to be

at home again. He felt that he had grown up and matured very much. His

despair at failing in a Scripture examination, his borrowing money

from Gavril to pay a sleigh driver, his kissing Sonya on the sly--he

now recalled all this as childishness he had left immeasurably behind.

Now he was a lieutenant of hussars, in a jacket laced with silver, and

wearing the Cross of St. George, awarded to soldiers for bravery in

action, and in the company of well-known, elderly, and respected

racing men was training a trotter of his own for a race. He knew a

lady on one of the boulevards whom he visited of an evening. He led

the mazurka at the Arkharovs' ball, talked about the war with Field

Marshal Kamenski, visited the English Club, and was on intimate

terms with a colonel of forty to whom Denisov had introduced him.



His passion for the Emperor had cooled somewhat in Moscow. But

still, as he did not see him and had no opportunity of seeing him,

he often spoke about him and about his love for him, letting it be

understood that he had not told all and that there was something in

his feelings for the Emperor not everyone could understand, and with

his whole soul he shared the adoration then common in Moscow for the

Emperor, who was spoken of as the "angel incarnate."



During Rostov's short stay in Moscow, before rejoining the army,

he did not draw closer to Sonya, but rather drifted away from her. She

was very pretty and sweet, and evidently deeply in love with him,

but he was at the period of youth when there seems so much to do

that there is no time for that sort of thing and a young man fears

to bind himself and prizes his freedom which he needs for so many

other things. When he thought of Sonya, during this stay in Moscow, he

said to himself, "Ah, there will be, and there are, many more such

girls somewhere whom I do not yet know. There will be time enough to

think about love when I want to, but now I have no time." Besides,

it seemed to him that the society of women was rather derogatory to

his manhood. He went to balls and into ladies' society with an

affectation of doing so against his will. The races, the English Club,

sprees with Denisov, and visits to a certain house--that was another

matter and quite the thing for a dashing young hussar!



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At the beginning of March, old Count Ilya Rostov was very busy

arranging a dinner in honor of Prince Bagration at the English Club.



The count walked up and down the hall in his dressing gown, giving

orders to the club steward and to the famous Feoktist, the Club's head

cook, about asparagus, fresh cucumbers, strawberries, veal, and fish

for this dinner. The count had been a member and on the committee of

the Club from the day it was founded. To him the Club entrusted the

arrangement of the festival in honor of Bagration, for few men knew so

well how to arrange a feast on an open-handed, hospitable scale, and

still fewer men would be so well able and willing to make up out of

their own resources what might be needed for the success of the

fete. The club cook and the steward listened to the count's orders

with pleased faces, for they knew that under no other management could

they so easily extract a good profit for themselves from a dinner

costing several thousand rubles.



"Well then, mind and have cocks' comb in the turtle soup, you know!"



"Shall we have three cold dishes then?" asked the cook.



The count considered.



"We can't have less--yes, three... the mayonnaise, that's one," said

he, bending down a finger.



"Then am I to order those large sterlets?" asked the steward.



"Yes, it can't be helped if they won't take less. Ah, dear me! I was

forgetting. We must have another entree. Ah, goodness gracious!" he

clutched at his head. "Who is going to get me the flowers? Dmitri! Eh,

Dmitri! Gallop off to our Moscow estate," he said to the factotum

who appeared at his call. "Hurry off and tell Maksim, the gardener, to

set the serfs to work. Say that everything out of the hothouses must

be brought here well wrapped up in felt. I must have two hundred

pots here on Friday."



Having given several more orders, he was about to go to his

"little countess" to have a rest, but remembering something else of

importance, he returned again, called back the cook and the club

steward, and again began giving orders. A light footstep and the

clinking of spurs were heard at the door, and the young count,

handsome, rosy, with a dark little mustache, evidently rested and made

sleeker by his easy life in Moscow, entered the room.



"Ah, my boy, my head's in a whirl!" said the old man with a smile,

as if he felt a little confused before his son. "Now, if you would

only help a bit! I must have singers too. I shall have my own

orchestra, but shouldn't we get the gypsy singers as well? You

military men like that sort of thing."



"Really, Papa, I believe Prince Bagration worried himself less

before the battle of Schon Grabern than you do now," said his son with

a smile.

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The old count pretended to be angry.



"Yes, you talk, but try it yourself!"



And the count turned to the cook, who, with a shrewd and

respectful expression, looked observantly and sympathetically at the

father and son.



"What have the young people come to nowadays, eh, Feoktist?" said

he. "Laughing at us old fellows!"



"That's so, your excellency, all they have to do is to eat a good

dinner, but providing it and serving it all up, that's not their

business!"



"That's it, that's it!" exclaimed the count, and gaily seizing his

son by both hands, he cried, "Now I've got you, so take the sleigh and

pair at once, and go to Bezukhob's, and tell him 'Count Ilya has

sent you to ask for strawberries and fresh pineapples.' We can't get

them from anyone else. He's not there himself, so you'll have to go in

and ask the princesses; and from there go on to the Rasgulyay--the

coachman Ipatka knows--and look up the gypsy Ilyushka, the one who

danced at Count Orlov's, you remember, in a white Cossack coat, and

bring him along to me."



"And am I to bring the gypsy girls along with him?" asked

Nicholas, laughing. "Dear, dear!..."



At that moment, with noiseless footsteps and with the

businesslike, preoccupied, yet meekly Christian look which never

left her face, Anna Mikhaylovna entered the hall. Though she came upon

the count in his dressing gown every day, he invariably became

confused and begged her to excuse his costume.



"No matter at all, my dear count," she said, meekly closing her

eyes. "But I'll go to Bezukhov's myself. Pierre has arrived, and now

we shall get anything we want from his hothouses. I have to see him in

any case. He has forwarded me a letter from Boris. Thank God, Boris is

now on the staff."



The count was delighted at Anna Mikhaylovna's taking upon herself

one of his commissions and ordered the small closed carriage for her.



"Tell Bezukhov to come. I'll put his name down. Is his wife with

him?" he asked.



Anna Mikhaylovna turned up her eyes, and profound sadness was

depicted on her face.



"Ah, my dear friend, he is very unfortunate," she said. "If what

we hear is true, it is dreadful. How little we dreamed of such a thing

when we were rejoicing at his happiness! And such a lofty angelic soul

as young Bezukhov! Yes, I pity him from my heart, and shall try to

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give him what consolation I can."



"Wh-what is the matter?" asked both the young and old Rostov.



Anna Mikhaylovna sighed deeply.



"Dolokhov, Mary Ivanovna's son," she said in a mysterious whisper,

"has compromised her completely, they say. Pierre took him up, invited

him to his house in Petersburg, and now... she has come here and

that daredevil after her!" said Anna Mikhaylovna, wishing to show

her sympathy for Pierre, but by involuntary intonations and a half

smile betraying her sympathy for the "daredevil," as she called

Dolokhov. "They say Pierre is quite broken by his misfortune."



"Dear, dear! But still tell him to come to the Club--it will all

blow over. It will be a tremendous banquet."



Next day, the third of March, soon after one o'clock, two hundred

and fifty members of the English Club and fifty guests were awaiting

the guest of honor and hero of the Austrian campaign, Prince

Bagration, to dinner.



On the first arrival of the news of the battle of Austerlitz, Moscow

had been bewildered. At that time, the Russians were so used to

victories that on receiving news of the defeat some would simply not

believe it, while others sought some extraordinary explanation of so

strange an event. In the English Club, where all who were

distinguished, important, and well informed forgathered when the

news began to arrive in December, nothing was said about the war and

the last battle, as though all were in a conspiracy of silence. The

men who set the tone in conversation--Count Rostopchin, Prince Yuri

Dolgorukov, Valuev, Count Markov, and Prince Vyazemski--did not show

themselves at the Club, but met in private houses in intimate circles,

and the Moscovites who took their opinions from others--Ilya Rostov

among them--remained for a while without any definite opinion on the

subject of the war and without leaders. The Moscovites felt that

something was wrong and that to discuss the bad news was difficult,

and so it was best to be silent. But after a while, just as a jury

comes out of its room, the bigwigs who guided the Club's opinion

reappeared, and everybody began speaking clearly and definitely.

Reasons were found for the incredible, unheard-of, and impossible

event of a Russian defeat, everything became clear, and in all corners

of Moscow the same things began to be said. These reasons were the

treachery of the Austrians, a defective commissariat, the treachery of

the Pole Przebyszewski and of the Frenchman Langeron, Kutuzov's

incapacity, and (it was whispered) the youth and inexperience of the

sovereign, who had trusted worthless and insignificant people. But the

army, the Russian army, everyone declared, was extraordinary and had

achieved miracles of valor. The soldiers, officers, and generals were

heroes. But the hero of heroes was Prince Bagration, distinguished

by his Schon Grabern affair and by the retreat from Austerlitz,

where he alone had withdrawn his column unbroken and had all day

beaten back an enemy force twice as numerous as his own. What also

conduced to Bagration's being selected as Moscow's hero was the fact

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that he had no connections in the city and was a stranger there. In

his person, honor was shown to a simple fighting Russian soldier

without connections and intrigues, and to one who was associated by

memories of the Italian campaign with the name of Suvorov. Moreover,

paying such honor to Bagration was the best way of expressing

disapproval and dislike of Kutuzov.



"Had there been no Bagration, it would have been necessary to invent

him," said the wit Shinshin, parodying the words of Voltaire.

Kutuzov no one spoke of, except some who abused him in whispers,

calling him a court weathercock and an old satyr.



All Moscow repeated Prince Dolgorukov's saying: "If you go on

modeling and modeling you must get smeared with clay," suggesting

consolation for our defeat by the memory of former victories; and

the words of Rostopchin, that French soldiers have to be incited to

battle by highfalutin words, and Germans by logical arguments to

show them that it is more dangerous to run away than to advance, but

that Russian soldiers only need to be restrained and held back! On all

sides, new and fresh anecdotes were heard of individual examples of

heroism shown by our officers and men at Austerlitz. One had saved a

standard, another had killed five Frenchmen, a third had loaded five

cannon singlehanded. Berg was mentioned, by those who did not know

him, as having, when wounded in the right hand, taken his sword in the

left, and gone forward. Of Bolkonski, nothing was said, and only those

who knew him intimately regretted that he had died so young, leaving a

pregnant wife with his eccentric father.









CHAPTER III





On that third of March, all the rooms in the English Club were

filled with a hum of conversation, like the hum of bees swarming in

springtime. The members and guests of the Club wandered hither and

thither, sat, stood, met, and separated, some in uniform and some in

evening dress, and a few here and there with powdered hair and in

Russian kaftans. Powdered footmen, in livery with buckled shoes and

smart stockings, stood at every door anxiously noting visitors'

every movement in order to offer their services. Most of those present

were elderly, respected men with broad, self-confident faces, fat

fingers, and resolute gestures and voices. This class of guests and

members sat in certain habitual places and met in certain habitual

groups. A minority of those present were casual guests--chiefly

young men, among whom were Denisov, Rostov, and Dolokhov--who was

now again an officer in the Semenov regiment. The faces of these young

people, especially those who were militarymen, bore that expression of

condescending respect for their elders which seems to say to the older

generation, "We are prepared to respect and honor you, but all the

same remember that the future belongs to us."



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Nesvitski was there as an old member of the Club. Pierre, who at his

wife's command had let his hair grow and abandoned his spectacles,

went about the rooms fashionably dressed but looking sad and dull.

Here, as elsewhere, he was surrounded by an atmosphere of subservience

to his wealth, and being in the habit of lording it over these people,

he treated them with absent-minded contempt.



By his age he should have belonged to the younger men, but by his

wealth and connections he belonged to the groups old and honored

guests, and so he went from one group to another. Some of the most

important old men were the center of groups which even strangers

approached respectfully to hear the voices of well-known men. The

largest circles formed round Count Rostopchin, Valuev, and

Naryshkin. Rostopchin was describing how the Russians had been

overwhelmed by flying Austrians and had had to force their way through

them with bayonets.



Valuev was confidentially telling that Uvarov had been sent from

Petersburg to ascertain what Moscow was thinking about Austerlitz.



In the third circle, Naryshkin was speaking of the meeting of the

Austrian Council of War at which Suvorov crowed like a cock in reply

to the nonsense talked by the Austrian generals. Shinshin, standing

close by, tried to make a joke, saying that Kutuzov had evidently

failed to learn from Suvorov even so simple a thing as the art of

crowing like a cock, but the elder members glanced severely at the

wit, making him feel that in that place and on that day, it was

improper to speak so of Kutuzov.



Count Ilya Rostov, hurried and preoccupied, went about in his soft

boots between the dining and drawing rooms, hastily greeting the

important and unimportant, all of whom he knew, as if they were all

equals, while his eyes occasionally sought out his fine well-set-up

young son, resting on him and winking joyfully at him. Young Rostov

stood at a window with Dolokhov, whose acquaintance he had lately made

and highly valued. The old count came up to them and pressed

Dolokhov's hand.



"Please come and visit us... you know my brave boy... been

together out there... both playing the hero... Ah, Vasili

Ignatovich... How d'ye do, old fellow?" he said, turning to an old man

who was passing, but before he had finished his greeting there was a

general stir, and a footman who had run in announced, with a

frightened face: "He's arrived!"



Bells rang, the stewards rushed forward, and--like rye shaken

together in a shovel--the guests who had been scattered about in

different rooms came together and crowded in the large drawing room by

the door of the ballroom.



Bagration appeared in the doorway of the anteroom without hat or

sword, which, in accord with the Club custom, he had given up to the

hall porter. He had no lambskin cap on his head, nor had he a loaded

whip over his shoulder, as when Rostov had seen him on the eve of

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the battle of Austerlitz, but wore a tight new uniform with Russian

and foreign Orders, and the Star of St. George on his left breast.

Evidently just before coming to the dinner he had had his hair and

whiskers trimmed, which changed his appearance for the worse. There

was something naively festive in his air, which, in conjunction with

his firm and virile features, gave him a rather comical expression.

Bekleshev and Theodore Uvarov, who had arrived with him, paused at the

doorway to allow him, as the guest of honor, to enter first. Bagration

was embarrassed, not wishing to avail himself of their courtesy, and

this caused some delay at the doors, but after all he did at last

enter first. He walked shyly and awkwardly over the parquet floor of

the reception room, not knowing what to do with his hands; he was more

accustomed to walk over a plowed field under fire, as he had done at

the head of the Kursk regiment at Schon Grabern--and he would have

found that easier. The committeemen met him at the first door and,

expressing their delight at seeing such a highly honored guest, took

possession of him as it were, without waiting for his reply,

surrounded him, and led him to the drawing room. It was at first

impossible to enter the drawing-room door for the crowd of members and

guests jostling one another and trying to get a good look at Bagration

over each other's shoulders, as if he were some rare animal. Count

Ilya Rostov, laughing and repeating the words, "Make way, dear boy!

Make way, make way!" pushed through the crowd more energetically

than anyone, led the guests into the drawing room, and seated them

on the center sofa. The bigwigs, the most respected members of the

Club, beset the new arrivals. Count Ilya, again thrusting his way

through the crowd, went out of the drawing room and reappeared a

minute later with another committeeman, carrying a large silver salver

which he presented to Prince Bagration. On the salver lay some

verses composed and printed in the hero's honor. Bagration, on

seeing the salver, glanced around in dismay, as though seeking help.

But all eyes demanded that he should submit. Feeling himself in

their power, he resolutely took the salver with both hands and

looked sternly and reproachfully at the count who had presented it

to him. Someone obligingly took the dish from Bagration (or he

would, it seemed, have held it till evening and have gone in to dinner

with it) and drew his attention to the verses.



"Well, I will read them, then!" Bagration seemed to say, and, fixing

his weary eyes on the paper, began to read them with a fixed and

serious expression. But the author himself took the verses and began

reading them aloud. Bagration bowed his bead and listened:



Bring glory then to Alexander's reign

And on the throne our Titus shield.

A dreaded foe be thou, kindhearted as a man,

A Rhipheus at home, a Caesar in the field!

E'en fortunate Napoleon

Knows by experience, now, Bagration,

And dare not Herculean Russians trouble...



But before he had finished reading, a stentorian major-domo

announced that dinner was ready! The door opened, and from the

dining room came the resounding strains of the polonaise:

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Conquest's joyful thunder waken,

Triumph, valiant Russians, now!...



and Count Rostov, glancing angrily at the author who went on reading

his verses, bowed to Bagration. Everyone rose, feeling that dinner was

more important than verses, and Bagration, again preceding all the

rest, went in to dinner. He was seated in the place of honor between

two Alexanders--Bekleshev and Naryshkin--which was a significant

allusion to the name of the sovereign. Three hundred persons took

their seats in the dining room, according to their rank and

importance: the more important nearer to the honored guest, as

naturally as water flows deepest where the land lies lowest.



Just before dinner, Count Ilya Rostov presented his son to

Bagration, who recognized him and said a few words to him,

disjointed and awkward, as were all the words he spoke that day, and

Count Ilya looked joyfully and proudly around while Bagration spoke to

his son.



Nicholas Rostov, with Denisov and his new acquaintance, Dolokhov,

sat almost at the middle of the table. Facing them sat Pierre,

beside Prince Nesvitski. Count Ilya Rostov with the other members of

the committee sat facing Bagration and, as the very personification of

Moscow hospitality, did the honors to the prince.



His efforts had not been in vain. The dinner, both the Lenten and

the other fare, was splendid, yet he could not feel quite at ease till

the end of the meal. He winked at the butler, whispered directions

to the footmen, and awaited each expected dish with some anxiety.

Everything was excellent. With the second course, a gigantic sterlet

(at sight of which Ilya Rostov blushed with self-conscious

pleasure), the footmen began popping corks and filling the champagne

glasses. After the fish, which made a certain sensation, the count

exchanged glances with the other committeemen. "There will be many

toasts, it's time to begin," he whispered, and taking up his glass, he

rose. All were silent, waiting for what he would say.



"To the health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he cried, and at

the same moment his kindly eyes grew moist with tears of joy and

enthusiasm. The band immediately struck up "Conquest's joyful

thunder waken..." All rose and cried "Hurrah!" Bagration also rose and

shouted "Hurrah!" in exactly the same voice in which he had shouted it

on the field at Schon Grabern. Young Rostov's ecstatic voice could

be heard above the three hundred others. He nearly wept. "To the

health of our Sovereign, the Emperor!" he roared, "Hurrah!" and

emptying his glass at one gulp he dashed it to the floor. Many

followed his example, and the loud shouting continued for a long time.

When the voices subsided, the footmen cleared away the broken glass

and everybody sat down again, smiling at the noise they had made and

exchanging remarks. The old count rose once more, glanced at a note

lying beside his plate, and proposed a toast, "To the health of the

hero of our last campaign, Prince Peter Ivanovich Bagration!" and

again his blue eyes grew moist. "Hurrah!" cried the three hundred

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voices again, but instead of the band a choir began singing a

cantata composed by Paul Ivanovich Kutuzov:



Russians! O'er all barriers on!

Courage conquest guarantees;

Have we not Bagration?

He brings foe men to their knees,... etc.





As soon as the singing was over, another and another toast was

proposed and Count Ilya Rostov became more and more moved, more

glass was smashed, and the shouting grew louder. They drank to

Bekleshev, Naryshkin, Uvarov, Dolgorukov, Apraksin, Valuev, to the

committee, to all the Club members and to all the Club guests, and

finally to Count Ilya Rostov separately, as the organizer of the

banquet. At that toast, the count took out his handkerchief and,

covering his face, wept outright.









CHAPTER IV





Pierre sat opposite Dolokhov and Nicholas Rostov. As usual, he ate

and drank much, and eagerly. But those who knew him intimately noticed

that some great change had come over him that day. He was silent all

through dinner and looked about, blinking and scowling, or, with fixed

eyes and a look of complete absent-mindedness, kept rubbing the bridge

of his nose. His face was depressed and gloomy. He seemed to see and

hear nothing of what was going on around him and to be absorbed by

some depressing and unsolved problem.



The unsolved problem that tormented him was caused by hints given by

the princess, his cousin, at Moscow, concerning Dolokhov's intimacy

with his wife, and by an anonymous letter he had received that

morning, which in the mean jocular way common to anonymous letters

said that he saw badly through his spectacles, but that his wife's

connection with Dolokhov was a secret to no one but himself. Pierre

absolutely disbelieved both the princess' hints and the letter, but he

feared now to look at Dolokhov, who was sitting opposite him. Every

time he chanced to meet Dolokhov's handsome insolent eyes, Pierre felt

something terrible and monstrous rising in his soul and turned quickly

away. Involuntarily recalling his wife's past and her relations with

Dolokhov, Pierre saw clearly that what was said in the letter might be

true, or might at least seem to be true had it not referred to his

wife. He involuntarily remembered how Dolokhov, who had fully

recovered his former position after the campaign, had returned to

Petersburg and come to him. Availing himself of his friendly relations

with Pierre as a boon companion, Dolokhov had come straight to his

house, and Pierre had put him up and lent him money. Pierre recalled

how Helene had smilingly expressed disapproval of Dolokhov's living at

their house, and how cynically Dolokhov had praised his wife's

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beauty to him and from that time till they came to Moscow had not left

them for a day.



"Yes, he is very handsome," thought Pierre, "and I know him. It

would be particularly pleasant to him to dishonor my name and ridicule

me, just because I have exerted myself on his behalf, befriended

him, and helped him. I know and understand what a spice that would add

to the pleasure of deceiving me, if it really were true. Yes, if it

were true, but I do not believe it. I have no right to, and can't,

believe it." He remembered the expression Dolokhov's face assumed in

his moments of cruelty, as when tying the policeman to the bear and

dropping them into the water, or when he challenged a man to a duel

without any reason, or shot a post-boy's horse with a pistol. That

expression was often on Dolokhov's face when looking at him. "Yes,

he is a bully," thought Pierre, "to kill a man means nothing to him.

It must seem to him that everyone is afraid of him, and that must

please him. He must think that I, too, am afraid of him--and in fact I

am afraid of him," he thought, and again he felt something terrible

and monstrous rising in his soul. Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov were

now sitting opposite Pierre and seemed very gay. Rostov was talking

merrily to his two friends, one of whom was a dashing hussar and the

other a notorious duelist and rake, and every now and then he

glanced ironically at Pierre, whose preoccupied, absent-minded, and

massive figure was a very noticeable one at the dinner. Rostov

looked inimically at Pierre, first because Pierre appeared to his

hussar eyes as a rich civilian, the husband of a beauty, and in a

word--an old woman; and secondly because Pierre in his preoccupation

and absent-mindedness had not recognized Rostov and had not

responded to his greeting. When the Emperor's health was drunk,

Pierre, lost in thought, did not rise or lift his glass.



"What are you about?" shouted Rostov, looking at him in an ecstasy

of exasperation. "Don't you hear it's His Majesty the Emperor's

health?"



Pierre sighed, rose submissively, emptied his glass, and, waiting

till all were seated again, turned with his kindly smile to Rostov.



"Why, I didn't recognize you!" he said. But Rostov was otherwise

engaged; he was shouting "Hurrah!"



"Why don't you renew the acquaintance?" said Dolokhov to Rostov.



"Confound him, he's a fool!" said Rostov.



"One should make up to the husbands of pretty women," said Denisov.



Pierre did not catch what they were saying, but knew they were

talking about him. He reddened and turned away.



"Well, now to the health of handsome women!" said Dolokhov, and with

a serious expression, but with a smile lurking at the corners of his

mouth, he turned with his glass to Pierre.



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"Here's to the health of lovely women, Peterkin--and their

lovers!" he added.



Pierre, with downcast eyes, drank out of his glass without looking

at Dolokhov or answering him. The footman, who was distributing

leaflets with Kutuzov's cantata, laid one before Pierre as one of

the principal guests. He was just going to take it when Dolokhov,

leaning across, snatched it from his hand and began reading it. Pierre

looked at Dolokhov and his eyes dropped, the something terrible and

monstrous that had tormented him all dinnertime rose and took

possession of him. He leaned his whole massive body across the table.



"How dare you take it?" he shouted.



Hearing that cry and seeing to whom it was addressed, Nesvitski

and the neighbor on his right quickly turned in alarm to Bezukhov.



"Don't! Don't! What are you about?" whispered their frightened

voices.



Dolokhov looked at Pierre with clear, mirthful, cruel eyes, and that

smile of his which seemed to say, "Ah! This is what I like!"



"You shan't have it!" he said distinctly.



Pale, with quivering lips, Pierre snatched the copy.



"You...! you... scoundrel! I challenge you!" he ejaculated, and,

pushing back his chair, he rose from the table.



At the very instant he did this and uttered those words, Pierre felt

that the question of his wife's guilt which had been tormenting him

the whole day was finally and indubitably answered in the affirmative.

He hated her and was forever sundered from her. Despite Denisov's

request that he would take no part in the matter, Rostov agreed to

be Dolokhov's second, and after dinner he discussed the arrangements

for the duel with Nesvitski, Bezukhov's second. Pierre went home,

but Rostov with Dolokhov and Denisov stayed on at the Club till

late, listening to the gypsies and other singers.



"Well then, till tomorrow at Sokolniki," said Dolokhov, as he took

leave of Rostov in the Club porch.



"And do you feel quite calm?" Rostov asked.



Dolokhov paused.



"Well, you see, I'll tell you the whole secret of dueling in two

words. If you are going to fight a duel, and you make a will and write

affectionate letters to your parents, and if you think you may be

killed, you are a fool and are lost for certain. But go with the

firm intention of killing your man as quickly and surely as

possible, and then all will be right, as our bear huntsman at Kostroma

used to tell me. 'Everyone fears a bear,' he says, 'but when you see

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one your fear's all gone, and your only thought is not to let him

get away!' And that's how it is with me. A demain, mon cher."*





*Till tomorrow, my dear fellow.





Next day, at eight in the morning, Pierre and Nesvitski drove to the

Sokolniki forest and found Dolokhov, Denisov, and Rostov already

there. Pierre had the air of a man preoccupied with considerations

which had no connection with the matter in hand. His haggard face

was yellow. He had evidently not slept that night. He looked about

distractedly and screwed up his eyes as if dazzled by the sun. He

was entirely absorbed by two considerations: his wife's guilt, of

which after his sleepless night he had not the slightest doubt, and

the guiltlessness of Dolokhov, who had no reason to preserve the honor

of a man who was nothing to him.... "I should perhaps have done the

same thing in his place," thought Pierre. "It's even certain that I

should have done the same, then why this duel, this murder? Either I

shall kill him, or he will hit me in the head, or elbow, or knee.

Can't I go away from here, run away, bury myself somewhere?" passed

through his mind. But just at moments when such thoughts occurred to

him, he would ask in a particularly calm and absent-minded way,

which inspired the respect of the onlookers, "Will it be long? Are

things ready?"



When all was ready, the sabers stuck in the snow to mark the

barriers, and the pistols loaded, Nesvitski went up to Pierre.



"I should not be doing my duty, Count," he said in timid tones, "and

should not justify your confidence and the honor you have done me in

choosing me for your second, if at this grave, this very grave, moment

I did not tell you the whole truth. I think there is no sufficient

ground for this affair, or for blood to be shed over it.... You were

not right, not quite in the right, you were impetuous..."



"Oh yes, it is horribly stupid," said Pierre.



"Then allow me to express your regrets, and I am sure your

opponent will accept them," said Nesvitski (who like the others

concerned in the affair, and like everyone in similar cases, did not

yet believe that the affair had come to an actual duel). "You know,

Count, it is much more honorable to admit one's mistake than to let

matters become irreparable. There was no insult on either side.

Allow me to convey...."



"No! What is there to talk about?" said Pierre. "It's all the

same.... Is everything ready?" he added. "Only tell me where to go and

where to shoot," he said with an unnaturally gentle smile.



He took the pistol in his hand and began asking about the working of

the trigger, as he had not before held a pistol in his hand--a fact

that he did not to confess.



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"Oh yes, like that, I know, I only forgot," said he.



"No apologies, none whatever," said Dolokhov to Denisov (who on

his side had been attempting a reconciliation), and he also went up to

the appointed place.



The spot chosen for the duel was some eighty paces from the road,

where the sleighs had been left, in a small clearing in the pine

forest covered with melting snow, the frost having begun to break up

during the last few days. The antagonists stood forty paces apart at

the farther edge of the clearing. The seconds, measuring the paces,

left tracks in the deep wet snow between the place where they had been

standing and Nesvitski's and Dolokhov's sabers, which were stuck

intothe ground ten paces apart to mark the barrier. It was thawing and

misty; at forty paces' distance nothing could be seen. For three

minutes all had been ready, but they still delayed and all were

silent.









CHAPTER V





"Well begin!" said Dolokhov.



"All right," said Pierre, still smiling in the same way. A feeling

of dread was in the air. It was evident that the affair so lightly

begun could no longer be averted but was taking its course

independently of men's will.



Denisov first went to the barrier and announced: "As the adve'sawies

have wefused a weconciliation, please pwoceed. Take your pistols,

and at the word thwee begin to advance.



"O-ne! T-wo! Thwee!" he shouted angrily and stepped aside.



The combatants advanced along the trodden tracks, nearer and

nearer to one another, beginning to see one another through the

mist. They had the right to fire when they liked as they approached

the barrier. Dolokhov walked slowly without raising his pistol,

looking intently with his bright, sparkling blue eyes into his

antagonist's face. His mouth wore its usual semblance of a smile.



"So I can fire when I like!" said Pierre, and at the word "three,"

he went quickly forward, missing the trodden path and stepping into

the deep snow. He held the pistol in his right hand at arm's length,

apparently afraid of shooting himself with it. His left hand he held

carefully back, because he wished to support his right hand with it

and knew he must not do so. Having advanced six paces and strayed

off the track into the snow, Pierre looked down at his feet, then

quickly glanced at Dolokhov and, bending his finger as he had been

shown, fired. Not at all expecting so loud a report, Pierre

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shuddered at the sound and then, smiling at his own sensations,

stood still. The smoke, rendered denser by the mist, prevented him

from seeing anything for an instant, but there was no second report as

he had expected. He only heard Dolokhov's hurried steps, and his

figure came in view through the smoke. He was pressing one hand to his

left side, while the other clutched his drooping pistol. His face

was pale. Rostov ran toward him and said something.



"No-o-o!" muttered Dolokhov through his teeth, "no, it's not

over." And after stumbling a few staggering steps right up to the

saber, he sank on the snow beside it. His left hand was bloody; he

wiped it on his coat and supported himself with it. His frowning

face was pallid and quivered.



"Plea..." began Dolokhov, but could not at first pronounce the word.



"Please," he uttered with an effort.



Pierre, hardly restraining his sobs, began running toward Dolokhov

and was about to cross the space between the barriers, when Dolokhov

cried:



"To your barrier!" and Pierre, grasping what was meant, stopped by

his saber. Only ten paces divided them. Dolokhov lowered his head to

the snow, greedily bit at it, again raised his head, adjusted himself,

drew in his legs and sat up, seeking a firm center of gravity. He

sucked and swallowed the cold snow, his lips quivered but

his eyes, still smiling, glittered with effort and exasperation as

he mustered his remaining strength. He raised his pistol and aimed.



"Sideways! Cover yourself with your pistol!" ejaculated Nesvitski.



"Cover yourself!" even Denisov cried to his adversary.



Pierre, with a gentle smile of pity and remorse, his arms and legs

helplessly spread out, stood with his broad chest directly facing

Dolokhov looked sorrowfully at him. Denisov, Rostov, and Nesvitski

closed their eyes. At the same instant they heard a report and

Dolokhov's angry cry.



"Missed!" shouted Dolokhov, and he lay helplessly, face downwards on

the snow.



Pierre clutched his temples, and turning round went into the forest,

trampling through the deep snow, and muttering incoherent words:



"Folly... folly! Death... lies..." he repeated, puckering his face.



Nesvitski stopped him and took him home.



Rostov and Denisov drove away with the wounded Dolokhov.



The latter lay silent in the sleigh with closed eyes and did not

answer a word to the questions addressed to him. But on entering

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Moscow he suddenly came to and, lifting his head with an effort,

took Rostov, who was sitting beside him, by the hand. Rostov was

struck by the totally altered and unexpectedly rapturous and tender

expression on Dolokhov's face.



"Well? How do you feel?" he asked.



"Bad! But it's not that, my friend-" said Dolokhov with a gasping

voice. "Where are we? In Moscow, I know. I don't matter, but I have

killed her, killed... She won't get over it! She won't survive...."



"Who?" asked Rostov.



"My mother! My mother, my angel, my adored angel mother," and

Dolokhov pressed Rostov's hand and burst into tears.



When he had become a little quieter, he explained to Rostov that

he was living with his mother, who, if she saw him dying, would not

survive it. He implored Rostov to go on and prepare her.



Rostov went on ahead to do what was asked, and to his great surprise

learned that Dolokhov the brawler, Dolokhov the bully, lived in Moscow

with an old mother and a hunchback sister, and was the most

affectionate of sons and brothers.









CHAPTER VI





Pierre had of late rarely seen his wife alone. Both in Petersburg

and in Moscow their house was always full of visitors. The night after

the duel he did not go to his bedroom but, as he often did, remained

in his father's room, that huge room in which Count Bezukhov had died.



He lay down on the sofa meaning to fall asleep and forget all that

had happened to him, but could not do so. Such a storm of feelings,

thoughts, and memories suddenly arose within him that he could not

fall asleep, nor even remain in one place, but had to jump up and pace

the room with rapid steps. Now he seemed to see her in the early

days of their marriage, with bare shoulders and a languid,

passionate look on her face, and then immediately he saw beside her

Dolokhov's handsome, insolent, hard, and mocking face as he had seen

it at the banquet, and then that same face pale, quivering, and

suffering, as it had been when he reeled and sank on the snow.



"What has happened?" he asked himself. "I have killed her lover,

yes, killed my wife's lover. Yes, that was it! And why? How did I come

to do it?"--"Because you married her," answered an inner voice.



"But in what was I to blame?" he asked. "In marrying her without

loving her; in deceiving yourself and her." And he vividly recalled

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that moment after supper at Prince Vasili's, when he spoke those words

he had found so difficult to utter: "I love you." "It all comes from

that! Even then I felt it," he thought. "I felt then that it was not

so, that I had no right to do it. And so it turns out."



He remembered his honeymoon and blushed at the recollection.

Particularly vivid, humiliating, and shameful was the recollection

of how one day soon after his marriage he came out of the bedroom into

his study a little before noon in his silk dressing gown and found his

head steward there, who, bowing respectfully, looked into his face and

at his dressing gown and smiled slightly, as if expressing

respectful understanding of his employer's happiness.



"But how often I have felt proud of her, proud of her majestic

beauty and social tact," thought he; "been proud of my house, in

which she received all Petersburg, proud of her unapproachability and

beauty. So this is what I was proud of! I then thought that I did

not understand her. How often when considering her character I have

told myself that I was to blame for not understanding her, for not

understanding that constant composure and complacency and lack of

all interests or desires, and the whole secret lies in the terrible

truth that she is a depraved woman. Now I have spoken that terrible

word to myself all has become clear.



"Anatole used to come to borrow money from her and used to kiss

her naked shoulders. She did not give him the money, but let herself

be kissed. Her father in jest tried to rouse her jealousy, and she

replied with a calm smile that she was not so stupid as to be jealous:

'Let him do what he pleases,' she used to say of me. One day I asked

her if she felt any symptoms of pregnancy. She laughed

contemptuously and said she was not a fool to want to have children,

and that she was not going to have any children by me."



Then he recalled the coarseness and bluntness of her thoughts and

the vulgarity of the expressions that were natural to her, though

she had been brought up in the most aristocratic circles.



"I'm not such a fool.... Just you try it on.... Allez-vous

promener,"* she used to say. Often seeing the success she had with

young and old men and women Pierre could not understand why he did not

love her.





*"You clear out of this."





"Yes, I never loved her," said he to himself; "I knew she was a

depraved woman," he repeated, "but dared not admit it to myself. And

now there's Dolokhov sitting in the snow with a forced smile and

perhaps dying, while meeting my remorse with some forced bravado!"



Pierre was one of those people who, in spite of an appearance of

what is called weak character, do not seek a confidant in their

troubles. He digested his sufferings alone.

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"It is all, all her fault," he said to himself; "but what of that?

Why did I bind myself to her? Why did I say 'Je vous aime'* to her,

which was a lie, and worse than a lie? I am guilty and must

endure... what? A slur on my name? A misfortune for life? Oh, that's

nonsense," he thought. "The slur on my name and honor--that's all

apart from myself.





*I love you.





"Louis XVI was executed because they said he was dishonorable and

a criminal," came into Pierre's head, "and from their point of view

they were right, as were those too who canonized him and died a

martyr's death for his sake. Then Robespierre was beheaded for being a

despot. Who is right and who is wrong? No one! But if you are alive-

live: tomorrow you'll die as I might have died an hour ago. And is

it worth tormenting oneself, when one has only a moment of life in

comparison with eternity?"



But at the moment when he imagined himself calmed by such

reflections, she suddenly came into his mind as she was at the moments

when he had most strongly expressed his insincere love for her, and he

felt the blood rush to his heart and had again to get up and move

about and break and tear whatever came to his hand. "Why did I tell

her that 'Je vous aime'?" he kept repeating to himself. And when he

had said it for the tenth time, Molibre's words: "Mais que diable

alloit-il faire dans cette galere?" occurred to him, and he began to

laugh at himself.



In the night he called his valet and told him to pack up to go to

Petersburg. He could not imagine how he could speak to her now. He

resolved to go away next day and leave a letter informing her of his

intention to part from her forever.



Next morning when the valet came into the room with his coffee,

Pierre was lying asleep on the ottoman with an open book in his hand.



He woke up and looked round for a while with a startled

expression, unable to realize where he was.



"The countess told me to inquire whether your excellency was at

home," said the valet.



But before Pierre could decide what answer he would send, the

countess herself in a white satin dressing gown embroidered with

silver and with simply dressed hair (two immense plaits twice round

her lovely head like a coronet) entered the room, calm and majestic,

except that there was a wrathful wrinkle on her rather prominent

marble brow. With her imperturbable calm she did not begin to speak in

front of the valet. She knew of the duel and had come to speak about

it. She waited till the valet had set down the coffee things and

left the room. Pierre looked at her timidly over his spectacles, and

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like a hare surrounded by hounds who lays back her ears and

continues to crouch motionless before her enemies, he tried to

continue reading. But feeling this to be senseless and impossible,

he again glanced timidly at her. She did not sit down but looked at

him with a contemptuous smile, waiting for the valet to go.



"Well, what's this now? What have you been up to now, I should

like to know?" she asked sternly.



"I? What have I...?" stammered Pierre.



"So it seems you're a hero, eh? Come now, what was this duel

about? What is it meant to prove? What? I ask you."



Pierre turned over heavily on the ottoman and opened his mouth,

but could not reply.



"If you won't answer, I'll tell you..." Helene went on. "You believe

everything you're told. You were told..." Helene laughed, "that

Dolokhov was my lover," she said in French with her coarse plainness

of speech, uttering the word amant as casually as any other word, "and

you believed it! Well, what have you proved? What does this duel

prove? That you're a fool, que vous etes un sot, but everybody knew

that. What will be the result? That I shall be the laughingstock of

all Moscow, that everyone will say that you, drunk and not knowing

what you were about, challenged a man you are jealous of without

cause." Helene raised her voice and became more and more excited, "A

man who's a better man than you in every way..."



"Hm... Hm...!" growled Pierre, frowning without looking at her,

and not moving a muscle.



"And how could you believe he was my lover? Why? Because I like

his company? If you were cleverer and more agreeable, I should

prefer yours."



"Don't speak to me... I beg you," muttered Pierre hoarsely.



"Why shouldn't I speak? I can speak as I like, and I tell you

plainly that there are not many wives with husbands such as you who

would not have taken lovers (des amants), but I have not done so,"

said she.



Pierre wished to say something, looked at her with eyes whose

strange expression she did not understand, and lay down again. He

was suffering physically at that moment, there was a weight on his

chest and he could not breathe. He knew that he must do something to

put an end to this suffering, but what he wanted to do was too

terrible.



"We had better separate," he muttered in a broken voice.



"Separate? Very well, but only if you give me a fortune," said

Helene. "Separate! That's a thing to frighten me with!"

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Pierre leaped up from the sofa and rushed staggering toward her.



"I'll kill you!" he shouted, and seizing the marble top of a table

with a strength he had never before felt, he made a step toward her

brandishing the slab.



Helene's face became terrible, she shrieked and sprang aside. His

father's nature showed itself in Pierre. He felt the fascination and

delight of frenzy. He flung down the slab, broke it, and swooping down

on her with outstretched hands shouted, "Get out!" in such a

terrible voice that the whole house heard it with horror. God knows

what he would have done at that moment had Helene not fled from the

room.





A week later Pierre gave his wife full power to control all his

estates in Great Russia, which formed the larger part of his property,

and left for Petersburg alone.









CHAPTER VII





Two months had elapsed since the news of the battle of Austerlitz

and the loss of Prince Andrew had reached Bald Hills, and in spite

of the letters sent through the embassy and all the searches made, his

body had not been found nor was he on the list of prisoners. What

was worst of all for his relations was the fact that there was still a

possibility of his having been picked up on the battlefield by the

people of the place and that he might now be lying, recovering or

dying, alone among strangers and unable to send news of himself. The

gazettes from which the old prince first heard of the defeat at

Austerlitz stated, as usual very briefly and vaguely, that after

brilliant engagements the Russians had had to retreat and had made

their withdrawal in perfect order. The old prince understood from this

official report that our army had been defeated. A week after the

gazette report of the battle of Austerlitz came a letter from

Kutuzov informing the prince of the fate that had befallen his son.



"Your son," wrote Kutuzov, "fell before my eyes, a standard in his

hand and at the head of a regiment--he fell as a hero, worthy of his

father and his fatherland. To the great regret of myself and of the

whole army it is still uncertain whether he is alive or not. I comfort

myself and you with the hope that your son is alive, for otherwise

he would have been mentioned among the officers found on the field

of battle, a list of whom has been sent me under flag of truce."



After receiving this news late in the evening, when he was alone

in his study, the old prince went for his walk as usual next

morning, but he was silent with his steward, the gardener, and the

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architect, and though he looked very grim he said nothing to anyone.



When Princess Mary went to him at the usual hour he was working at

his lathe and, as usual, did not look round at her.



"Ah, Princess Mary!" he said suddenly in an unnatural voice,

throwing down his chisel. (The wheel continued to revolve by its own

impetus, and Princess Mary long remembered the dying creak of that

wheel, which merged in her memory with what followed.)



She approached him, saw his face, and something gave way within her.

Her eyes grew dim. By the expression of her father's face, not sad,

not crushed, but angry and working unnaturally, she saw that hanging

over her and about to crush her was some terrible misfortune, the

worst in life, one she had not yet experienced, irreparable and

incomprehensible--the death of one she loved.



"Father! Andrew!"--said the ungraceful, awkward princess with such

an indescribable charm of sorrow and self-forgetfulness that her

father could not bear her look but turned away with a sob.



"Bad news! He's not among the prisoners nor among the killed!

Kutuzov writes..." and he screamed as piercingly as if he wished to

drive the princess away by that scream... "Killed!"



The princess did not fall down or faint. She was already pale, but

on hearing these words her face changed and something brightened in

her beautiful, radiant eyes. It was as if joy--a supreme joy apart

from the joys and sorrows of this world--overflowed the great grief

within her. She forgot all fear of her father, went up to him, took

his hand, and drawing him down put her arm round his thin, scraggy

neck.



"Father," she said, "do not turn away from me, let us weep together."



"Scoundrels! Blackguards!" shrieked the old man, turning his face

away from her. "Destroying the army, destroying the men! And why?

Go, go and tell Lise."



The princess sank helplessly into an armchair beside her father

and wept. She saw her brother now as he had been at the moment when he

took leave of her and of Lise, his look tender yet proud. She saw

him tender and amused as he was when he put on the little icon. "Did

he believe? Had he repented of his unbelief? Was he now there? There

in the realms of eternal peace and blessedness?" she thought.



"Father, tell me how it happened," she asked through her tears.



"Go! Go! Killed in battle, where the best of Russian men and

Russia's glory were led to destruction. Go, Princess Mary. Go and tell

Lise. I will follow."



When Princess Mary returned from her father, the little princess sat

working and looked up with that curious expression of inner, happy

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calm peculiar to pregnant women. It was evident that her eyes did

not see Princess Mary but were looking within... into herself... at

something joyful and mysterious taking place within her.



"Mary," she said, moving away from the embroidery frame and lying

back, "give me your hand." She took her sister-in-law's hand and

held it below her waist.



Her eyes were smiling expectantly, her downy lip rose and remained

lifted in childlike happiness.



Princess Mary knelt down before her and hid her face in the folds of

her sister-in-law's dress.



"There, there! Do you feel it? I feel so strange. And do you know,

Mary, I am going to love him very much," said Lise, looking with

bright and happy eyes at her sister-in-law.



Princess Mary could not lift her head, she was weeping.



"What is the matter, Mary?"



"Nothing... only I feel sad... sad about Andrew," she said, wiping

away her tears on her sister-in-law's knee.



Several times in the course of the morning Princess Mary began

trying to prepare her sister-in-law, and every time began to cry.

Unobservant as was the little princess, these tears, the cause of

which she did not understand, agitated her. She said nothing but

looked about uneasily as if in search of something. Before dinner

the old prince, of whom she was always afraid, came into her room with

a peculiarly restless and malign expression and went out again without

saying a word. She looked at Princess Mary, then sat thinking for a

while with that expression of attention to something within her that

is only seen in pregnant women, and suddenly began to cry.



"Has anything come from Andrew?" she asked.



"No, you know it's too soon for news. But my father is anxious and I

feel afraid."



"So there's nothing?"



"Nothing," answered Princess Mary, looking firmly with her radiant

eyes at her sister-in-law.



She had determined not to tell her and persuaded her father to

hide the terrible news from her till after her confinement, which

was expected within a few days. Princess Mary and the old prince

each bore and hid their grief in their own way. The old prince would

not cherish any hope: he made up his mind that Prince Andrew had

been killed, and though he sent an official to Austria to seek for

traces of his son, he ordered a monument from Moscow which he intended

to erect in his own garden to his memory, and he told everybody that

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his son had been killed. He tried not to change his former way of

life, but his strength failed him. He walked less, ate less, slept

less, and became weaker every day. Princess Mary hoped. She prayed for

her brother as living and was always awaiting news of his return.









CHAPTER VIII





"Dearest," said the little princess after breakfast on the morning

of the nineteenth March, and her downy little lip rose from old habit,

but as sorrow was manifest in every smile, the sound of every word,

and even every footstep in that house since the terrible news had

come, so now the smile of the little princess--influenced by the

general mood though without knowing its cause--was such as to remind

one still more of the general sorrow.



"Dearest, I'm afraid this morning's fruschtique*--as Foka the cook

calls it--has disagreed with me."





*Fruhstuck: breakfast.





"What is the matter with you, my darling? You look pale. Oh, you are

very pale!" said Princess Mary in alarm, running with her soft,

ponderous steps up to her sister-in-law.



"Your excellency, should not Mary Bogdanovna be sent for?" said

one of the maids who was present. (Mary Bogdanovna was a midwife

from the neighboring town, who had been at Bald Hills for the last

fortnight.)



"Oh yes," assented Princess Mary, "perhaps that's it. I'll go.

Courage, my angel." She kissed Lise and was about to leave the room.



"Oh, no, no!" And besides the pallor and the physical suffering on

the little princess' face, an expression of childish fear of

inevitable pain showed itself.



"No, it's only indigestion?... Say it's only indigestion, say so,

Mary! Say..." And the little princess began to cry capriciously like a

suffering child and to wring her little hands even with some

affectation. Princess Mary ran out of the room to fetch Mary

Bogdanovna.



"Mon Dieu! Mon Dieu! Oh!" she heard as she left the room.



The midwife was already on her way to meet her, rubbing her small,

plump white hands with an air of calm importance.



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"Mary Bogdanovna, I think it's beginning!" said Princess Mary

looking at the midwife with wide-open eyes of alarm.



"Well, the Lord be thanked, Princess," said Mary Bogdanovna, not

hastening her steps. "You young ladies should not know anything

about it."



"But how is it the doctor from Moscow is not here yet?" said the

princess. (In accordance with Lise's and Prince Andrew's wishes they

had sent in good time to Moscow for a doctor and were expecting him at

any moment.)



"No matter, Princess, don't be alarmed," said Mary Bogdanovna.

"We'll manage very well without a doctor."



Five minutes later Princess Mary from her room heard something heavy

being carried by. She looked out. The men servants were carrying the

large leather sofa from Prince Andrew's study into the bedroom. On

their faces was a quiet and solemn look.



Princess Mary sat alone in her room listening to the sounds in the

house, now and then opening her door when someone passed and

watching what was going on in the passage. Some women passing with

quiet steps in and out of the bedroom glanced at the princess and

turned away. She did not venture to ask any questions, and shut the

door again, now sitting down in her easy chair, now taking her

prayer book, now kneeling before the icon stand. To her surprise and

distress she found that her prayers did not calm her excitement.

Suddenly her door opened softly and her old nurse, Praskovya Savishna,

who hardly ever came to that room as the old prince had forbidden

it, appeared on the threshold with a shawl round her head.



"I've come to sit with you a bit, Masha," said the nurse, "and

here I've brought the prince's wedding candles to light before his

saint, my angel," she said with a sigh.



"Oh, nurse, I'm so glad!"



"God is merciful, birdie."



The nurse lit the gilt candles before the icons and sat down by

the door with her knitting. Princess Mary took a book and began

reading. Only when footsteps or voices were heard did they look at one

another, the princess anxious and inquiring, the nurse encouraging.

Everyone in the house was dominated by the same feeling that

Princess Mary experienced as she sat in her room. But owing to the

superstition that the fewer the people who know of it the less a woman

in travail suffers, everyone tried to pretend not to know; no one

spoke of it, but apart from the ordinary staid and respectful good

manners habitual in the prince's household, a common anxiety, a

softening of the heart, and a consciousness that something great and

mysterious was being accomplished at that moment made itself felt.



There was no laughter in the maids' large hall. In the men servants'

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hall all sat waiting, silently and alert. In the outlying serfs'

quarters torches and candles were burning and no one slept. The old

prince, stepping on his heels, paced up and down his study and sent

Tikhon to ask Mary Bogdanovna what news.--"Say only that 'the prince

told me to ask,' and come and tell me her answer."



"Inform the prince that labor has begun," said Mary Bogdanovna,

giving the messenger a significant look.



Tikhon went and told the prince.



"Very good!" said the prince closing the door behind him, and Tikhon

did not hear the slightest sound from the study after that.



After a while he re-entered it as if to snuff the candles, and,

seeing the prince was lying on the sofa, looked at him, noticed his

perturbed face, shook his head, and going up to him silently kissed

him on the shoulder and left the room without snuffing the candles

or saying why he had entered. The most solemn mystery in the world

continued its course. Evening passed, night came, and the feeling of

suspense and softening of heart in the presence of the unfathomable

did not lessen but increased. No one slept.



It was one of those March nights when winter seems to wish to resume

its sway and scatters its last snows and storms with desperate fury. A

relay of horses had been sent up the highroad to meet the German

doctor from Moscow who was expected every moment, and men on horseback

with lanterns were sent to the crossroads to guide him over the

country road with its hollows and snow-covered pools of water.



Princess Mary had long since put aside her book: she sat silent, her

luminous eyes fixed on her nurse's wrinkled face (every line of

which she knew so well), on the lock of gray hair that escaped from

under the kerchief, and the loose skin that hung under her chin.



Nurse Savishna, knitting in hand, was telling in low tones, scarcely

hearing or understanding her own words, what she had told hundreds

of times before: how the late princess had given birth to Princess

Mary in Kishenev with only a Moldavian peasant woman to help instead

of a midwife.



"God is merciful, doctors are never needed," she said.



Suddenly a gust of wind beat violently against the casement of the

window, from which the double frame had been removed (by order of

the prince, one window frame was removed in each room as soon as the

larks returned), and, forcing open a loosely closed latch, set the

damask curtain flapping and blew out the candle with its chill,

snowy draft. Princess Mary shuddered; her nurse, putting down the

stocking she was knitting, went to the window and leaning out tried to

catch the open casement. The cold wind flapped the ends of her

kerchief and her loose locks of gray hair.



"Princess, my dear, there's someone driving up the avenue!" she

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said, holding the casement and not closing it. "With lanterns. Most

likely the doctor."



"Oh, my God! thank God!" said Princess Mary. "I must go and meet

him, he does not know Russian."



Princess Mary threw a shawl over her head and ran to meet the

newcomer. As she was crossing the anteroom she saw through the

window a carriage with lanterns, standing at the entrance. She went

out on the stairs. On a banister post stood a tallow candle which

guttered in the draft. On the landing below, Philip, the footman,

stood looking scared and holding another candle. Still lower, beyond

the turn of the staircase, one could hear the footstep of someone in

thick felt boots, and a voice that seemed familiar to Princess Mary

was saying something.



"Thank God!" said the voice. "And Father?"



"Gone to bed," replied the voice of Demyan the house steward, who

was downstairs.



Then the voice said something more, Demyan replied, and the steps in

the felt boots approached the unseen bend of the staircase more

rapidly.



"It's Andrew!" thought Princess Mary. "No it can't be, that would be

too extraordinary," and at the very moment she thought this, the

face and figure of Prince Andrew, in a fur cloak the deep collar of

which covered with snow, appeared on the landing where the footman

stood with the candle. Yes, it was he, pale, thin, with a changed

and strangely softened but agitated expression on his face. He came up

the stairs and embraced his sister.



"You did not get my letter?" he asked, and not waiting for a

reply--which he would not have received, for the princess was unable

to speak--he turned back, rapidly mounted the stairs again with the

doctor who had entered the hall after him (they had met at the last

post station), and again embraced his sister.



"What a strange fate, Masha darling!" And having taken off his cloak

and felt boots, he went to the little princess' apartment.









CHAPTER IX





The little princess lay supported by pillows, with a white cap on

her head (the pains had just left her). Strands of her black hair

lay round her inflamed and perspiring cheeks, her charming rosy

mouth with its downy lip was open and she was smiling joyfully. Prince

Andrew entered and paused facing her at the foot of the sofa on

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which she was lying. Her glittering eyes, filled with childlike fear

and excitement, rested on him without changing their expression. "I

love you all and have done no harm to anyone; why must I suffer so?

Help me!" her look seemed to say. She saw her husband, but did not

realize the significance of his appearance before her now. Prince

Andrew went round the sofa and kissed her forehead.



"My darling!" he said--a word he had never used to her before.

"God is merciful...."



She looked at him inquiringly and with childlike reproach.



"I expected help from you and I get none, none from you either!"

said her eyes. She was not surprised at his having come; she did not

realize that he had come. His coming had nothing to do with her

sufferings or with their relief. The pangs began again and Mary

Bogdanovna advised Prince Andrew to leave the room.



The doctor entered. Prince Andrew went out and, meeting Princess

Mary, again joined her. They began talking in whispers, but their talk

broke off at every moment. They waited and listened.



"Go, dear," said Princess Mary.



Prince Andrew went again to his wife and sat waiting in the room

next to hers. A woman came from the bedroom with a frightened face and

became confused when she saw Prince Andrew. He covered his face with

his hands and remained so for some minutes. Piteous, helpless,

animal moans came through the door. Prince Andrew got up, went to

the door, and tried to open it. Someone was holding it shut.



"You can't come in! You can't!" said a terrified voice from within.



He began pacing the room. The screaming ceased, and a few more

seconds went by. Then suddenly a terrible shriek--it could not be

hers, she could not scream like that--came from the bedroom. Prince

Andrew ran to the door; the scream ceased and he heard the wail of

an infant.



"What have they taken a baby in there for?" thought Prince Andrew in

the first second. "A baby? What baby...? Why is there a baby there? Or

is the baby born?"



Then suddenly he realized the joyful significance of that wail;

tears choked him, and leaning his elbows on the window sill be began

to cry, sobbing like a child. The door opened. The doctor with his

shirt sleeves tucked up, without a coat, pale and with a trembling

jaw, came out of the room. Prince Andrew turned to him, but the doctor

gave him a bewildered look and passed by without a word. A woman

rushed out and seeing Prince Andrew stopped, hesitating on the

threshold. He went into his wife's room. She was lying dead, in the

same position he had seen her in five minutes before and, despite

the fixed eyes and the pallor of the cheeks, the same expression was

on her charming childlike face with its upper lip covered with tiny

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black hair.



"I love you all, and have done no harm to anyone; and what have

you done to me?"--said her charming, pathetic, dead face.



In a corner of the room something red and tiny gave a grunt and

squealed in Mary Bogdanovna's trembling white hands.





Two hours later Prince Andrew, stepping softly, went into his

father's room. The old man already knew everything. He was standing

close to the door and as soon as it opened his rough old arms closed

like a vise round his son's neck, and without a word he began to sob

like a child.





Three days later the little princess was buried, and Prince Andrew

went up the steps to where the coffin stood, to give her the

farewell kiss. And there in the coffin was the same face, though

with closed eyes. "Ah, what have you done to me?" it still seemed to

say, and Prince Andrew felt that something gave way in his soul and

that he was guilty of a sin he could neither remedy nor forget. He

could not weep. The old man too came up and kissed the waxen little

hands that lay quietly crossed one on the other on her breast, and

to him, too, her face seemed to say: "Ah, what have you done to me,

and why?" And at the sight the old man turned angrily away.





Another five days passed, and then the young Prince Nicholas

Andreevich was baptized. The wet nurse supported the coverlet with her

while the priest with a goose feather anointed the boy's little red

and wrinkled soles and palms.



His grandfather, who was his godfather, trembling and afraid of

dropping him, carried the infant round the battered tin font and

handed him over to the godmother, Princess Mary. Prince Andrew sat

in another room, faint with fear lest the baby should be drowned in

the font, and awaited the termination of the ceremony. He looked up

joyfully at the baby when the nurse brought it to him and nodded

approval when she told him that the wax with the baby's hair had not

sunk in the font but had floated.









CHAPTER X





Rostov's share in Dolokhov's duel with Bezukhov was hushed up by the

efforts of the old count, and instead of being degraded to the ranks

as he expected he was appointed an adjutant to the governor general of

Moscow. As a result he could not go to the country with the rest of

the family, but was kept all summer in Moscow by his new duties.

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Dolokhov recovered, and Rostov became very friendly with him during

his convalescence. Dolokhov lay ill at his mother's who loved him

passionately and tenderly, and old Mary Ivanovna, who had grown fond

of Rostov for his friendship to her Fedya, often talked to him about

her son.



"Yes, Count," she would say, "he is too noble and pure-souled for

our present, depraved world. No one now loves virtue; it seems like

a reproach to everyone. Now tell me, Count, was it right, was it

honorable, of Bezukhov? And Fedya, with his noble spirit, loved him

and even now never says a word against him. Those pranks in Petersburg

when they played some tricks on a policeman, didn't they do it

together? And there! Bezukhov got off scotfree, while Fedya had to

bear the whole burden on his shoulders. Fancy what he had to go

through! It's true he has been reinstated, but how could they fail

to do that? I think there were not many such gallant sons of the

fatherland out there as he. And now--this duel! Have these people no

feeling, or honor? Knowing him to be an only son, to challenge him and

shoot so straight! It's well God had mercy on us. And what was it for?

Who doesn't have intrigues nowadays? Why, if he was so jealous, as I

see things he should have shown it sooner, but he lets it go on for

months. And then to call him out, reckoning on Fedya not fighting

because he owed him money! What baseness! What meanness! I know you

understand Fedya, my dear count; that, believe me, is why I am so fond

of you. Few people do understand him. He is such a lofty, heavenly

soul!"



Dolokhov himself during his convalescence spoke to Rostov in a way

no one would have expected of him.



"I know people consider me a bad man!" he said. "Let them! I don't

care a straw about anyone but those I love; but those I love, I love

so that I would give my life for them, and the others I'd throttle

if they stood in my way. I have an adored, a priceless mother, and two

or three friends--you among them--and as for the rest I only care

about them in so far as they are harmful or useful. And most of them

are harmful, especially the women. Yes, dear boy," he continued, "I

have met loving, noble, high-minded men, but I have not yet met any

women--countesses or cooks--who were not venal. I have not yet met

that divine purity and devotion I look for in women. If I found such a

one I'd give my life for her! But those!..." and he made a gesture of

contempt. "And believe me, if I still value my life it is only because

I still hope to meet such a divine creature, who will regenerate,

purify, and elevate me. But you don't understand it."



"Oh, yes, I quite understand," answered Rostov, who was under his

new friend's influence.



In the autumn the Rostovs returned to Moscow. Early in the winter

Denisov also came back and stayed with them. The first half of the

winter of 1806, which Nicholas Rostov spent in Moscow, was one of

the happiest, merriest times for him and the whole family. Nicholas

brought many young men to his parents' house. Vera was a handsome girl

of twenty; Sonya a girl of sixteen with all the charm of an opening

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flower; Natasha, half grown up and half child, was now childishly

amusing, now girlishly enchanting.



At that time in the Rostovs' house there prevailed an amorous

atmosphere characteristic of homes where there are very young and very

charming girls. Every young man who came to the house--seeing those

impressionable, smiling young faces (smiling probably at their own

happiness), feeling the eager bustle around him, and hearing the

fitful bursts of song and music and the inconsequent but friendly

prattle of young girls ready for anything and full of hope-

experienced the same feeling; sharing with the young folk of the

Rostovs' household a readiness to fall in love and an expectation of

happiness.



Among the young men introduced by Rostov one of the first was

Dolokhov, whom everyone in the house liked except Natasha. She

almost quarreled with her brother about him. She insisted that he

was a bad man, and that in the duel with Bezukhov, Pierre was right

and Dolokhov wrong, and further that he was disagreeable and

unnatural.



"There's nothing for me to understand," cried out with resolute

self-will, "he is wicked and heartless. There now, I like your Denisov

though he is a rake and all that, still I like him; so you see I do

understand. I don't know how to put it... with this one everything

is calculated, and I don't like that. But Denisov..."



"Oh, Denisov is quite different," replied Nicholas, implying that

even Denisov was nothing compared to Dolokhov--"you must understand

what a soul there is in Dolokhov, you should see him with his

mother. What a heart!"



"Well, I don't know about that, but I am uncomfortable with him. And

do you know he has fallen in love with Sonya?"



"What nonsense..."



"I'm certain of it; you'll see."



Natasha's prediction proved true. Dolokhov, who did not usually care

for the society of ladies, began to come often to the house, and the

question for whose sake he came (though no one spoke of it) was soon

settled. He came because of Sonya. And Sonya, though she would never

have dared to say so, knew it and blushed scarlet every time

Dolokhov appeared.



Dolokhov often dined at the Rostovs', never missed a performance

at which they were present, and went to Iogel's balls for young people

which the Rostovs always attended. He was pointedly attentive to Sonya

and looked at her in such a way that not only could she not bear his

glances without coloring, but even the old countess and Natasha

blushed when they saw his looks.



It was evident that this strange, strong man was under the

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irresistible influence of the dark, graceful girl who loved another.



Rostov noticed something new in Dolokhov's relations with Sonya, but

he did not explain to himself what these new relations were.

"They're always in love with someone," he thought of Sonya and

Natasha. But he was not as much at ease with Sonya and Dolokhov as

before and was less frequently at home.



In the autumn of 1806 everybody had again begun talking of the war

with Napoleon with even greater warmth than the year before. Orders

were given to raise recruits, ten men in every thousand for the

regular army, and besides this, nine men in every thousand for the

militia. Everywhere Bonaparte was anathematized and in Moscow

nothing but the coming war was talked of. For the Rostov family the

whole interest of these preparations for war lay in the fact that

Nicholas would not hear of remaining in Moscow, and only awaited the

termination of Denisov's furlough after Christmas to return with him

to their regiment. His approaching departure did not prevent his

amusing himself, but rather gave zest to his pleasures. He spent the

greater part of his time away from home, at dinners, parties, and

balls.









CHAPTER XI





On the third day after Christmas Nicholas dined at home, a thing

he had rarely done of late. It was a grand farewell dinner, as he

and Denisov were leaving to join their regiment after Epiphany.

About twenty people were present, including Dolokhov and Denisov.



Never had love been so much in the air, and never had the amorous

atmosphere made itself so strongly felt in the Rostovs' house as at

this holiday time. "Seize the moments of happiness, love and be loved!

That is the only reality in the world, all else is folly. It is the

one thing we are interested in here," said the spirit of the place.



Nicholas, having as usual exhausted two pairs of horses, without

visiting all the places he meant to go to and where he had been

invited, returned home just before dinner. As soon as he entered he

noticed and felt the tension of the amorous air in the house, and also

noticed a curious embarrassment among some of those present. Sonya,

Dolokhov, and the old countess were especially disturbed, and to a

lesser degree Natasha. Nicholas understood that something must have

happened between Sonya and Dolokhov before dinner, and with the kindly

sensitiveness natural to him was very gentle and wary with them both

at dinner. On that same evening there was to be one of the balls

that Iogel (the dancing master) gave for his pupils durings the

holidays.



"Nicholas, will you come to Iogel's? Please do!" said Natasha. "He

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asked you, and Vasili Dmitrich* is also going."





*Denisov.





"Where would I not go at the countess' command!" said Denisov, who

at the Rostovs' had jocularly assumed the role of Natasha's knight.

"I'm even weady to dance the pas de chale."



"If I have time," answered Nicholas. "But I promised the

Arkharovs; they have a party."



"And you?" he asked Dolokhov, but as soon as he had asked the

question he noticed that it should not have been put.



"Perhaps," coldly and angrily replied Dolokhov, glancing at Sonya,

and, scowling, he gave Nicholas just such a look as he had given

Pierre at the Club dinner.



"There is something up," thought Nicholas, and he was further

confirmed in this conclusion by the fact that Dolokhov left

immediately after dinner. He called Natasha and asked her what was the

matter.



"And I was looking for you," said Natasha running out to him. "I

told you, but you would not believe it," she said triumphantly. "He

has proposed to Sonya!"



Little as Nicholas had occupied himself with Sonya of late,

something seemed to give way within him at this news. Dolokhov was a

suitable and in some respects a brilliant match for the dowerless,

orphan girl. From the point of view of the old countess and of society

it was out of the question for her to refuse him. And therefore

Nicholas' first feeling on hearing the news was one of anger with

Sonya.... He tried to say, "That's capital; of course she'll forget

her childish promises and accept the offer," but before he had time to

say it Natasha began again.



"And fancy! she refused him quite definitely!" adding, after a

pause, "she told him she loved another."



"Yes, my Sonya could not have done otherwise!" thought Nicholas.



"Much as Mamma pressed her, she refused, and I know she won't change

once she has said..."



"And Mamma pressed her!" said Nicholas reproachfully.



"Yes," said Natasha. "Do you know, Nicholas--don't be angry--but I

know you will not marry her. I know, heaven knows how, but I know

for certain that you won't marry her."



"Now don't know that at all!" said Nicholas. "But I must talk to

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her. What a darling Sonya is!" he added with a smile.



"Ah, she is indeed a darling! I'll send her to you."



And Natasha kissed her brother and ran away.



A minute later Sonya came in with a frightened, guilty, and scared

look. Nicholas went up to her and kissed her hand. This was the

first time since his return that they had talked alone and about their

love.



"Sophie," he began, timidly at first and then more and more

boldly, "if you wish to refuse one who is not only a brilliant and

advantageous match but a splendid, noble fellow... he is my friend..."



Sonya interrupted him.



"I have already refused," she said hurriedly.



"If you are refusing for my sake, I am afraid that I..."



Sonya again interrupted. She gave him an imploring, frightened look.



"Nicholas, don't tell me that!" she said.



"No, but I must. It may be arrogant of me, but still it is best to

say it. If you refuse him on my account, I must tell you the whole

truth. I love you, and I think I love you more than anyone else...."



"That is enough for me," said Sonya, blushing.



"No, but I have been in love a thousand times and shall fall in love

again, though for no one have I such a feeling of friendship,

confidence, and love as I have for you. Then I am young. Mamma does

not wish it. In a word, I make no promise. And I beg you to consider

Dolokhov's offer," he said, articulating his friend's name with

difficulty.



"Don't say that to me! I want nothing. I love you as a brother and

always shall, and I want nothing more."



"You are an angel: I am not worthy of you, but I am afraid of

misleading you."



And Nicholas again kissed her hand.









CHAPTER XII





Iogel's were the most enjoyable balls in Moscow. So said the mothers

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as they watched their young people executing their newly learned

steps, and so said the youths and maidens themselves as they danced

till they were ready to drop, and so said the grown-up young men and

women who came to these balls with an air of condescension and found

them most enjoyable. That year two marriages had come of these

balls. The two pretty young Princesses Gorchakov met suitors there and

were married and so further increased the fame of these dances. What

distinguished them from others was the absence of host or hostess

and the presence of the good-natured Iogel, flying about like a

feather and bowing according to the rules of his art, as he

collected the tickets from all his visitors. There was the fact that

only those came who wished to dance and amuse themselves as girls of

thirteen and fourteen do who are wearing long dresses for the first

time. With scarcely any exceptions they all were, or seemed to be,

pretty--so rapturous were their smiles and so sparkling their eyes.

Sometimes the best of the pupils, of whom Natasha, who was

exceptionally graceful, was first, even danced the pas de chale, but

at this last ball only the ecossaise, the anglaise, and the mazurka,

which was just coming into fashion, were danced. Iogel had taken a

ballroom in Bezukhov's house, and the ball, as everyone said, was a

great success. There were many pretty girls and the Rostov girls

were among the prettiest. They were both particularly happy and gay.

That evening, proud of Dolokhov's proposal, her refusal, and her

explanation with Nicholas, Sonya twirled about before she left home so

that the maid could hardly get her hair plaited, and she was

transparently radiant with impulsive joy.



Natasha no less proud of her first long dress and of being at a real

ball was even happier. They were both dressed in white muslin with

pink ribbons.



Natasha fell in love the very moment she entered the ballroom. She

was not in love with anyone in particular, but with everyone. Whatever

person she happened to look at she was in love with for that moment.



"Oh, how delightful it is!" she kept saying, running up to Sonya.



Nicholas and Denisov were walking up and down, looking with kindly

patronage at the dancers.



"How sweet she is--she will be a weal beauty!" said Denisov.



"Who?"



"Countess Natasha," answered Denisov.



"And how she dances! What gwace!" he said again after a pause.



"Who are you talking about?"



"About your sister," ejaculated Denisov testily.



Rostov smiled.



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"My dear count, you were one of my best pupils--you must dance,"

said little Iogel coming up to Nicholas. "Look how many charming young

ladies-" He turned with the same request to Denisov who was also a

former pupil of his.



"No, my dear fellow, I'll be a wallflower," said Denisov. "Don't you

wecollect what bad use I made of your lessons?"



"Oh no!" said Iogel, hastening to reassure him. "You were only

inattentive, but you had talent--oh yes, you had talent!"



The band struck up the newly introduced mazurka. Nicholas could not

refuse Iogel and asked Sonya to dance. Denisov sat down by the old

ladies and, leaning on his saber and beating time with his foot,

told them something funny and kept them amused, while he watched the

young people dancing, Iogel with Natasha, his pride and his best

pupil, were the first couple. Noiselessly, skillfully stepping with

his little feet in low shoes, Iogel flew first across the hall with

Natasha, who, though shy, went on carefully executing her steps.

Denisov did not take his eyes off her and beat time with his saber

in a way that clearly indicated that if he was not dancing it was

because he would not and not because he could not. In the middle of

a figure he beckoned to Rostov who was passing:



"This is not at all the thing," he said. "What sort of Polish

mazuwka is this? But she does dance splendidly."



Knowing that Denisov had a reputation even in Poland for the

masterly way in which he danced the mazurka, Nicholas ran up to

Natasha:



"Go and choose Denisov. He is a real dancer, a wonder!" he said.



When it came to Natasha's turn to choose a partner, she rose and,

tripping rapidly across in her little shoes trimmed with bows, ran

timidly to the corner where Denisov sat. She saw that everybody was

looking at her and waiting. Nicholas saw that Denisov was refusing

though he smiled delightedly. He ran up to them.



"Please, Vasili Dmitrich," Natasha was saying, "do come!"



"Oh no, let me off, Countess," Denisov replied.



"Now then, Vaska," said Nicholas.



"They coax me as if I were Vaska the cat!" said Denisov jokingly.



"I'll sing for you a whole evening," said Natasha.



"Oh, the faiwy! She can do anything with me!" said Denisov, and he

unhooked his saber. He came out from behind the chairs, clasped his

partner's hand firmly, threw back his head, and advanced his foot,

waiting for the beat. Only on horse back and in the mazurka was

Denisov's short stature not noticeable and he looked the fine fellow

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he felt himself to be. At the right beat of the music he looked

sideways at his partner with a merry and triumphant air, suddenly

stamped with one foot, bounded from the floor like a ball, and flew

round the room taking his partner with him. He glided silently on

one foot half across the room, and seeming not to notice the chairs

was dashing straight at them, when suddenly, clinking his spurs and

spreading out his legs, he stopped short on his heels, stood so a

second, stamped on the spot clanking his spurs, whirled rapidly round,

and, striking his left heel against his right, flew round again in a

circle. Natasha guessed what he meant to do, and abandoning herself to

him followed his lead hardly knowing how. First he spun her round,

holding her now with his left, now with his right hand, then falling

on one knee he twirled her round him, and again jumping up, dashed

so impetuously forward that it seemed as if he would rush through

the whole suite of rooms without drawing breath, and then he

suddenly stopped and performed some new and unexpected steps. When

at last, smartly whirling his partner round in front of her chair,

he drew up with a click of his spurs and bowed to her, Natasha did not

even make him a curtsy. She fixed her eyes on him in amazement,

smiling as if she did not recognize him.



"What does this mean?" she brought out.



Although Iogel did not acknowledge this to be the real mazurka,

everyone was delighted with Denisov's skill, he was asked again and

again as a partner, and the old men began smilingly to talk about

Poland and the good old days. Denisov, flushed after the mazurka and

mopping himself with his handkerchief, sat down by Natasha and did not

leave her for the rest of the evening.









CHAPTER XIII





For two days after that Rostov did not see Dolokhov at his own or at

Dolokhov's home: on the third day he received a note from him:





As I do not intend to be at your house again for reasons you know

of, and am going to rejoin my regiment, I am giving a farewell

supper tonight to my friends--come to the English Hotel.





About ten o'clock Rostov went to the English Hotel straight from the

theater, where he had been with his family and Denisov. He was at once

shown to the best room, which Dolokhov had taken for that evening.

Some twenty men were gathered round a table at which Dolokhov sat

between two candles. On the table was a pile of gold and paper

money, and he was keeping the bank. Rostov had not seen him since

his proposal and Sonya's refusal and felt uncomfortable at the thought

of how they would meet.

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Dolokhov's clear, cold glance met Rostov as soon as he entered the

door, as though he had long expected him.



"It's a long time since we met," he said. "Thanks for coming. I'll

just finish dealing, and then Ilyushka will come with his chorus."



"I called once or twice at your house," said Rostov, reddening.



Dolokhov made no reply.



"You may punt," he said.



Rostov recalled at that moment a strange conversation he had once

had with Dolokhov. "None but fools trust to luck in play," Dolokhov

had then said.



"Or are you afraid to play with me?" Dolokhov now asked as if

guessing Rostov's thought.



Beneath his smile Rostov saw in him the mood he had shown at the

Club dinner and at other times, when as if tired of everyday life he

had felt a need to escape from it by some strange, and usually

cruel, action.



Rostov felt ill at ease. He tried, but failed, to find some joke

with which to reply to Dolokhov's words. But before he had thought

of anything, Dolokhov, looking straight in his face, said slowly and

deliberately so that everyone could hear:



"Do you remember we had a talk about cards... 'He's a fool who

trusts to luck, one should make certain,' and I want to try."



"To try his luck or the certainty?" Rostov asked himself.



"Well, you'd better not play," Dolokhov added, and springing a new

pack of cards said: "Bank, gentlemen!"



Moving the money forward he prepared to deal. Rostov sat down by his

side and at first did not play. Dolokhov kept glancing at him.



"Why don't you play?" he asked.



And strange to say Nicholas felt that he could not help taking up

a card, putting a small stake on it, and beginning to play.



"I have no money with me," he said.



"I'll trust you."



Rostov staked five rubles on a card and lost, staked again, and

again lost. Dolokhov "killed," that is, beat, ten cards of Rostov's

running.



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"Gentlemen," said Dolokhov after he had dealt for some time. "Please

place your money on the cards or I may get muddled in the reckoning."



One of the players said he hoped he might be trusted.



"Yes, you might, but I am afraid of getting the accounts mixed. So I

ask you to put the money on your cards," replied Dolokhov. "Don't

stint yourself, we'll settle afterwards," he added, turning to Rostov.



The game continued; a waiter kept handing round champagne.



All Rostov's cards were beaten and he had eight hundred rubles

scored up against him. He wrote "800 rubles" on a card, but while

the waiter filled his glass he changed his mind and altered it to

his usual stake of twenty rubles.



"Leave it," said Dolokhov, though he did not seem to be even looking

at Rostov, "you'll win it back all the sooner. I lose to the others

but win from you. Or are you afraid of me?" he asked again.



Rostov submitted. He let the eight hundred remain and laid down a

seven of hearts with a torn corner, which he had picked up from the

floor. He well remembered that seven afterwards. He laid down the

seven of hearts, on which with a broken bit of chalk he had written

"800 rubles" in clear upright figures; he emptied the glass of warm

champagne that was handed him, smiled at Dolokhov's words, and with

a sinking heart, waiting for a seven to turn up, gazed at Dolokhov's

hands which held the pack. Much depended on Rostov's winning or losing

on that seven of hearts. On the previous Sunday the old count had

given his son two thousand rubles, and though he always disliked

speaking of money difficulties had told Nicholas that this was all

he could let him have till May, and asked him to be more economical

this time. Nicholas had replied that it would be more than enough

for him and that he gave his word of honor not to take anything more

till the spring. Now only twelve hundred rubles was left of that

money, so that this seven of hearts meant for him not only the loss of

sixteen hundred rubles, but the necessity of going back on his word.

With a sinking heart he watched Dolokhov's hands and thought, "Now

then, make haste and let me have this card and I'll take my cap and

drive home to supper with Denisov, Natasha, and Sonya, and will

certainly never touch a card again." At that moment his home life,

jokes with Petya, talks with Sonya, duets with Natasha, piquet with

his father, and even his comfortable bed in the house on the

Povarskaya rose before him with such vividness, clearness, and charm

that it seemed as if it were all a lost and unappreciated bliss,

long past. He could not conceive that a stupid chance, letting the

seven be dealt to the right rather than to the left, might deprive him

of all this happiness, newly appreciated and newly illumined, and

plunge him into the depths of unknown and undefined misery. That could

not be, yet he awaited with a sinking heart the movement of Dolokhov's

hands. Those broad, reddish hands, with hairy wrists visible from

under the shirt cuffs, laid down the pack and took up a glass and a

pipe that were handed him.



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"So you are not afraid to play with me?" repeated Dolokhov, and as

if about to tell a good story he put down the cards, leaned back in

his chair, and began deliberately with a smile:



"Yes, gentlemen, I've been told there's a rumor going about Moscow

that I'm a sharper, so I advise you to be careful."



"Come now, deal!" exclaimed Rostov.



"Oh, those Moscow gossips!" said Dolokhov, and he took up the

cards with a smile.



"Aah!" Rostov almost screamed lifting both hands to his head. The

seven he needed was lying uppermost, the first card in the pack. He

had lost more than he could pay.



"Still, don't ruin yourself!" said Dolokhov with a side glance at

Rostov as he continued to deal.









CHAPTER XIV





An hour and a half later most of the players were but little

interested in their own play.



The whole interest was concentrated on Rostov. Instead of sixteen

hundred rubles he had a long column of figures scored against him,

which he had reckoned up to ten thousand, but that now, as he

vaguely supposed, must have risen to fifteen thousand. In reality it

already exceeded twenty thousand rubles. Dolokhov was no longer

listening to stories or telling them, but followed every movement of

Rostov's hands and occasionally ran his eyes over the score against

him. He had decided to play until that score reached forty-three

thousand. He had fixed on that number because forty-three was the

sum of his and Sonya's joint ages. Rostov, leaning his head on both

hands, sat at the table which was scrawled over with figures, wet with

spilled wine, and littered with cards. One tormenting impression did

not leave him: that those broad-boned reddish hands with hairy

wrists visible from under the shirt sleeves, those hands which he

loved and hated, held him in their power.



"Six hundred rubles, ace, a corner, a nine... winning it back's

impossible... Oh, how pleasant it was at home!... The knave, double or

quits... it can't be!... And why is he doing this to me?" Rostov

pondered. Sometimes he staked a large sum, but Dolokhov refused to

accept it and fixed the stake himself. Nicholas submitted to him,

and at one moment prayed to God as he had done on the battlefield at

the bridge over the Enns, and then guessed that the card that came

first to hand from the crumpled heap under the table would save him,

now counted the cords on his coat and took a card with that number and

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tried staking the total of his losses on it, then he looked round

for aid from the other players, or peered at the now cold face of

Dolokhov and tried to read what was passing in his mind.



"He knows of course what this loss means to me. He can't want my

ruin. Wasn't he my friend? Wasn't I fond of him? But it's not his

fault. What's he to do if he has such luck?... And it's not my fault

either," he thought to himself, "I have done nothing wrong. Have I

killed anyone, or insulted or wished harm to anyone? Why such a

terrible misfortune? And when did it begin? Such a little while ago

I came to this table with the thought of winning a hundred rubles to

buy that casket for Mamma's name day and then going home. I was so

happy, so free, so lighthearted! And I did not realize how happy I

was! When did that end and when did this new, terrible state of things

begin? What marked the change? I sat all the time in this same place

at this table, chose and placed cards, and watched those broad-boned

agile hands in the same way. When did it happen and what has happened?

I am well and strong and still the same and in the same place. No,

it can't be! Surely it will all end in nothing!"



He was flushed and bathed in perspiration, though the room was not

hot. His face was terrible and piteous to see, especially from its

helpless efforts to seem calm.



The score against him reached the fateful sum of forty-three

thousand. Rostov had just prepared a card, by bending the corner of

which he meant to double the three thousand just put down to his

score, when Dolokhov, slamming down the pack of cards, put it aside

and began rapidly adding up the total of Rostov's debt, breaking the

chalk as he marked the figures in his clear, bold hand.



"Supper, it's time for supper! And here are the gypsies!"



Some swarthy men and women were really entering from the cold

outside and saying something in their gypsy accents. Nicholas

understood that it was all over; but he said in an indifferent tone:



"Well, won't you go on? I had a splendid card all ready," as if it

were the fun of the game which interested him most.



"It's all up! I'm lost!" thought he. "Now a bullet through my brain-

that's all that's left me!" And at the same time he said in a

cheerful voice:



"Come now, just this one more little card!"



"All right!" said Dolokhov, having finished the addition. "All

right! Twenty-one rubles," he said, pointing to the figure

twenty-one by which the total exceeded the round sum of forty-three

thousand; and taking up a pack he prepared to deal. Rostov

submissively unbent the corner of his card and, instead of the six

thousand he had intended, carefully wrote twenty-one.



"It's all the same to me," he said. "I only want to see whether

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you will let me win this ten, or beat it."



Dolokhov began to deal seriously. Oh, how Rostov detested at that

moment those hands with their short reddish fingers and hairy

wrists, which held him in their power.... The ten fell to him.



"You owe forty-three thousand, Count," said Dolokhov, and stretching

himself he rose from the table. "One does get tired sitting so

long," he added.



"Yes, I'm tired too," said Rostov.



Dolokhov cut him short, as if to remind him that it was not for

him to jest.



"When am I to receive the money, Count?"



Rostov, flushing, drew Dolokhov into the next room.



"I cannot pay it all immediately. Will you take an I.O.U.?" he said.



"I say, Rostov," said Dolokhov clearly, smiling and looking Nicholas

straight in the eyes, "you know the saying, 'Lucky in love, unlucky at

cards.' Your cousin is in love with you, I know."



"Oh, it's terrible to feel oneself so in this man's power,"

thought Rostov. He knew what a shock he would inflict on his father

and mother by the news of this loss, he knew what a relief it would be

to escape it all, and felt that Dolokhov knew that he could save him

from all this shame and sorrow, but wanted now to play with him as a

cat does with a mouse.



"Your cousin..." Dolokhov started to say, but Nicholas interrupted

him.



"My cousin has nothing to do with this and it's not necessary to

mention her!" he exclaimed fiercely.



"Then when am I to have it?"



"Tomorrow," replied Rostov and left the room.









CHAPTER XV





To say "tomorrow" and keep up a dignified tone was not difficult,

but to go home alone, see his sisters, brother, mother, and father,

confess and ask for money he had no right to after giving his word

of honor, was terrible.



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At home, they had not yet gone to bed. The young people, after

returning from the theater, had had supper and were grouped round

the clavichord. As soon as Nicholas entered, he was enfolded in that

poetic atmosphere of love which pervaded the Rostov household that

winter and, now after Dolokhov's proposal and Iogel's ball, seemed

to have grown thicker round Sonya and Natasha as the air does before a

thunderstorm. Sonya and Natasha, in the light-blue dresses they had

worn at the theater, looking pretty and conscious of it, were standing

by the clavichord, happy and smiling. Vera was playing chess with

Shinshin in the drawing room. The old countess, waiting for the return

of her husband and son, sat playing patience with the old

gentlewoman who lived in their house. Denisov, with sparkling eyes and

ruffled hair, sat at the clavichord striking chords with his short

fingers, his legs thrown back and his eyes rolling as he sang, with

his small, husky, but true voice, some verses called "Enchantress,"

which he had composed, and to which he was trying to fit music:



Enchantress, say, to my forsaken lyre

What magic power is this recalls me still?

What spark has set my inmost soul on fire,

What is this bliss that makes my fingers thrill?



He was singing in passionate tones, gazing with his

sparkling black-agate eyes at the frightened and happy Natasha.



"Splendid! Excellent!" exclaimed Natasha. "Another verse," she

said, without noticing Nicholas.



"Everything's still the same with them," thought Nicholas,

glancing into the drawing room, where he saw Vera and his mother

with the old lady.



"Ah, and here's Nicholas!" cried Natasha, running up to him.



"Is Papa at home?" he asked.



"I am so glad you've come!" said Natasha, without answering him. "We

are enjoying ourselves! Vasili Dmitrich is staying a day longer for my

sake! Did you know?"



"No, Papa is not back yet," said Sonya.



"Nicholas, have you come? Come here, dear!" called the old

countess from the drawing room.



Nicholas went to her, kissed her hand, and sitting down silently

at her table began to watch her hands arranging the cards. From the

dancing room, they still heard the laughter and merry voices trying to

persuade Natasha to sing.



"All wight! All wight!" shouted Denisov. "It's no good making

excuses now! It's your turn to sing the ba'cawolla--I entweat you!"



The countess glanced at her silent son.

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"What is the matter?" she asked.



"Oh, nothing," said he, as if weary of being continually asked the

same question. "Will Papa be back soon?"



"I expect so."



"Everything's the same with them. They know nothing about it!

Where am I to go?" thought Nicholas, and went again into the dancing

room where the clavichord stood.



Sonya was sitting at the clavichord, playing the prelude to

Denisov's favorite barcarolle. Natasha was preparing to sing.

Denisov was looking at her with enraptured eyes.



Nicholas began pacing up and down the room.



"Why do they want to make her sing? How can she sing? There's

nothing to be happy about!" thought he.



Sonya struck the first chord of the prelude.



"My God, I'm a ruined and dishonored man! A bullet through my

brain is the only thing left me--not singing!" his thoughts ran on.

"Go away? But where to? It's one--let them sing!"



He continued to pace the room, looking gloomily at Denisov and the

girls and avoiding their eyes.



"Nikolenka, what is the matter?" Sonya's eyes fixed on him seemed to

ask. She noticed at once that something had happened to him.



Nicholas turned away from her. Natasha too, with her quick instinct,

had instantly noticed her brother's condition. But, though she noticed

it, she was herself in such high spirits at that moment, so far from

sorrow, sadness, or self-reproach, that she purposely deceived herself

as young people often do. "No, I am too happy now to spoil my

enjoyment by sympathy with anyone's sorrow," she felt, and she said to

herself: "No, I must be mistaken, he must be feeling happy, just as

I am."



"Now, Sonya!" she said, going to the very middle of the room,

where she considered the resonance was best.



Having lifted her head and let her arms droop lifelessly, as

ballet dancers do, Natasha, rising energetically from her heels to her

toes, stepped to the middle of the room and stood still.



"Yes, that's me!" she seemed to say, answering the rapt gaze with

which Denisov followed her.



"And what is she so pleased about?" thought Nicholas, looking at his

sister. "Why isn't she dull and ashamed?"

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Natasha took the first note, her throat swelled, her chest rose, her

eyes became serious. At that moment she was oblivious of her

surroundings, and from her smiling lips flowed sounds which anyone may

produce at the same intervals hold for the same time, but which

leave you cold a thousand times and the thousand and first time thrill

you and make you weep.



Natasha, that winter, had for the first time begun to sing

seriously, mainly because Denisov so delighted in her singing. She

no longer sang as a child, there was no longer in her singing that

comical, childish, painstaking effect that had been in it before;

but she did not yet sing well, as all the connoisseurs who heard her

said: "It is not trained, but it is a beautiful voice that must be

trained." Only they generally said this some time after she had

finished singing. While that untrained voice, with its incorrect

breathing and labored transitions, was sounding, even the connoisseurs

said nothing, but only delighted in it and wished to hear it again. In

her voice there was a virginal freshness, an unconsciousness of her

own powers, and an as yet untrained velvety softness, which so mingled

with her lack of art in singing that it seemed as if nothing in that

voice could be altered without spoiling it.



"What is this?" thought Nicholas, listening to her with widely

opened eyes. "What has happened to her? How she is singing today!" And

suddenly the whole world centered for him on anticipation of the

next note, the next phrase, and everything in the world was divided

into three beats: "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three... one,

two, three... One... "Oh mio crudele affetto."... One, two, three...

One. "Oh, this senseless life of ours!" thought Nicholas. "All this

misery, and money, and Dolokhov, and anger, and honor--it's all

nonsense... but this is real.... Now then, Natasha, now then, dearest!

Now then, darling! How will she take that si? She's taken it! Thank

God!" And without noticing that he was singing, to strengthen the si

he sung a second, a third below the high note. "Ah, God! How fine! Did

I really take it? How fortunate!" he thought.



Oh, how that chord vibrated, and how moved was something that was

finest in Rostov's soul! And this something was apart from

everything else in the world and above everything in the world.

"What were losses, and Dolokhov, and words of honor?... All

nonsense! One might kill and rob and yet be happy..."









CHAPTER XVI





It was long since Rostov had felt such enjoyment from music as he

did that day. But no sooner had Natasha finished her barcarolle than

reality again presented itself. He got up without saying a word and

went downstairs to his own room. A quarter of an hour later the old

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count came in from his Club, cheerful and contented. Nicholas, hearing

him drive up, went to meet him.



"Well--had a good time?" said the old count, smiling gaily and

proudly at his son.



Nicholas tried to say "Yes," but could not: and he nearly burst into

sobs. The count was lighting his pipe and did not notice his son's

condition.



"Ah, it can't be avoided!" thought Nicholas, for the first and

last time. And suddenly, in the most casual tone, which made him

feel ashamed of himself, he said, as if merely asking his

father to let him have the carriage to drive to town:



"Papa, I have come on a matter of business. I was nearly forgetting.

I need some money."



"Dear me!" said his father, who was in a specially good humor. "I

told you it would not be enough. How much?"



"Very much," said Nicholas flushing, and with a stupid careless

smile, for which he was long unable to forgive himself, "I have lost a

little, I mean a good deal, a great deal--forty three thousand."



"What! To whom?... Nonsense!" cried the count, suddenly reddening

with an apoplectic flush over neck and nape as old people do.



"I promised to pay tomorrow," said Nicholas.



"Well!..." said the old count, spreading out his arms and sinking

helplessly on the sofa.



"It can't be helped It happens to everyone!" said the son, with a

bold, free, and easy tone, while in his soul he regarded himself as

a worthless scoundrel whose whole life could not atone for his

crime. He longed to kiss his father's hands and kneel to beg his

forgiveness, but said, in a careless and even rude voice, that it

happens to everyone!



The old count cast down his eyes on hearing his son's words and

began bustlingly searching for something.



"Yes, yes," he muttered, "it will be difficult, I fear, difficult to

raise... happens to everybody! Yes, who has not done it?"



And with a furtive glance at his son's face, the count went out of

the room.... Nicholas had been prepared for resistance, but had not at

all expected this.



"Papa! Pa-pa!" he called after him, sobbing, "forgive me!" And

seizing his father's hand, he pressed it to his lips and burst into

tears.



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While father and son were having their explanation, the mother and

daughter were having one not less important. Natasha came running to

her mother, quite excited.



"Mamma!... Mamma!... He has made me..."



"Made what?"



"Made, made me an offer, Mamma! Mamma!" she exclaimed.



The countess did not believe her ears. Denisov had proposed. To

whom? To this chit of a girl, Natasha, who not so long ago was playing

with dolls and who was still having lessons.



"Don't, Natasha! What nonsense!" she said, hoping it was a joke.



"Nonsense, indeed! I am telling you the fact," said Natasha

indignantly. "I come to ask you what to do, and you call it

'nonsense!'"



The countess shrugged her shoulders.



"If it true that Monsieur Denisov has made you a proposal, tell

him he is a fool, that's all!"



"No, he's not a fool!" replied Natasha indignantly and seriously.



"Well then, what do you want? You're all in love nowadays. Well,

if you are in love, marry him!" said the countess, with a laugh of

annoyance. "Good luck to you!"



"No, Mamma, I'm not in love with him, I suppose I'm not in love with

him."



"Well then, tell him so."



"Mamma, are you cross? Don't be cross, dear! Is it my fault?"



"No, but what is it, my dear? Do you want me to go and tell him?"

said the countess smiling.



"No, I will do it myself, only tell me what to say. It's all very

well for you," said Natasha, with a responsive smile. "You should have

seen how he said it! I know he did not mean to say it, but it came out

accidently."



"Well, all the same, you must refuse him."



"No, I mustn't. I am so sorry for him! He's so nice."



"Well then, accept his offer. It's high time for you to be married,"

answered the countess sharply and sarcastically.



"No, Mamma, but I'm so sorry for him. I don't know how I'm to say

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it."



"And there's nothing for you to say. I shall speak to him myself,"

said the countess, indignant that they should have dared to treat this

little Natasha as grown up.



"No, not on any account! I will tell him myself, and you'll listen

at the door," and Natasha ran across the drawing room to the dancing

hall, where Denisov was sitting on the same chair by the clavichord

with his face in his hands.



He jumped up at the sound of her light step.



"Nataly," he said, moving with rapid steps toward her, "decide my

fate. It is in your hands."



"Vasili Dmitrich, I'm so sorry for you!... No, but you are so

nice... but it won't do...not that... but as a friend, I shall

always love you."



Denisov bent over her hand and she heard strange sounds she did

not understand. She kissed his rough curly black head. At this

instant, they heard the quick rustle of the countess' dress. She

came up to them.



"Vasili Dmitrich, I thank you for the honor," she said, with an

embarrassed voice, though it sounded severe to Denisov--"but my

daughter is so young, and I thought that, as my son's friend, you

would have addressed yourself first to me. In that case you would

not have obliged me to give this refusal."



"Countess..." said Denisov, with downcast eyes and a guilty face. He

tried to say more, but faltered.



Natasha could not remain calm, seeing him in such a plight. She

began to sob aloud.



"Countess, I have done w'ong," Denisov went on in an unsteady voice,

"but believe me, I so adore your daughter and all your family that I

would give my life twice over..." He looked at the countess, and

seeing her severe face said: "Well, good-by, Countess," and kissing

her hand, he left the room with quick resolute strides, without

looking at Natasha.





Next day Rostov saw Denisov off. He not wish to stay another day

in Moscow. All Denisov's Moscow friends gave him a farewell

entertainment at the gypsies', with the result that he had no

recollection of how he was put in the sleigh or of the first three

stages of his journey.



After Denisov's departure, Rostov spent another fortnight in Moscow,

without going out of the house, waiting for the money his father could

not at once raise, and he spent most of his time in the girls' room.

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Sonya was more tender and devoted to him than ever. It was as if she

wanted to show him that his losses were an achievement that made her

love him all the more, but Nicholas now considered himself unworthy of

her.



He filled the girls' albums with verses and music, and having at

last sent Dolokhov the whole forty-three thousand rubles and

received his receipt, he left at the end of November, without taking

leave of any of his acquaintances, to overtake his regiment which

was already in Poland.









BOOK FIVE: 1806 --07









CHAPTER I





After his interview with his wife Pierre left for Petersburg. At the

Torzhok post station, either there were no horses or the postmaster

would not supply them. Pierre was obliged to wait. Without undressing,

he lay down on the leather sofa in front of a round table, put his big

feet in their overboots on the table, and began to reflect.



"Will you have the portmanteaus brought in? And a bed got ready, and

tea?" asked his valet.



Pierre gave no answer, for he neither heard nor saw anything. He had

begun to think of the last station and was still pondering on the same

question--one so important that he took no notice of what went on

around him. Not only was he indifferent as to whether he got to

Petersburg earlier or later, or whether he secured accommodation at

this station, but compared to the thoughts that now occupied him it

was a matter of indifference whether he remained there for a few hours

or for the rest of his life.



The postmaster, his wife, the valet, and a peasant woman selling

Torzhok embroidery came into the room offering their services. Without

changing his careless attitude, Pierre looked at them over his

spectacles unable to understand what they wanted or how they could

go on living without having solved the problems that so absorbed

him. He had been engrossed by the same thoughts ever since the day

he returned from Sokolniki after the duel and had spent that first

agonizing, sleepless night. But now, in the solitude of the journey,

they seized him with special force. No matter what he thought about,

he always returned to these same questions which he could not solve

and yet could not cease to ask himself. It was as if the thread of the

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chief screw which held his life together were stripped, so that the

screw could not get in or out, but went on turning uselessly in the

same place.



The postmaster came in and began obsequiously to beg his

excellency to wait only two hours, when, come what might, he would let

his excellency have the courier horses. It was plain that he was lying

and only wanted to get more money from the traveler.



"Is this good or bad?" Pierre asked himself. "It is good for me, bad

for another traveler, and for himself it's unavoidable, because he

needs money for food; the man said an officer had once given him a

thrashing for letting a private traveler have the courier horses.

But the officer thrashed him because he had to get on as quickly as

possible. And I," continued Pierre, "shot Dolokhov because I

considered myself injured, and Louis XVI was executed because they

considered him a criminal, and a year later they executed those who

executed him--also for some reason. What is bad? What is good? What

should one love and what hate? What does one live for? And what am

I? What is life, and what is death? What power governs all?"



There was no answer to any of these questions, except one, and

that not a logical answer and not at all a reply to them. The answer

was: "You'll die and all will end. You'll die and know all, or cease

asking." But dying was also dreadful.



The Torzhok peddler woman, in a whining voice, went on offering

her wares, especially a pair of goatskin slippers. "I have hundreds of

rubles I don't know what to do with, and she stands in her tattered

cloak looking timidly at me," he thought. "And what does she want

the money for? As if that money could add a hair's breadth to

happiness or peace of mind. Can anything in the world make her or me

less a prey to evil and death?--death which ends all and must come

today or tomorrow--at any rate, in an instant as compared with

eternity." And again he twisted the screw with the stripped thread,

and again it turned uselessly in the same place.



His servant handed him a half-cut novel, in the form of letters,

by Madame de Souza. He began reading about the sufferings and virtuous

struggles of a certain Emilie de Mansfeld. "And why did she resist her

seducer when she loved him?" he thought. "God could not have put

into her heart an impulse that was against His will. My wife--as she

once was--did not struggle, and perhaps she was right. Nothing has

been found out, nothing discovered," Pierre again said to himself.

"All we can know is that we know nothing. And that's the height of

human wisdom."



Everything within and around him seemed confused, senseless, and

repellent. Yet in this very repugnance to all his circumstances Pierre

found a kind of tantalizing satisfaction.



"I make bold to ask your excellency to move a little for this

gentleman," said the postmaster, entering the room followed by another

traveler, also detained for lack of horses.

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The newcomer was a short, large-boned, yellow-faced, wrinkled old

man, with gray bushy eyebrows overhanging bright eyes of an indefinite

grayish color.



Pierre took his feet off the table, stood up, and lay down on a

bed that had been got ready for him, glancing now and then at the

newcomer, who, with a gloomy and tired face, was wearily taking off

his wraps with the aid of his servant, and not looking at Pierre. With

a pair of felt boots on his thin bony legs, and keeping on a worn,

nankeen-covered, sheepskin coat, the traveler sat down on the sofa,

leaned back his big head with its broad temples and close-cropped

hair, and looked at Bezukhov. The stern, shrewd, and penetrating

expression of that look struck Pierre. He felt a wish to speak to

the stranger, but by the time he had made up his mind to ask him a

question about the roads, the traveler had closed his eyes. His

shriveled old hands were folded and on the finger of one of them

Pierre noticed a large cast iron ring with a seal representing a

death's head. The stranger sat without stirring, either resting or, as

it seemed to Pierre, sunk in profound and calm meditation. His servant

was also a yellow, wrinkled old man, without beard or mustache,

evidently not because he was shaven but because they had never

grown. This active old servant was unpacking the traveler's canteen

and preparing tea. He brought in a boiling samovar. When everything

was ready, the stranger opened his eyes, moved to the table, filled

a tumbler with tea for himself and one for the beardless old man to

whom he passed it. Pierre began to feel a sense of uneasiness, and the

need, even the inevitability, of entering into conversation with

this stranger.



The servant brought back his tumbler turned upside down,* with an

unfinished bit of nibbled sugar, and asked if anything more would be

wanted.





*To indicate he did not want more tea.





"No. Give me the book," said the stranger.



The servant handed him a book which Pierre took to be a devotional

work, and the traveler became absorbed in it. Pierre looked at him.

All at once the stranger closed the book, putting in a marker, and

again, leaning with his arms on the back of the sofa, sat in his

former position with his eyes shut. Pierre looked at him and had not

time to turn away when the old man, opening his eyes, fixed his steady

and severe gaze straight on Pierre's face.



Pierre felt confused and wished to avoid that look, but the bright

old eyes attracted him irresistibly.









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CHAPTER II





"I have the pleasure of addressing Count Bezukhov, if I am not

mistaken," said the stranger in a deliberate and loud voice.



Pierre looked silently and inquiringly at him over his spectacles.



"I have heard of you, my dear sir," continued the stranger, "and

of your misfortune." He seemed to emphasize the last word, as if to

say--"Yes, misfortune! Call it what you please, I know that what

happened to you in Moscow was a misfortune."--"I regret it very

much, my dear sir."



Pierre flushed and, hurriedly putting his legs down from the bed,

bent forward toward the old man with a forced and timid smile.



"I have not referred to this out of curiosity, my dear sir, but

for greater reasons."



He paused, his gaze still on Pierre, and moved aside on the sofa

by way of inviting the other to take a seat beside him. Pierre felt

reluctant to enter into conversation with this old man, but,

submitting to him involuntarily, came up and sat down beside him.



"You are unhappy, my dear sir," the stranger continued. "You are

young and I am old. I should like to help you as far as lies in my

power."



"Oh, yes!" said Pierre, with a forced smile. "I am very grateful

to you. Where are you traveling from?"



The stranger's face was not genial, it was even cold and severe, but

in spite of this, both the face and words of his new acquaintance were

irresistibly attractive to Pierre.



"But if for reason you don't feel inclined to talk to me," said

the old man, "say so, my dear sir." And he suddenly smiled, in an

unexpected and tenderly paternal way.



"Oh no, not at all! On the contrary, I am very glad to make your

acquaintance," said Pierre. And again, glancing at the stranger's

hands, he looked more closely at the ring, with its skull--a Masonic

sign.



"Allow me to ask," he said, "are you a Mason?"



"Yes, I belong to the Brotherhood of the Freemasons," said the

stranger, looking deeper and deeper into Pierre's eyes. "And in

their name and my own I hold out a brotherly hand to you."



"I am afraid," said Pierre, smiling, and wavering between the

confidence the personality of the Freemason inspired in him and his

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own habit of ridiculing the Masonic beliefs--"I am afraid I am very

far from understanding--how am I to put it?--I am afraid my way of

looking at the world is so opposed to yours that we shall not

understand one another."



"I know your outlook," said the Mason, "and the view of life you

mention, and which you think is the result of your own mental efforts,

is the one held by the majority of people, and is the invariable fruit

of pride, indolence, and ignorance. Forgive me, my dear sir, but if

I had not known it I should not have addressed you. Your view of

life is a regrettable delusion."



"Just as I may suppose you to be deluded," said Pierre, with a faint

smile.



"I should never dare to say that I know the truth," said the

Mason, whose words struck Pierre more and more by their precision

and firmness. "No one can attain to truth by himself. Only by laying

stone on stone with the cooperation of all, by the millions of

generations from our forefather Adam to our own times, is that

temple reared which is to be a worthy dwelling place of the Great

God," he added, and closed his eyes.



"I ought to tell you that I do not believe... do not believe in God,"

said Pierre, regretfully and with an effort, feeling it essential to

speak the whole truth.



The Mason looked intently at Pierre and smiled as a rich man with

millions in hand might smile at a poor fellow who told him that he,

poor man, had not the five rubles that would make him happy.



"Yes, you do not know Him, my dear sir," said the Mason. "You cannot

know Him. You do not know Him and that is why you are unhappy."



"Yes, yes, I am unhappy," assented Pierre. "But what am I to do?"



"You know Him not, my dear sir, and so you are very unhappy. You

do not know Him, but He is here, He is in me, He is in my words, He

is in thee, and even in those blasphemous words thou hast just

uttered!" pronounced the Mason in a stern and tremulous voice.



He paused and sighed, evidently trying to calm himself.



"If He were not," he said quietly, "you and I would not be

speaking of Him, my dear sir. Of what, of whom, are we speaking?

Whom hast thou denied?" he suddenly asked with exulting austerity

and authority in his voice. "Who invented Him, if He did not exist?

Whence came thy conception of the existence of such an

incomprehensible Being? didst thou, and why did the whole world,

conceive the idea of the existence of such an incomprehensible

Being, a Being all-powerful, eternal, and infinite in all His

attributes?..."



He stopped and remained silent for a long time.

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Pierre could not and did not wish to break this silence.



"He exists, but to understand Him is hard," the Mason began again,

looking not at Pierre but straight before him, and turning the

leaves of his book with his old hands which from excitement he could

not keep still. "If it were a man whose existence thou didst doubt I

could bring him to thee, could take him by the hand and show him to

thee. But how can I, an insignificant mortal, show His omnipotence,

His infinity, and all His mercy to one who is blind, or who shuts

his eyes that he may not see or understand Him and may not see or

understand his own vileness and sinfulness?" He paused again. "Who art

thou? Thou dreamest that thou art wise because thou couldst utter

those blasphemous words," he went on, with a somber and scornful

smile. "And thou art more foolish and unreasonable than a little

child, who, playing with the parts of a skillfully made watch, dares

to say that, as he does not understand its use, he does not believe in

the master who made it. To know Him is hard.... For ages, from our

forefather Adam to our own day, we labor to attain that knowledge

and are still infinitely far from our aim; but in our lack of

understanding we see only our weakness and His greatness...."



Pierre listened with swelling heart, gazing into the Mason's face

with shining eyes, not interrupting or questioning him, but

believing with his whole soul what the stranger said. Whether he

accepted the wise reasoning contained in the Mason's words, or

believed as a child believes, in the speaker's tone of conviction

and earnestness, or the tremor of the speaker's voice--which sometimes

almost broke--or those brilliant aged eyes grown old in this

conviction, or the calm firmness and certainty of his vocation,

which radiated from his whole being (and which struck Pierre

especially by contrast with his own dejection and hopelessness)--at

any rate, Pierre longed with his whole soul to believe and he did

believe, and felt a joyful sense of comfort, regeneration, and

return to life.



"He is not to be apprehended by reason, but by life," said the

Mason.



"I do not understand," said Pierre, feeling with dismay doubts

reawakening. He was afraid of any want of clearness, any weakness,

in the Mason's arguments; he dreaded not to be able to believe in him.

"I don't understand," he said, "how it is that the mind of man

cannot attain the knowledge of which you speak."



The Mason smiled with his gentle fatherly smile.



"The highest wisdom and truth are like the purest liquid we may wish

to imbibe," he said. "Can I receive that pure liquid into an impure

vessel and judge of its purity? Only by the inner purification of

myself can I retain in some degree of purity the liquid I receive."



"Yes, yes, that is so," said Pierre joyfully.



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"The highest wisdom is not founded on reason alone, not on those

worldly sciences of physics, history, chemistry, and the like, into

which intellectual knowledge is divided. The highest wisdom is one.

The highest wisdom has but one science--the science of the whole-

the science explaining the whole creation and man's place in it. To

receive that science it is necessary to purify and renew one's inner

self, and so before one can know, it is necessary to believe and to

perfect one's self. And to attain this end, we have the light called

conscience that God has implanted in our souls."



"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.



"Look then at thy inner self with the eyes of the spirit, and ask

thyself whether thou art content with thyself. What hast thou attained

relying on reason only? What art thou? You are young, you are rich,

you are clever, you are well educated. And what have you done with all

these good gifts? Are you content with yourself and with your life?"



"No, I hate my life," Pierre muttered, wincing.



"Thou hatest it. Then change it, purify thyself; and as thou art

purified, thou wilt gain wisdom. Look at your life, my dear sir. How

have you spent it? In riotous orgies and debauchery, receiving

everything from society and giving nothing in return. You have

become the possessor of wealth. How have you used it? What have you

done for your neighbor? Have you ever thought of your tens of

thousands of slaves? Have you helped them physically and morally?

No! You have profited by their toil to lead a profligate life. That is

what you have done. Have you chosen a post in which you might be of

service to your neighbor? No! You have spent your life in idleness.

Then you married, my dear sir--took on yourself responsibility for the

guidance of a young woman; and what have you done? You have not helped

her to find the way of truth, my dear sir, but have thrust her into an

abyss of deceit and misery. A man offended you and you shot him, and

you say you do not know God and hate your life. There is nothing

strange in that, my dear sir!"



After these words, the Mason, as if tired by his long discourse,

again leaned his arms on the back of the sofa and closed his eyes.

Pierre looked at that aged, stern, motionless, almost lifeless face

and moved his lips without uttering a sound. He wished to say, "Yes, a

vile, idle, vicious life!" but dared not break the silence.



The Mason cleared his throat huskily, as old men do, and called

his servant.



"How about the horses?" he asked, without looking at Pierre.



"The exchange horses have just come," answered the servant. "Will

you not rest here?"



"No, tell them to harness."



"Can he really be going away leaving me alone without having told me

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all, and without promising to help me?" thought Pierre, rising with

downcast head; and he began to pace the room, glancing occasionally at

the Mason. "Yes, I never thought of it, but I have led a

contemptible and profligate life, though I did not like it and did not

want to," thought Pierre. "But this man knows the truth and, if he

wished to, could disclose it to me."



Pierre wished to say this to the Mason, but did not dare to. The

traveler, having packed his things with his practiced hands, began

fastening his coat. When he had finished, he turned to Bezukhov, and

said in a tone of indifferent politeness:



"Where are you going to now, my dear sir?"



"I?... I'm going to Petersburg," answered Pierre, in a childlike,

hesitating voice. "I thank you. I agree with all you have said. But do

not suppose me to be so bad. With my whole soul I wish to be what

you would have me be, but I have never had help from anyone.... But it

is I, above all, who am to blame for everything. Help me, teach me,

and perhaps I may..."



Pierre could not go on. He gulped and turned away.



The Mason remained silent for a long time, evidently considering.



"Help comes from God alone," he said, "but such measure of help as

our Order can bestow it will render you, my dear sir. You are going to

Petersburg. Hand this to Count Willarski" (he took out his notebook

and wrote a few words on a large sheet of paper folded in four).

"Allow me to give you a piece of advice. When you reach the capital,

first of all devote some time to solitude and self-examination and

do not resume your former way of life. And now I wish you a good

journey, my dear sir," he added, seeing that his servant had

entered... "and success."



The traveler was Joseph Alexeevich Bazdeev, as Pierre saw from the

postmaster's book. Bazdeev had been one of the best-known Freemasons

and Martinists, even in Novikov's time. For a long while after he

had gone, Pierre did not go to bed or order horses but paced up and

down the room, pondering over his vicious past, and with a rapturous

sense of beginning anew pictured to himself the blissful,

irreproachable, virtuous future that seemed to him so easy. It

seemed to him that he had been vicious only because he had somehow

forgotten how good it is to be virtuous. Not a trace of his former

doubts remained in his soul. He firmly believed in the possibility

of the brotherhood of men united in the aim of supporting one

another in the path of virtue, and that is how Freemasonry presented

itself to him.









CHAPTER III

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On reaching Petersburg Pierre did not let anyone know of his

arrival, he went nowhere and spent whole days in reading Thomas a

Kempis, whose book had been sent him by someone unknown. One thing

he continually realized as he read that book: the joy, hitherto

unknown to him, of believing in the possibility of attaining

perfection, and in the possibility of active brotherly love among men,

which Joseph Alexeevich had revealed to him. A week after his arrival,

the young Polish count, Willarski, whom Pierre had known slightly in

Petersburg society, came into his room one evening in the official and

ceremonious manner in which Dolokhov's second had called on him,

and, having closed the door behind him and satisfied himself that

there was nobody else in the room, addressed Pierre.



"I have come to you with a message and an offer, Count," he said

without sitting down. "A person of very high standing in our

Brotherhood has made application for you to be received into our Order

before the usual term and has proposed to me to be your sponsor. I

consider it a sacred duty to fulfill that person's wishes. Do you wish

to enter the Brotherhood of Freemasons under my sponsorship?"



The cold, austere tone of this man, whom he had almost always

before met at balls, amiably smiling in the society of the most

brilliant women, surprised Pierre.



"Yes, I do wish it," said he.



Willarski bowed his head.



"One more question, Count," he said, "which beg you to answer in all

sincerity--not as a future Mason but as an honest man: have you

renounced your former convictions--do you believe in God?"



Pierre considered.



"Yes... yes, I believe in God," he said.



"In that case..." began Willarski, but Pierre interrupted him.



"Yes, I do believe in God," he repeated.



"In that case we can go," said Willarski. "My carriage is at your

service."



Willarski was silent throughout the drive. To Pierre's inquiries

as to what he must do and how he should answer, Willarski only replied

that brothers more worthy than he would test him and that Pierre had

only to tell the truth.



Having entered the courtyard of a large house where the Lodge had

its headquarters, and having ascended a dark staircase, they entered a

small well-lit anteroom where they took off their cloaks without the

aid of a servant. From there they passed into another room. A man in

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strange attire appeared at the door. Willarski, stepping toward him,

said something to him in French in an undertone and then went up to

a small wardrobe in which Pierre noticed garments such as he had never

seen before. Having taken a kerchief from the cupboard, Willarski

bound Pierre's eyes with it and tied it in a knot behind, catching

some hairs painfully in the knot. Then he drew his face down, kissed

him, and taking him by the hand led him forward. The hairs tied in the

knot hurt Pierre and there were lines of pain on his face and a

shamefaced smile. His huge figure, with arms hanging down and with a

puckered, though smiling face, moved after Willarski with uncertain,

timid steps.



Having led him about ten paces, Willarski stopped.



"Whatever happens to you," he said, "you must bear it all manfully

if you have firmly resolved to join our Brotherhood." (Pierre nodded

affirmatively.) "When you hear a knock at the door, you will uncover

your eyes," added Willarski. "I wish you courage and success," and,

pressing Pierre's hand, he went out.



Left alone, Pierre went on smiling in the same way. Once or twice he

shrugged his and raised his hand to the kerchief, as if wishing to

take it off, but let it drop again. The five minutes spent with his

eyes bandaged seemed to him an hour. His arms felt numb, his legs

almost gave way, it seemed to him that he was tired out. He

experienced a variety of most complex sensations. He felt afraid of

what would happen to him and still more afraid of showing his fear. He

felt curious to know what was going to happen and what would be

revealed to him; but most of all, he felt joyful that the moment had

come when he would at last start on that path of regeneration and on

the actively virtuous life of which he had been dreaming since he

met Joseph Alexeevich. Loud knocks were heard at the door. Pierre took

the bandage off his eyes and glanced around him. The room was in black

darkness, only a small lamp was burning inside something white. Pierre

went nearer and saw that the lamp stood on a black table on which

lay an open book. The book was the Gospel, and the white thing with

the lamp inside was a human skull with its cavities and teeth. After

reading the first words of the Gospel: "In the beginning was the

Word and the Word was with God," Pierre went round the table and saw a

large open box filled with something. It was a coffin with bones

inside. He was not at all surprised by what he saw. Hoping to enter on

an entirely new life quite unlike the old one, he expected

everything to be unusual, even more unusual than what he was seeing. A

skull, a coffin, the Gospel--it seemed to him that he had expected all

this and even more. Trying to stimulate his emotions he looked around.

"God, death, love, the brotherhood of man," he kept saying to himself,

associating these words with vague yet joyful ideas. The door opened

and someone came in.



By the dim light, to which Pierre had already become accustomed,

he saw rather short man. Having evidently come from the light into the

darkness, the man paused, then moved with cautious steps toward the

table and placed on it his small leather-gloved hands.



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This short man had on a white leather apron which covered his

chest and part of his legs; he had on a kind of necklace above which

rose a high white ruffle, outlining his rather long face which was lit

up from below.



"For what have you come hither?" asked the newcomer, turning in

Pierre's direction at a slight rustle made by the latter. "Why have

you, who do not believe in the truth of the light and who have not

seen the light, come here? What do you seek from us? Wisdom, virtue,

enlightenment?"



At the moment the door opened and the stranger came in, Pierre

felt a sense of awe and veneration such as he had experienced in his

boyhood at confession; he felt himself in the presence of one socially

a complete stranger, yet nearer to him through the brotherhood of man.

With bated breath and beating heart he moved toward the Rhetor (by

which name the brother who prepared a seeker for entrance into the

Brotherhood was known). Drawing nearer, he recognized in the Rhetor

a man he knew, Smolyaninov, and it mortified him to think that the

newcomer was an acquaintance--he wished him simply a brother and a

virtuous instructor. For a long time he could not utter a word, so

that the Rhetor had to repeat his question.



"Yes... I... I... desire regeneration," Pierre uttered with

difficulty.



"Very well," said Smolyaninov, and went on at once: "Have you any

idea of the means by which our holy Order will help you to reach

your aim?" said he quietly and quickly.



"I... hope... for guidance... help... in regeneration," said Pierre,

with a trembling voice and some difficulty in utterance due to his

excitement and to being unaccustomed to speak of abstract matters in

Russian.



"What is your conception of Freemasonry?"



"I imagine that Freemasonry is the fraternity and equality of men

who have virtuous aims," said Pierre, feeling ashamed of the

inadequacy of his words for the solemnity of the moment, as he

spoke. "I imagine..."



"Good!" said the Rhetor quickly, apparently satisfied with this

answer. "Have you sought for means of attaining your aim in religion?"



"No, I considered it erroneous and did not follow it," said

Pierre, so softly that the Rhetor did not hear him and asked him

what he was saying. "I have been an atheist," answered Pierre.



"You are seeking for truth in order to follow its laws in your life,

therefore you seek wisdom and virtue. Is that not so?" said the

Rhetor, after a moment's pause.



"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.

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The Rhetor cleared his throat, crossed his gloved hands on his

breast, and began to speak.



"Now I must disclose to you the chief aim of our Order," he said,

"and if this aim coincides with yours, you may enter our Brotherhood

with profit. The first and chief object of our Order, the foundation

on which it rests and which no human power can destroy, is the

preservation and handing on to posterity of a certain important

mystery... which has come down to us from the remotest ages, even from

the first man--a mystery on which perhaps the fate of mankind depends.

But since this mystery is of such a nature that nobody can know or use

it unless he be prepared by long and diligent self-purification, not

everyone can hope to attain it quickly. Hence we have a secondary aim,

that of preparing our members as much as possible to reform their

hearts, to purify and enlighten their minds, by means handed on to

us by tradition from those who have striven to attain this mystery,

and thereby to render them capable of receiving it.



"By purifying and regenerating our members we try, thirdly, to

improve the whole human race, offering it in our members an example of

piety and virtue, and thereby try with all our might to combat the

evil which sways the world. Think this over and I will come to you

again."



"To combat the evil which sways the world..." Pierre repeated, and a

mental image of his future activity in this direction rose in his

mind. He imagined men such as he had himself been a fortnight ago, and

he addressed an edifying exhortation to them. He imagined to himself

vicious and unfortunate people whom he would assist by word and

deed, imagined oppressors whose victims he would rescue. Of the

three objects mentioned by the Rhetor, this last, that of improving

mankind, especially appealed to Pierre. The important mystery

mentioned by the Rhetor, though it aroused his curiosity, did not seem

to him essential, and the second aim, that of purifying and

regenerating himself, did not much interest him because at that moment

he felt with delight that he was already perfectly cured of his former

faults and was ready for all that was good.



Half an hour later, the Rhetor returned to inform the seeker of

the seven virtues, corresponding to the seven steps of Solomon's

temple, which every Freemason should cultivate in himself. These

virtues were: 1. Discretion, the keeping of the secrets of the Order.

2. Obedience to those of higher ranks in the Order. 3. Morality. 4.

Love of mankind. 5. Courage. 6. Generosity. 7. The love of death.



"In the seventh place, try, by the frequent thought of death," the

Rhetor said, "to bring yourself to regard it not as a dreaded foe, but

as a friend that frees the soul grown weary in the labors of virtue

from this distressful life, and leads it to its place of recompense

and peace."



"Yes, that must be so," thought Pierre, when after these words the

Rhetor went away, leaving him to solitary meditation. "It must be

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so, but I am still so weak that I love my life, the meaning of which

is only now gradually opening before me." But five of the other

virtues which Pierre recalled, counting them on his fingers, he felt

already in his soul: courage, generosity, morality, love of mankind,

and especially obedience--which did not even seem to him a virtue, but

a joy. (He now felt so glad to be free from his own lawlessness and to

submit his will to those who knew the indubitable truth.) He forgot

what the seventh virtue was and could not recall it.



The third time the Rhetor came back more quickly and asked Pierre

whether he was still firm in his intention and determined to submit to

all that would be required of him.



"I am ready for everything," said Pierre.



"I must also inform you," said the Rhetor, "that our Order

delivers its teaching not in words only but also by other means, which

may perhaps have a stronger effect on the sincere seeker after

wisdom and virtue than mere words. This chamber with what you see

therein should already have suggested to your heart, if it is sincere,

more than words could do. You will perhaps also see in your further

initiation a like method of enlightenment. Our Order imitates the

ancient societies that explained their teaching by hieroglyphics. A

hieroglyph," said the Rhetor, "is an emblem of something not

cognizable by the senses but which possesses qualities resembling

those of the symbol."



Pierre knew very well what a hieroglyph was, but dared not speak. He

listened to the Rhetor in silence, feeling from all he said that his

ordeal was about to begin.



"If you are resolved, I must begin your initiation," said the Rhetor

coming closer to Pierre. "In token of generosity I ask you to give

me all your valuables."



"But I have nothing here," replied Pierre, supposing that he was

asked to give up all he possessed.



"What you have with you: watch, money, rings...."



Pierre quickly took out his purse and watch, but could not manage

for some time to get the wedding ring off his fat finger. When that

had been done, the Rhetor said:



"In token of obedience, I ask you to undress."



Pierre took off his coat, waistcoat, and left boot according to

the Rhetor's instructions. The Mason drew the shirt back from Pierre's

left breast, and stooping down pulled up the left leg of his

trousers to above the knee. Pierre hurriedly began taking off his

right boot also and was going to tuck up the other trouser leg to save

this stranger the trouble, but the Mason told him that was not

necessary and gave him a slipper for his left foot. With a childlike

smile of embarrassment, doubt, and self-derision, which appeared on

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his face against his will, Pierre stood with his arms hanging down and

legs apart, before his brother Rhetor, and awaited his further

commands.



"And now, in token of candor, I ask you to reveal to me your chief

passion," said the latter.



"My passion! I have had so many," replied Pierre.



"That passion which more than all others caused you to waver on

the path of virtue," said the Mason.



Pierre paused, seeking a reply.



"Wine? Gluttony? Idleness? Laziness? Irritability? Anger? Women?" He

went over his vices in his mind, not knowing to which of them to

give the pre-eminence.



"Women," he said in a low, scarcely audible voice.



The Mason did not move and for a long time said nothing after this

answer. At last he moved up to Pierre and, taking the kerchief that

lay on the table, again bound his eyes.



"For the last time I say to you--turn all your attention upon

yourself, put a bridle on your senses, and seek blessedness, not in

passion but in your own heart. The source of blessedness is not

without us but within...."



Pierre had already long been feeling in himself that refreshing

source of blessedness which now flooded his heart with glad emotion.









CHAPTER IV





Soon after this there came into the dark chamber to fetch Pierre,

not the Rhetor but Pierre's sponsor, Willarski, whom he recognized

by his voice. To fresh questions as to the firmness of his

resolution Pierre replied: "Yes, yes, I agree," and with a beaming,

childlike smile, his fat chest uncovered, stepping unevenly and

timidly in one slippered and one booted foot, he advanced, while

Willarski held a sword to his bare chest. He was conducted from that

room along passages that turned backwards and forwards and was at last

brought to the doors of the Lodge. Willarski coughed, he was

answered by the Masonic knock with mallets, the doors opened before

them. A bass voice (Pierre was still blindfold) questioned him as to

who he was, when and where he was born, and so on. Then he was again

led somewhere still blindfold, and as they went along he was told

allegories of the toils of his pilgrimage, of holy friendship, of

the Eternal Architect of the universe, and of the courage with which

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he should endure toils and dangers. During these wanderings, Pierre

noticed that he was spoken of now as the "Seeker," now as the

"Sufferer," and now as the "Postulant," to the accompaniment of

various knockings with mallets and swords. As he was being led up to

some object he noticed a hesitation and uncertainty among his

conductors. He heard those around him disputing in whispers and one of

them insisting that he should be led along a certain carpet. After

that they took his right hand, placed it on something, and told him to

hold a pair of compasses to his left breast with the other hand and to

repeat after someone who read aloud an oath of fidelity to the laws of

the Order. The candles were then extinguished and some spirit lighted,

as Pierre knew by the smell, and he was told that he would now see the

lesser light. The bandage was taken off his eyes and, by the faint

light of the burning spirit, Pierre, as in a dream, saw several men

standing before him, wearing aprons like the Rhetor's and holding

swords in their hands pointed at his breast. Among them stood a man

whose white shirt was stained with blood. On seeing this, Pierre moved

forward with his breast toward the swords, meaning them to pierce

it. But the swords were drawn back from him and he was at once

blindfolded again.



"Now thou hast seen the lesser light," uttered a voice. Then the

candles were relit and he was told that he would see the full light;

the bandage was again removed and more than ten voices said

together: "Sic transit gloria mundi."



Pierre gradually began to recover himself and looked about at the

room and at the people in it. Round a long table covered with black

sat some twelve men in garments like those he had already seen. Some

of them Pierre had met in Petersburg society. In the President's chair

sat a young man he did not know, with a peculiar cross hanging from

his neck. On his right sat the Italian abbe whom Pierre had met at

Anna Pavlovna's two years before. There were also present a very

distinguished dignitary and a Swiss who had formerly been tutor at the

Kuragins'. All maintained a solemn silence, listening to the words

of the President, who held a mallet in his hand. Let into the wall was

a star-shaped light. At one side of the table was a small carpet

with various figures worked upon it, at the other was something

resembling an altar on which lay a Testament and a skull. Round it

stood seven large candlesticks like those used in churches. Two of the

brothers led Pierre up to the altar, placed his feet at right

angles, and bade him lie down, saying that he must prostrate himself

at the Gates of the Temple.



"He must first receive the trowel," whispered one of the brothers.



"Oh, hush, please!" said another.



Pierre, perplexed, looked round with his shortsighted eyes without

obeying, and suddenly doubts arose in his mind. "Where am I? What am I

doing? Aren't they laughing at me? Shan't I be ashamed to remember

this?" But these doubts only lasted a moment. Pierre glanced at the

serious faces of those around, remembered all he had already gone

through, and realized that he could not stop halfway. He was aghast at

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his hesitation and, trying to arouse his former devotional feeling,

prostrated himself before the Gates of the Temple. And really, the

feeling of devotion returned to him even more strongly than before.

When he had lain there some time, he was told to get up, and a white

leather apron, such as the others wore, was put on him: he was given a

trowel and three pairs of gloves, and then the Grand Master

addressed him. He told him that he should try to do nothing to stain

the whiteness of that apron, which symbolized strength and purity;

then of the unexplained trowel, he told him to toil with it to cleanse

his own heart from vice, and indulgently to smooth with it the heart

of his neighbor. As to the first pair of gloves, a man's, he said that

Pierre could not know their meaning but must keep them. The second

pair of man's gloves he was to wear at the meetings, and finally of

the third, a pair of women's gloves, he said: "Dear brother, these

woman's gloves are intended for you too. Give them to the woman whom

you shall honor most of all. This gift will be a pledge of your purity

of heart to her whom you select to be your worthy helpmeet in

Masonry." And after a pause, he added: "But beware, dear brother, that

these gloves do not deck hands that are unclean." While the Grand

Master said these last words it seemed to Pierre that he grew

embarrassed. Pierre himself grew still more confused, blushed like a

child till tears came to his eyes, began looking about him uneasily,

and an awkward pause followed.



This silence was broken by one of the brethren, who led Pierre up to

the rug and began reading to him from a manuscript book an explanation

of all the figures on it: the sun, the moon, a hammer, a plumb line, a

trowel, a rough stone and a squared stone, a pillar, three windows,

and so on. Then a place was assigned to Pierre, he was shown the signs

of the Lodge, told the password, and at last was permitted to sit

down. The Grand Master began reading the statutes. They were very

long, and Pierre, from joy, agitation, and embarrassment, was not in a

state to understand what was being read. He managed to follow only the

last words of the statutes and these remained in his mind.



"In our temples we recognize no other distinctions," read the

Grand Master, "but those between virtue and vice. Beware of making any

distinctions which may infringe equality. Fly to a brother's aid

whoever he may be, exhort him who goeth astray, raise him that

falleth, never bear malice or enmity toward thy brother. Be kindly and

courteous. Kindle in all hearts the flame of virtue. Share thy

happiness with thy neighbor, and may envy never dim the purity of that

bliss. Forgive thy enemy, do not avenge thyself except by doing him

good. Thus fulfilling the highest law thou shalt regain traces of

the ancient dignity which thou hast lost."



He finished and, getting up, embraced and kissed Pierre, who, with

tears of joy in his eyes, looked round him, not knowing how to

answer the congratulations and greetings from acquaintances that met

him on all sides. He acknowledged no acquaintances but saw in all

these men only brothers, and burned with impatience to set to work

with them.



The Grand Master rapped with his mallet. All the Masons sat down

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in their places, and one of them read an exhortation on the

necessity of humility.



The Grand Master proposed that the last duty should be performed,

and the distinguished dignitary who bore the title of "Collector of

Alms" went round to all the brothers. Pierre would have liked to

subscribe all he had, but fearing that it might look like pride

subscribed the same amount as the others.



The meeting was at an end, and on reaching home Pierre felt as if he

had returned from a long journey on which he had spent dozens of

years, had become completely changed, and had quite left behind his

former habits and way of life.









CHAPTER V





The day after he had been received into the Lodge, Pierre was

sitting at home reading a book and trying to fathom the significance

of the Square, one side of which symbolized God, another moral things,

a third physical things, and the fourth a combination of these. Now

and then his attention wandered from the book and the Square and he

formed in imagination a new plan of life. On the previous evening at

the Lodge, he had heard that a rumor of his duel had reached the

Emperor and that it would be wiser for him to leave Petersburg. Pierre

proposed going to his estates in the south and there attending to

the welfare of his serfs. He was joyfully planning this new life, when

Prince Vasili suddenly entered the room.



"My dear fellow, what have you been up to in Moscow? Why have you

quarreled with Helene, mon cher? You are under a delusion," said

Prince Vasili, as he entered. "I know all about it, and I can tell you

positively that Helene is as innocent before you as Christ was

before the Jews."



Pierre was about to reply, but Prince Vasili interrupted him.



"And why didn't you simply come straight to me as to a friend? I

know all about it and understand it all," he said. "You behaved as

becomes a man values his honor, perhaps too hastily, but we won't go

into that. But consider the position in which you are placing her

and me in the eyes of society, and even of the court," he added,

lowering his voice. "She is living in Moscow and you are here.

Remember, dear boy," and he drew Pierre's arm downwards, "it is simply

a misunderstanding. I expect you feel it so yourself. Let us write her

a letter at once, and she'll come here and all will be explained, or

else, my dear boy, let me tell you it's quite likely you'll have to

suffer for it."



Prince Vasili gave Pierre a significant look.

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"I know from reliable sources that the Dowager Empress is taking a

keen interest in the whole affair. You know she is very gracious to

Helene."



Pierre tried several times to speak, but, on one hand, Prince Vasili

did not let him and, on the other, Pierre himself feared to begin to

speak in the tone of decided refusal and disagreement in which he

had firmly resolved to answer his father-in-law. Moreover, the words

of the Masonic statutes, "be kindly and courteous," recurred to him.

He blinked, went red, got up and sat down again, struggling with

himself to do what was for him the most difficult thing in life--to

say an unpleasant thing to a man's face, to say what the other,

whoever he might be, did not expect. He was so used to submitting to

Prince Vasili's tone of careless self-assurance that he felt he

would be unable to withstand it now, but he also felt that on what

he said now his future depended--whether he would follow the same

old road, or that new path so attractively shown him by the Masons, on

which he firmly believed he would be reborn to a new life.



"Now, dear boy," said Prince Vasili playfully, "say 'yes,' and

I'll write to her myself, and we will kill the fatted calf."



But before Prince Vasili had finished his playful speech, Pierre,

without looking at him, and with a kind of fury that made him like his

father, muttered in a whisper:



"Prince, I did not ask you here. Go, please go!" And he jumped up

and opened the door for him.



"Go!" he repeated, amazed at himself and glad to see the look of

confusion and fear that showed itself on Prince Vasili's face.



"What's the matter with you? Are you ill?"



"Go!" the quivering voice repeated. And Prince Vasili had to go

without receiving any explanation.



A week later, Pierre, having taken leave of his new friends, the

Masons, and leaving large sums of money with them for alms, went

away to his estates. His new brethren gave him letters to the Kiev and

Odessa Masons and promised to write to him and guide him in his new

activity.









CHAPTER VI





The duel between Pierre and Dolokhov was hushed up and, in spite

of the Emperor's severity regarding duels at that time, neither the

principals nor their seconds suffered for it. But the story of the

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duel, confirmed by Pierre's rupture with his wife, was the talk of

society. Pierre who had been regarded with patronizing condescension

when he was an illegitimate son, and petted and extolled when he was

the best match in Russia, had sunk greatly in the esteem of society

after his marriage--when the marriageable daughters and their

mothers had nothing to hope from him--especially as he did not know

how, and did not wish, to court society's favor. Now he alone was

blamed for what had happened, he was said to be insanely jealous and

subject like his father to fits of bloodthirsty rage. And when after

Pierre's departure Helene returned to Petersburg, she was received

by all her acquaintances not only cordially, but even with a shade

of deference due to her misfortune. When conversation turned on her

husband Helene assumed a dignified expression, which with

characteristic tact she had acquired though she did not understand its

significance. This expression suggested that she had resolved to

endure her troubles uncomplainingly and that her husband was a cross

laid upon her by God. Prince Vasili expressed his opinion more openly.

He shrugged his shoulders when Pierre was mentioned and, pointing to

his forehead, remarked:



"A bit touched--I always said so."



"I said from the first," declared Anna Pavlovna referring to Pierre,

"I said at the time and before anyone else" (she insisted on her

priority) "that that senseless young man was spoiled by the depraved

ideas of these days. I said so even at the time when everybody was

in raptures about him, when he had just returned from abroad, and

when, if you remember, he posed as a sort of Marat at one of my

soirees. And how has it ended? I was against this marriage even then

and foretold all that has happened."



Anna Pavlovna continued to give on free evenings the same kind of

soirees as before--such as she alone had the gift of arranging--at

which was to be found "the cream of really good society, the bloom

of the intellectual essence of Petersburg," as she herself put it.

Besides this refined selection of society Anna Pavlovna's receptions

were also distinguished by the fact that she always presented some new

and interesting person to the visitors and that nowhere else was the

state of the political thermometer of legitimate Petersburg court

society so dearly and distinctly indicated.



Toward the end of 1806, when all the sad details of Napoleon's

destruction of the Prussian army at Jena and Auerstadt and the

surrender of most of the Prussian fortresses had been received, when

our troops had already entered Prussia and our second war with

Napoleon was beginning, Anna Pavlovna gave one of her soirees. The

"cream of really good society" consisted of the fascinating Helene,

forsaken by her husband, Mortemart, the delightful Prince Hippolyte

who had just returned from Vienna, two diplomatists, the old aunt, a

young man referred to in that drawing room as "a man of great merit"

(un homme de beaucoup de merite), a newly appointed maid of honor

and her mother, and several other less noteworthy persons.



The novelty Anna Pavlovna was setting before her guests that evening

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was Boris Drubetskoy, who had just arrived as a special messenger from

the Prussian army and was aide-de-camp to a very important personage.



The temperature shown by the political thermometer to the company

that evening was this:



"Whatever the European sovereigns and commanders may do to

countenance Bonaparte, and to cause me, and us in general, annoyance

and mortification, our opinion of Bonaparte cannot alter. We shall not

cease to express our sincere views on that subject, and can only say

to the King Prussia and others: 'So much the worse for you. Tu l'as

voulu, George Dandin,' that's all we have to say about it!"



When Boris, who was to be served up to the guests, entered the

drawing room, almost all the company had assembled, and the

conversation, guided by Anna Pavlovna, was about our diplomatic

relations with Austria and the hope of an alliance with her.



Boris, grown more manly and looking fresh, rosy and

self-possessed, entered the drawing room elegantly dressed in the

uniform of an aide-de-camp and was duly conducted to pay his

respects to the aunt and then brought back to the general circle.



Anna Pavlovna gave him her shriveled hand to kiss and introduced him

to several persons whom he did not know, giving him a whispered

description of each.



"Prince Hippolyte Kuragin, M. Krug, the charge d'affaires from

Copenhagen--a profound intellect," and simply, "Mr. Shitov--a

man of great merit"--this of the man usually so described.



Thanks to Anna Mikhaylovna's efforts, his own tastes, and the

peculiarities of his reserved nature, Boris had managed during his

service to place himself very advantageously. He was aide-de-camp to a

very important personage, had been sent on a very important mission to

Prussia, and had just returned from there as a special messenger. He

had become thoroughly conversant with that unwritten code with which

he had been so pleased at Olmutz and according to which an ensign

might rank incomparably higher than a general, and according to

which what was needed for success in the service was not effort or

work, or courage, or perseverance, but only the knowledge of how to

get on with those who can grant rewards, and he was himself often

surprised at the rapidity of his success and at the inability of

others to understand these things. In consequence of this discovery

his whole manner of life, all his relations with old friends, all

his plans for his future, were completely altered. He was not rich,

but would spend his last groat to be better dressed than others, and

would rather deprive himself of many pleasures than allow himself to

be seen in a shabby equipage or appear in the streets of Petersburg in

an old uniform. He made friends with and sought the acquaintance of

only those above him in position and who could therefore be of use

to him. He liked Petersburg and despised Moscow. The remembrance of

the Rostovs' house and of his childish love for Natasha was unpleasant

to him and he had not once been to see the Rostovs since the day of

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his departure for the army. To be in Anna Pavlovna's drawing room he

considered an important step up in the service, and he at once

understood his role, letting his hostess make use of whatever interest

he had to offer. He himself carefully scanned each face, appraising

the possibilities of establishing intimacy with each of those present,

and the advantages that might accrue. He took the seat indicated to

him beside the fair Helene and listened to the general conversation.



"Vienna considers the bases of the proposed treaty so unattainable

that not even a continuity of most brilliant successes would secure

them, and she doubts the means we have of gaining them. That is the

actual phrase used by the Vienna cabinet," said the Danish charge

d'affaires.



"The doubt is flattering," said "the man of profound intellect,"

with a subtle smile.



"We must distinguish between the Vienna cabinet and the Emperor of

Austria," said Mortemart. "The Emperor of Austria can never have

thought of such a thing, it is only the cabinet that says it."



"Ah, my dear vicomte," put in Anna Pavlovna, "L'Urope" (for some

reason she called it Urope as if that were a specially refined

French pronunciation which she could allow herself when conversing

with a Frenchman), "L'Urope ne sera jamais notre alliee sincere."*





*"Europe will never be our sincere ally."





After that Anna Pavlovna led up to the courage and firmness of the

King of Prussia, in order to draw Boris into the conversation.



Boris listened attentively to each of the speakers, awaiting his

turn, but managed meanwhile to look round repeatedly at his

neighbor, the beautiful Helene, whose eyes several times met those

of the handsome young aide-de-camp with a smile.



Speaking of the position of Prussia, Anna Pavlovna very naturally

asked Boris to tell them about his journey to Glogau and in what state

he found the Prussian army. Boris, speaking with deliberation, told

them in pure, correct French many interesting details about the armies

and the court, carefully abstaining from expressing an opinion of

his own about the facts he was recounting. For some time he

engrossed the general attention, and Anna Pavlovna felt that the

novelty she had served up was received with pleasure by all her

visitors. The greatest attention of all to Boris' narrative was

shown by Helene. She asked him several questions about his journey and

seemed greatly interested in the state of the Prussian army. As soon

as he had finished she turned to him with her usual smile.



"You absolutely must come and see me," she said in a tone that

implied that, for certain considerations he could not know of, this

was absolutely necessary.

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"On Tuesday between eight and nine. It will give me great pleasure."



Boris promised to fulfill her wish and was about to begin a

conversation with her, when Anna Pavlovna called him away on the

pretext that her aunt wished to hear him.



"You know her husband, of course?" said Anna Pavlovna, closing her

eyes and indicating Helene with a sorrowful gesture. "Ah, she is

such an unfortunate and charming woman! Don't mention him before

her--please don't! It is too painful for her!"









CHAPTER VII





When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the others Prince Hippolyte

had the ear of the company.



Bending forward in his armchair he said: "Le Roi de Prusse!" and

having said this laughed. Everyone turned toward him.



"Le Roi de Prusse?" Hippolyte said interrogatively, again

laughing, and then calmly and seriously sat back in his chair. Anna

Pavlovna waited for him to go on, but as he seemed quite decided to

say no more she began to tell of how at Potsdam the impious

Bonaparte had stolen the sword of Frederick the Great.



"It is the sword of Frederick the Great which I..." she began, but

Hippolyte interrupted her with the words: "Le Roi de Prusse..." and

again, as soon as all turned toward him, excused himself and

said no more.



Anna Pavlovna frowned. Mortemart, Hippolyte's friend, addressed

him firmly.



"Come now, what about your Roi de Prusse?"



Hippolyte laughed as if ashamed of laughing.



"Oh, it's nothing. I only wished to say..." (he wanted to repeat a

joke he had heard in Vienna and which he had been trying all that

evening to get in) "I only wished to say that we are wrong to fight

pour le Roi de Prusse!"



Boris smiled circumspectly, so that it might be taken as ironical or

appreciative according to the way the joke was received. Everybody

laughed.



"Your joke is too bad, it's witty but unjust," said Anna Pavlovna,

shaking her little shriveled finger at him.

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"We are not fighting pour le Roi de Prusse, but for right

principles. Oh, that wicked Prince Hippolyte!" she said.



The conversation did not flag all evening and turned chiefly on

the political news. It became particularly animated toward the end

of the evening when the rewards bestowed by the Emperor were

mentioned.



"You know N--N--received a snuffbox with the portrait last year?"

said "the man of profound intellect." "Why shouldn't S--S--get the

same distinction?"



"Pardon me! A snuffbox with the Emperor's portrait is a reward but

not a distinction," said the diplomatist--"a gift, rather."



"There are precedents, I may mention Schwarzenberg."



"It's impossible," replied another.



"Will you bet? The ribbon of the order is a different matter...."



When everybody rose to go, Helene who had spoken very little all the

evening again turned to Boris, asking him in a tone of caressing

significant command to come to her on Tuesday.



"It is of great importance to me," she said, turning with a smile

toward Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the same sad smile

with which she spoke of her exalted patroness, supported Helene's

wish.



It seemed as if from some words Boris had spoken that evening

about the Prussian army, Helene had suddenly found it necessary to see

him. She seemed to promise to explain that necessity to him when he

came on Tuesday.



But on Tuesday evening, having come to Helene's splendid salon,

Boris received no clear explanation of why it had been necessary for

him to come. There were other guests and the countess talked little to

him, and only as he kissed her hand on taking leave said

unexpectedly and in a whisper, with a strangely unsmiling face:

"Come to dinner tomorrow... in the evening. You must come.... Come!"



During that stay in Petersburg, Boris became an intimate in the

countess' house.









CHAPTER VIII





The war was flaming up and nearing the Russian frontier.

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Everywhere one heard curses on Bonaparte, "the enemy of mankind."

Militiamen and recruits were being enrolled in the villages, and

from the seat of war came contradictory news, false as usual and

therefore variously interpreted. The life of old Prince Bolkonski,

Prince Andrew, and Princess Mary had greatly changed since 1805.



In 1806 the old prince was made one of the eight commanders in chief

then appointed to supervise the enrollment decreed throughout

Russia. Despite the weakness of age, which had become particularly

noticeable since the time when he thought his son had been killed,

he did not think it right to refuse a duty to which he had been

appointed by the Emperor himself, and this fresh opportunity for

action gave him new energy and strength. He was continually

traveling through the three provinces entrusted to him, was pedantic

in the fulfillment of his duties, severe to cruelty with his

subordinates, and went into everything down to the minutest details

himself. Princess Mary had ceased taking lessons in mathematics from

her father, and when the old prince was at home went to his study with

the wet nurse and little Prince Nicholas (as his grandfather called

him). The baby Prince Nicholas lived with his wet nurse and nurse

Savishna in the late princess' rooms and Princess Mary spent most of

the day in the nursery, taking a mother's place to her little nephew

as best she could. Mademoiselle Bourienne, too, seemed passionately

fond of the boy, and Princess Mary often deprived herself to give

her friend the pleasure of dandling the little angel--as she called

her nephew--and playing with him.



Near the altar of the church at Bald Hills there was a chapel over

the tomb of the little princess, and in this chapel was a marble

monument brought from Italy, representing an angel with outspread

wings ready to fly upwards. The angel's upper lip was slightly

raised as though about to smile, and once on coming out of the

chapel Prince Andrew and Princess Mary admitted to one another that

the angel's face reminded them strangely of the little princess. But

what was still stranger, though of this Prince Andrew said nothing

to his sister, was that in the expression the sculptor had happened to

give the angel's face, Prince Andrew read the same mild reproach he

had read on the face of his dead wife: "Ah, why have you done this

to me?"



Soon after Prince Andrew's return the old prince made over to him

a large estate, Bogucharovo, about twenty-five miles from Bald

Hills. Partly because of the depressing memories associated with

Bald Hills, partly because Prince Andrew did not always feel equal

to bearing with his father's peculiarities, and partly because he

needed solitude, Prince Andrew made use of Bogucharovo, began building

and spent most of his time there.



After the Austerlitz campaign Prince Andrew had firmly resolved

not to continue his military service, and when the war recommenced and

everybody had to serve, he took a post under his father in the

recruitment so as to avoid active service. The old prince and his

son seemed to have changed roles since the campaign of 1805. The old

man, roused by activity, expected the best results from the new

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campaign, while Prince Andrew on the contrary, taking no part in the

war and secretly regretting this, saw only the dark side.



On February 26, 1807, the old prince set off on one of his circuits.

Prince Andrew remained at Bald Hills as usual during his father's

absence. Little Nicholas had been unwell for four days. The coachman

who had driven the old prince to town returned bringing papers and

letters for Prince Andrew.



Not finding the young prince in his study the valet went with the

letters to Princess Mary's apartments, but did not find him there.

He was told that the prince had gone to the nursery.



"If you please, your excellency, Petrusha has brought some

papers," said one of the nursemaids to Prince Andrew who was sitting

on a child's little chair while, frowning and with trembling hands, he

poured drops from a medicine bottle into a wineglass half full of

water.



"What is it?" he said crossly, and, his hand shaking

unintentionally, he poured too many drops into the glass. He threw the

mixture onto the floor and asked for some more water. The maid brought

it.



There were in the room a child's cot, two boxes, two armchairs, a

table, a child's table, and the little chair on which Prince Andrew

was sitting. The curtains were drawn, and a single candle was

burning on the table, screened by a bound music book so that the light

did not fall on the cot.



"My dear," said Princess Mary, addressing her brother from beside

the cot where she was standing, "better wait a bit... later..."



"Oh, leave off, you always talk nonsense and keep putting things

off--and this is what comes of it!" said Prince Andrew in an

exasperated whisper, evidently meaning to wound his sister.



"My dear, really... it's better not to wake him... he's asleep,"

said the princess in a tone of entreaty.



Prince Andrew got up and went on tiptoe up to the little bed,

wineglass in hand.



"Perhaps we'd really better not wake him," he said hesitating.



"As you please... really... I think so... but as you please," said

Princess Mary, evidently intimidated and confused that her opinion had

prevailed. She drew her brother's attention to the maid who was

calling him in a whisper.



It was the second night that neither of them had slept, watching the

boy who was in a high fever. These last days, mistrusting their

household doctor and expecting another for whom they had sent to town,

they had been trying first one remedy and then another. Worn out by

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sleeplessness and anxiety they threw their burden of sorrow on one

another and reproached and disputed with each other.



"Petrusha has come with papers from your father," whispered the

maid.



Prince Andrew went out.



"Devil take them!" he muttered, and after listening to the verbal

instructions his father had sent and taking the correspondence and his

father's letter, he returned to the nursery.



"Well?" he asked.



"Still the same. Wait, for heaven's sake. Karl Ivanich always says

that sleep is more important than anything," whispered Princess Mary

with a sigh.



Prince Andrew went up to the child and felt him. He was burning hot.



"Confound you and your Karl Ivanich!" He took the glass with the

drops and again went up to the cot.



"Andrew, don't!" said Princess Mary.



But he scowled at her angrily though also with suffering in his

eyes, and stooped glass in hand over the infant.



"But I wish it," he said. "I beg you--give it him!"



Princess Mary shrugged her shoulders but took the glass submissively

and calling the nurse began giving the medicine. The child screamed

hoarsely. Prince Andrew winced and, clutching his head, went out and

sat down on a sofa in the next room.



He still had all the letters in his hand. Opening them

mechanically he began reading. The old prince, now and then using

abbreviations, wrote in his large elongated hand on blue paper as

follows:





Have just this moment received by special messenger very joyful

news--if it's not false. Bennigsen seems to have obtained a complete

victory over Buonaparte at Eylau. In Petersburg everyone is rejoicing,

and the rewards sent to the army are innumerable. Though he is a

German--I congratulate him! I can't make out what the commander at

Korchevo--a certain Khandrikov--is up to; till now the additional

men and provisions have not arrived. Gallop off to him at once and say

I'll have his head off if everything is not here in a week. Have

received another letter about the Preussisch-Eylau battle from

Petenka--he took part in it--and it's all true. When mischief-makers

don't meddle even a German beats Buonaparte. He is said to be

fleeing in great disorder. Mind you gallop off to Korchevo without

delay and carry out instructions!

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Prince Andrew sighed and broke the seal of another envelope. It

was a closely written letter of two sheets from Bilibin. He folded

it up without reading it and reread his father's letter, ending with

the words: "Gallop off to Korchevo and carry out instructions!"



"No, pardon me, I won't go now till the child is better," thought

he, going to the door and looking into the nursery.



Princess Mary was still standing by the cot, gently rocking the

baby.



"Ah yes, and what else did he say that's unpleasant?" thought Prince

Andrew, recalling his father's letter. "Yes, we have gained a

victory over Bonaparte, just when I'm not serving. Yes, yes, he's

always poking fun at me.... Ah, well! Let him!" And he began reading

Bilibin's letter which was written in French. He read without

understanding half of it, read only to forget, if but for a moment,

what he had too long been thinking of so painfully to the exclusion of

all else.









CHAPTER IX





Bilibin was now at army headquarters in a diplomatic capacity, and

though he wrote in French and used French jests and French idioms,

he described the whole campaign with a fearless self-censure and

self-derision genuinely Russian. Bilibin wrote that the obligation

of diplomatic discretion tormented him, and he was happy to have in

Prince Andrew a reliable correspondent to whom he could pour out the

bile he had accumulated at the sight of all that was being done in the

army. The letter was old, having been written before the battle at

Preussisch-Eylau.



"Since the day of our brilliant success at Austerlitz," wrote

Bilibin, "as you know, my dear prince, I never leave headquarters. I

have certainly acquired a taste for war, and it is just as well for

me; what I have seen during these last three months is incredible.



"I begin ab ovo. 'The enemy of the human race,' as you know, attacks

the Prussians. The Prussians are our faithful allies who have only

betrayed us three times in three years. We take up their cause, but it

turns out that 'the enemy of the human race' pays no heed to our

fine speeches and in his rude and savage way throws himself on the

Prussians without giving them time to finish the parade they had

begun, and in two twists of the hand he breaks them to smithereens and

installs himself in the palace at Potsdam.



"'I most ardently desire,' writes the King of Prussia to

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Bonaparte, 'that Your Majesty should be received and treated in my

palace in a manner agreeable to yourself, and in so far as

circumstances allowed, I have hastened to take all steps to that

end. May I have succeeded!' The Prussian generals pride themselves

on being polite to the French and lay down their arms at the first

demand.



"The head of the garrison at Glogau, with ten thousand men, asks the

King of Prussia what he is to do if he is summoned to surrender....

All this is absolutely true.



"In short, hoping to settle matters by taking up a warlike attitude,

it turns out that we have landed ourselves in war, and what is more,

in war on our own frontiers, with and for the King of Prussia. We have

everything in perfect order, only one little thing is lacking, namely,

a commander in chief. As it was considered that the Austerlitz success

might have been more decisive had the commander in chief not been so

young, all our octogenarians were reviewed, and of Prozorovski and

Kamenski the latter was preferred. The general comes to us,

Suvorov-like, in a kibitka, and is received with acclamations of joy

and triumph.



"On the 4th, the first courier arrives from Petersburg. The mails

are taken to the field marshal's room, for he likes to do everything

himself. I am called in to help sort the letters and take those

meant for us. The field marshal looks on and waits for letters

addressed to him. We search, but none are to be found. The field

marshal grows impatient and sets to work himself and finds letters

from the Emperor to Count T., Prince V., and others. Then he bursts

into one of his wild furies and rages at everyone and everything,

seizes the letters, opens them, and reads those from the Emperor

addressed to others. 'Ah! So that's the way they treat me! No

confidence in me! Ah, ordered to keep an eye on me! Very well then!

Get along with you!' So he writes the famous order of the day to

General Bennigsen:



'I am wounded and cannot ride and consequently cannot command the

army. You have brought your army corps to Pultusk, routed: here it

is exposed, and without fuel or forage, so something must be done,

and, as you yourself reported to Count Buxhowden yesterday, you must

think of retreating to our frontier--which do today.'



"'From all my riding,' he writes to the Emperor, 'I have got a

saddle sore which, coming after all my previous journeys, quite

prevents my riding and commanding so vast an army, so I have passed on

the command to the general next in seniority, Count Buxhowden,

having sent him my whole staff and all that belongs to it, advising

him if there is a lack of bread, to move farther into the interior

of Prussia, for only one day's ration of bread remains, and in some

regiments none at all, as reported by the division commanders,

Ostermann and Sedmoretzki, and all that the peasants had has been

eaten up. I myself will remain in hospital at Ostrolenka till I

recover. In regard to which I humbly submit my report, with the

information that if the army remains in its present bivouac another

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fortnight there will not be a healthy man left in it by spring.



"'Grant leave to retire to his country seat to an old man who is

already in any case dishonored by being unable to fulfill the great

and glorious task for which he was chosen. I shall await your most

gracious permission here in hospital, that I may not have to play

the part of a secretary rather than commander in the army. My

removal from the army does not produce the slightest stir--a blind man

has left it. There are thousands such as I in Russia.'



"The field marshal is angry with the Emperor and he punishes us all,

isn't it logical?



"This is the first act. Those that follow are naturally increasingly

interesting and entertaining. After the field marshal's departure it

appears that we are within sight of the enemy and must give battle.

Buxhowden is commander in chief by seniority, but General Bennigsen

does not quite see it; more particularly as it is he and his corps who

are within sight of the enemy and he wishes to profit by the

opportunity to fight a battle 'on his own hand' as the Germans say. He

does so. This is the battle of Pultusk, which is considered a great

victory but in my opinion was nothing of the kind. We civilians, as

you know, have a very bad way of deciding whether a battle was won

or lost. Those who retreat after a battle have lost it is what we say;

and according to that it is we who lost the battle of Pultusk. In

short, we retreat after the battle but send a courier to Petersburg

with news of a victory, and General Bennigsen, hoping to receive

from Petersburg the post of commander in chief as a reward for his

victory, does not give up the command of the army to General

Buxhowden. During this interregnum we begin a very original and

interesting series of maneuvers. Our aim is no longer, as it should

be, to avoid or attack the enemy, but solely to avoid General

Buxhowden who by right of seniority should be our chief. So

energetically do we pursue this aim that after crossing an

unfordable river we burn the bridges to separate ourselves from our

enemy, who at the moment is not Bonaparte but Buxhowden. General

Buxhowden was all but attacked and captured by a superior enemy

force as a result of one of these maneuvers that enabled us to

escape him. Buxhowden pursues us--we scuttle. He hardly crosses the

river to our side before we recross to the other. At last our enemy.

Buxhowden, catches us and attacks. Both generals are angry, and the

result is a challenge on Buxhowden's part and an epileptic fit on

Bennigsen's. But at the critical moment the courier who carried the

news of our victory at Pultusk to Petersburg returns bringing our

appointment as commander in chief, and our first foe, Buxhowden, is

vanquished; we can now turn our thoughts to the second, Bonaparte. But

as it turns out, just at that moment a third enemy rises before us-

namely the Orthodox Russian soldiers, loudly demanding bread, meat,

biscuits, fodder, and whatnot! The stores are empty, the roads

impassable. The Orthodox begin looting, and in a way of which our last

campaign can give you no idea. Half the regiments form bands and scour

the countryside and put everything to fire and sword. The

inhabitants are totally ruined, the hospitals overflow with sick,

and famine is everywhere. Twice the marauders even attack our

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headquarters, and the commander in chief has to ask for a battalion to

disperse them. During one of these attacks they carried off my empty

portmanteau and my dressing gown. The Emperor proposes to give all

commanders of divisions the right to shoot marauders, but I much

fear this will oblige one half the army to shoot the other."



At first Prince Andrew read with his eyes only, but after a while,

in spite of himself (although he knew how far it was safe to trust

Bilibin), what he had read began to interest him more and more. When

he had read thus far, he crumpled the letter up and threw it away.

It was not what he had read that vexed him, but the fact that the life

out there in which he had now no part could perturb him. He shut his

eyes, rubbed his forehead as if to rid himself of all interest in what

he had read, and listened to what was passing in the nursery. Suddenly

he thought he heard a strange noise through the door. He was seized

with alarm lest something should have happened to the child while he

was reading the letter. He went on tiptoe to the nursery door and

opened it.



Just as he went in he saw that the nurse was hiding something from

him with a scared look and that Princess Mary was no longer by the

cot.



"My dear," he heard what seemed to him her despairing whisper behind

him.



As often happens after long sleeplessness and long anxiety, he was

seized by an unreasoning panic--it occurred to him that the child

was dead. All that he saw and heard seemed to confirm this terror.



"All is over," he thought, and a cold sweat broke out on his

forehead. He went to the cot in confusion, sure that he would find

it empty and that the nurse had been hiding the dead baby. He drew the

curtain aside and for some time his frightened, restless eyes could

not find the baby. At last he saw him: the rosy boy had tossed about

till he lay across the bed with his head lower than the pillow, and

was smacking his lips in his sleep and breathing evenly.



Prince Andrew was as glad to find the boy like that, as if he had

already lost him. He bent over him and, as his sister had taught

him, tried with his lips whether the child was still feverish. The

soft forehead was moist. Prince Andrew touched the head with his hand;

even the hair was wet, so profusely had the child perspired. He was

not dead, but evidently the crisis was over and he was convalescent.

Prince Andrew longed to snatch up, to squeeze, to hold to his heart,

this helpless little creature, but dared not do so. He stood over him,

gazing at his head and at the little arms and legs which showed

under the blanket. He heard a rustle behind him and a shadow

appeared under the curtain of the cot. He did not look round, but

still gazing at the infant's face listened to his regular breathing.

The dark shadow was Princess Mary, who had come up to the cot with

noiseless steps, lifted the curtain, and dropped it again behind

her. Prince Andrew recognized her without looking and held out his

hand to her. She pressed it.

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"He has perspired," said Prince Andrew.



"I was coming to tell you so."



The child moved slightly in his sleep, smiled, and rubbed his

forehead against the pillow.



Prince Andrew looked at his sister. In the dim shadow of the curtain

her luminous eyes shone more brightly than usual from the tears of joy

that were in them. She leaned over to her brother and kissed him,

slightly catching the curtain of the cot. Each made the other a

warning gesture and stood still in the dim light beneath the curtain

as if not wishing to leave that seclusion where they three were shut

off from all the world. Prince Andrew was the first to move away,

ruffling his hair against the muslin of the curtain.



"Yes, this is the one thing left me now," he said with a sigh.









CHAPTER X





Soon after his admission to the Masonic Brotherhood, Pierre went

to the Kiev province, where he had the greatest number of serfs,

taking with him full directions which he had written down for his

own guidance as to what he should do on his estates.



When he reached Kiev he sent for all his stewards to the head office

and explained to them his intentions and wishes. He told them that

steps would be taken immediately to free his serfs--and that till then

they were not to be overburdened with labor, women while nursing their

babies were not to be sent to work, assistance was to be given to

the serfs, punishments were to be admonitory and not corporal, and

hospitals, asylums, and schools were to be established on all the

estates. Some of the stewards (there were semiliterate foremen among

them) listened with alarm, supposing these words to mean that the

young count was displeased with their management and embezzlement of

money, some after their first fright were amused by Pierre's lisp

and the new words they had not heard before, others simply enjoyed

hearing how the master talked, while the cleverest among them,

including the chief steward, understood from this speech how they

could best handle the master for their own ends.



The chief steward expressed great sympathy with Pierre's intentions,

but remarked that besides these changes it would be necessary to go

into the general state of affairs which was far from satisfactory.



Despite Count Bezukhov's enormous wealth, since he had come into

an income which was said to amount to five hundred thousand rubles a

year, Pierre felt himself far poorer than when his father had made him

an allowance of ten thousand rubles. He had a dim perception of the

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following budget:



About 80,000 went in payments on all the estates to the Land Bank,

about 30,000 went for the upkeep of the estate near Moscow, the town

house, and the allowance to the three princesses; about 15,000 was

given in pensions and the same amount for asylums; 150,000 alimony was

sent to the countess; about 70,00 went for interest on debts. The

building of a new church, previously begun, had cost about 10,000 in

each of the last two years, and he did not know how the rest, about

100,000 rubles, was spent, and almost every year he was obliged to

borrow. Besides this the chief steward wrote every year telling him of

fires and bad harvests, or of the necessity of rebuilding factories

and workshops. So the first task Pierre had to face was one for

which he had very little aptitude or inclination--practical business.



He discussed estate affairs every day with his chief steward. But he

felt that this did not forward matters at all. He felt that these

consultations were detached from real affairs and did not link up with

them or make them move. On the one hand, the chief steward put the

state of things to him in the very worst light, pointing out the

necessity of paying off the debts and undertaking new activities

with serf labor, to which Pierre did not agree. On the other hand,

Pierre demanded that steps should be taken to liberate the serfs,

which the steward met by showing the necessity of first paying off the

loans from the Land Bank, and the consequent impossibility of a speedy

emancipation.



The steward did not say it was quite impossible, but suggested

selling the forests in the province of Kostroma, the land lower down

the river, and the Crimean estate, in order to make it possible: all

of which operations according to him were connected with such

complicated measures--the removal of injunctions, petitions,

permits, and so on--that Pierre became quite bewildered and only

replied:



"Yes, yes, do so."



Pierre had none of the practical persistence that would have enabled

him to attend to the business himself and so he disliked it and only

tried to pretend to the steward that he was attending to it. The

steward for his part tried to pretend to the count that he

considered these consultations very valuable for the proprietor and

troublesome to himself.



In Kiev Pierre found some people he knew, and strangers hastened

to make his acquaintance and joyfully welcomed the rich newcomer,

the largest landowner of the province. Temptations to Pierre's

greatest weakness--the one to which he had confessed when admitted

to the Lodge--were so strong that he could not resist them. Again

whole days, weeks, and months of his life passed in as great a rush

and were as much occupied with evening parties, dinners, lunches,

and balls, giving him no time for reflection, as in Petersburg.

Instead of the new life he had hoped to lead he still lived the old

life, only in new surroundings.

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Of the three precepts of Freemasonry Pierre realized that he did not

fulfill the one which enjoined every Mason to set an example of

moral life, and that of the seven virtues he lacked two--morality

and the love of death. He consoled himself with the thought that he

fulfilled another of the precepts--that of reforming the human race-

and had other virtues--love of his neighbor, and especially

generosity.



In the spring of 1807 he decided to return to Petersburg. On the way

he intended to visit all his estates and see for himself how far his

orders had been carried out and in what state were the serfs whom

God had entrusted to his care and whom he intended to benefit.



The chief steward, who considered the young count's attempts

almost insane--unprofitable to himself, to the count, and to the

serfs--made some concessions. Continuing to represent the liberation

of the serfs as impracticable, he arranged for the erection of large

buildings--schools, hospitals, and asylums--on all the estates

before the master arrived. Everywhere preparations were made not for

ceremonious welcomes (which he knew Pierre would not like), but for

just such gratefully religious ones, with offerings of icons and the

bread and salt of hospitality, as, according to his understanding of

his master, would touch and delude him.



The southern spring, the comfortable rapid traveling in a Vienna

carriage, and the solitude of the road, all had a gladdening effect on

Pierre. The estates he had not before visited were each more

picturesque than the other; the serfs everywhere seemed thriving and

touchingly grateful for the benefits conferred on them. Everywhere

were receptions, which though they embarrassed Pierre awakened a

joyful feeling in the depth of his heart. In one place the peasants

presented him with bread and salt and an icon of Saint Peter and Saint

Paul, asking permission, as a mark of their gratitude for the benefits

he had conferred on them, to build a new chantry to the church at

their own expense in honor of Peter and Paul, his patron saints. In

another place the women with infants in arms met him to thank him

for releasing them from hard work. On a third estate the priest,

bearing a cross, came to meet him surrounded by children whom, by

the count's generosity, he was instructing in reading, writing, and

religion. On all his estates Pierre saw with his own eyes brick

buildings erected or in course of erection, all on one plan, for

hospitals, schools, and almshouses, which were soon to be opened.

Everywhere he saw the stewards' accounts, according to which the

serfs' manorial labor had been diminished, and heard the touching

thanks of deputations of serfs in their full-skirted blue coats.



What Pierre did not know was that the place where they presented him

with bread and salt and wished to build a chantry in honor of Peter

and Paul was a market village where a fair was held on St. Peter's

day, and that the richest peasants (who formed the deputation) had

begun the chantry long before, but that nine tenths of the peasants in

that villages were in a state of the greatest poverty. He did not know

that since the nursing mothers were no longer sent to work on his

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land, they did still harder work on their own land. He did not know

that the priest who met him with the cross oppressed the peasants by

his exactions, and that the pupils' parents wept at having to let

him take their children and secured their release by heavy payments.

He did not know that the brick buildings, built to plan, were being

built by serfs whose manorial labor was thus increased, though

lessened on paper. He did not know that where the steward had shown

him in the accounts that the serfs' payments had been diminished by

a third, their obligatory manorial work had been increased by a

half. And so Pierre was delighted with his visit to his estates and

quite recovered the philanthropic mood in which he had left

Petersburg, and wrote enthusiastic letters to his "brother-instructor"

as he called the Grand Master.



"How easy it is, how little effort it needs, to do so much good,"

thought Pierre, "and how little attention we pay to it!"



He was pleased at the gratitude he received, but felt abashed at

receiving it. This gratitude reminded him of how much more he might do

for these simple, kindly people.



The chief steward, a very stupid but cunning man who saw perfectly

through the naive and intelligent count and played with him as with

a toy, seeing the effect these prearranged receptions had on Pierre,

pressed him still harder with proofs of the impossibility and above

all the uselessness of freeing the serfs, who were quite happy as it

was.



Pierre in his secret soul agreed with the steward that it would be

difficult to imagine happier people, and that God only knew what would

happen to them when they were free, but he insisted, though

reluctantly, on what he thought right. The steward promised to do

all in his power to carry out the count's wishes, seeing clearly

that not only would the count never be able to find out whether all

measures had been taken for the sale of the land and forests and to

release them from the Land Bank, but would probably never even inquire

and would never know that the newly erected buildings were standing

empty and that the serfs continued to give in money and work all

that other people's serfs gave--that is to say, all that could be

got out of them.









CHAPTER XI





Returning from his journey through South Russia in the happiest

state of mind, Pierre carried out an intention he had long had of

visiting his friend Bolkonski, whom he had not seen for two years.



Bogucharovo lay in a flat uninteresting part of the country among

fields and forests of fir and birch, which were partly cut down. The

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house lay behind a newly dug pond filled with water to the brink and

with banks still bare of grass. It was at the end of a village that

stretched along the highroad in the midst of a young copse in which

were a few fir trees.



The homestead consisted of a threshing floor, outhouses, stables,

a bathhouse, a lodge, and a large brick house with semicircular facade

still in course of construction. Round the house was a garden newly

laid out. The fences and gates were new and solid; two fire pumps

and a water cart, painted green, stood in a shed; the paths were

straight, the bridges were strong and had handrails. Everything bore

an impress of tidiness and good management. Some domestic serfs Pierre

met, in reply to inquiries as to where the prince lived, pointed out a

small newly built lodge close to the pond. Anton, a man who had looked

after Prince Andrew in his boyhood, helped Pierre out of his carriage,

said that the prince was at home, and showed him into a clean little

anteroom.



Pierre was struck by the modesty of the small though clean house

after the brilliant surroundings in which he had last met his friend

in Petersburg.



He quickly entered the small reception room with its

still-unplastered wooden walls redolent of pine, and would have gone

farther, but Anton ran ahead on tiptoe and knocked at a door.



"Well, what is it?" came a sharp, unpleasant voice.



"A visitor," answered Anton.



"Ask him to wait," and the sound was heard of a chair being pushed

back.



Pierre went with rapid steps to the door and suddenly came face to

face with Prince Andrew, who came out frowning and looking old. Pierre

embraced him and lifting his spectacles kissed his friend on the cheek

and looked at him closely.



"Well, I did not expect you, I am very glad," said Prince Andrew.



Pierre said nothing; he looked fixedly at his friend with

surprise. He was struck by the change in him. His words were kindly

and there was a smile on his lips and face, but his eyes were dull and

lifeless and in spite of his evident wish to do so he could not give

them a joyous and glad sparkle. Prince Andrew had grown thinner,

paler, and more manly-looking, but what amazed and estranged Pierre

till he got used to it were his inertia and a wrinkle on his brow

indicating prolonged concentration on some one thought.



As is usually the case with people meeting after a prolonged

separation, it was long before their conversation could settle on

anything. They put questions and gave brief replies about things

they knew ought to be talked over at length. At last the

conversation gradually settled on some of the topics at first

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lightly touched on: their past life, plans for the future, Pierre's

journeys and occupations, the war, and so on. The preoccupation and

despondency which Pierre had noticed in his friend's look was now

still more clearly expressed in the smile with which he listened to

Pierre, especially when he spoke with joyful animation of the past

or the future. It was as if Prince Andrew would have liked to

sympathize with what Pierre was saying, but could not. The latter

began to feel that it was in bad taste to speak of his enthusiasms,

dreams, and hopes of happiness or goodness, in Prince Andrew's

presence. He was ashamed to express his new Masonic views, which had

been particularly revived and strengthened by his late tour. He

checked himself, fearing to seem naive, yet he felt an irresistible

desire to show his friend as soon as possible that he was now a

quite different, and better, Pierre than he had been in Petersburg.



"I can't tell you how much I have lived through since then. I hardly

know myself again."



"Yes, we have altered much, very much, since then," said Prince

Andrew.



"Well, and you? What are your plans?"



"Plans!" repeated Prince Andrew ironically. "My plans?" he said,

as if astonished at the word. "Well, you see, I'm building. I mean

to settle here altogether next year...."



Pierre looked silently and searchingly into Prince Andrew's face,

which had grown much older.



"No, I meant to ask..." Pierre began, but Prince Andrew

interrupted him.



"But why talk of me?... Talk to me, yes, tell me about your

travels and all you have been doing on your estates."



Pierre began describing what he had done on his estates, trying as

far as possible to conceal his own part in the improvements that had

been made. Prince Andrew several times prompted Pierre's story of what

he had been doing, as though it were all an old-time story, and he

listened not only without interest but even as if ashamed of what

Pierre was telling him.



Pierre felt uncomfortable and even depressed in his friend's company

and at last became silent.



"I'll tell you what, my dear fellow," said Prince Andrew, who

evidently also felt depressed and constrained with his visitor, "I

am only bivouacking here and have just come to look round. I am

going back to my sister today. I will introduce you to her. But of

course you know her already," he said, evidently trying to entertain a

visitor with whom he now found nothing in common. "We will go after

dinner. And would you now like to look round my place?"



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They went out and walked about till dinnertime, talking of the

political news and common acquaintances like people who do not know

each other intimately. Prince Andrew spoke with some animation and

interest only of the new homestead he was constructing and its

buildings, but even here, while on the scaffolding, in the midst of

a talk explaining the future arrangements of the house, he interrupted

himself:



"However, this is not at all interesting. Let us have dinner, and

then we'll set off."



At dinner, conversation turned on Pierre's marriage.



"I was very much surprised when I heard of it," said Prince Andrew.



Pierre blushed, as he always did when it was mentioned, and said

hurriedly: "I will tell you some time how it all happened. But you

know it is all over, and forever."



"Forever?" said Prince Andrew. "Nothing's forever."



"But you know how it all ended, don't you? You heard of the duel?"



"And so you had to go through that too!"



"One thing I thank God for is that I did not kill that man," said

Pierre.



"Why so?" asked Prince Andrew. "To kill a vicious dog is a very good

thing really."



"No, to kill a man is bad--wrong."



"Why is it wrong?" urged Prince Andrew. "It is not given to man to

know what is right and what is wrong. Men always did and always will

err, and in nothing more than in what they consider right and wrong."



"What does harm to another is wrong," said Pierre, feeling with

pleasure that for the first time since his arrival Prince Andrew was

roused, had begun to talk, and wanted to express what had brought

him to his present state.



"And who has told you what is bad for another man?" he asked.



"Bad! Bad!" exclaimed Pierre. "We all know what is bad for

ourselves."



"Yes, we know that, but the harm I am conscious of in myself is

something I cannot inflict on others," said Prince Andrew, growing

more and more animated and evidently wishing to express his new

outlook to Pierre. He spoke in French. "I only know two very real

evils in life: remorse and illness. The only good is the absence of

those evils. To live for myself avoiding those two evils is my whole

philosophy now."

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"And love of one's neighbor, and self-sacrifice?" began Pierre. "No,

I can't agree with you! To live only so as not to do evil and not to

have to repent is not enough. I lived like that, I lived for myself

and ruined my life. And only now when I am living, or at least trying"

(Pierre's modesty made him correct himself) "to live for others,

only now have I understood all the happiness of life. No, I shall

not agree with you, and you do not really believe what you are

saying." Prince Andrew looked silently at Pierre with an ironic smile.



"When you see my sister, Princess Mary, you'll get on with her,"

he said. "Perhaps you are right for yourself," he added after a

short pause, "but everyone lives in his own way. You lived for

yourself and say you nearly ruined your life and only found

happiness when you began living for others. I experienced just the

reverse. I lived for glory.--And after all what is glory? The same

love of others, a desire to do something for them, a desire for

their approval.--So I lived for others, and not almost, but quite,

ruined my life. And I have become calmer since I began to live only

for myself."



"But what do you mean by living only for yourself?" asked Pierre,

growing excited. "What about your son, your sister, and your father?"



"But that's just the same as myself--they are not others," explained

Prince Andrew. "The others, one's neighbors, le prochain, as you and

Princess Mary call it, are the chief source of all error and evil.

Le prochain--your Kiev peasants to whom you want to do good."



And he looked at Pierre with a mocking, challenging expression. He

evidently wished to draw him on.



"You are joking," replied Pierre, growing more and more excited.

"What error or evil can there be in my wishing to do good, and even

doing a little--though I did very little and did it very badly? What

evil can there be in it if unfortunate people, our serfs, people

like ourselves, were growing up and dying with no idea of God and

truth beyond ceremonies and meaningless prayers and are now instructed

in a comforting belief in future life, retribution, recompense, and

consolation? What evil and error are there in it, if people were dying

of disease without help while material assistance could so easily be

rendered, and I supplied them with a doctor, a hospital, and an asylum

for the aged? And is it not a palpable, unquestionable good if a

peasant, or a woman with a baby, has no rest day or night and I give

them rest and leisure?" said Pierre, hurrying and lisping. "And I have

done that though badly and to a small extent; but I have done

something toward it and you cannot persuade me that it was not a

good action, and more than that, you can't make me believe that you do

not think so yourself. And the main thing is," he continued, "that I

know, and know for certain, that the enjoyment of doing this good is

the only sure happiness in life."



"Yes, if you put it like that it's quite a different matter," said

Prince Andrew. "I build a house and lay out a garden, and you build

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hospitals. The one and the other may serve as a pastime. But what's

right and what's good must be judged by one who knows all, but not

by us. Well, you want an argument," he added, "come on then."



They rose from the table and sat down in the entrance porch which

served as a veranda.



"Come, let's argue then," said Prince Andrew, "You talk of schools,"

he went on, crooking a finger, "education and so forth; that is, you

want to raise him" (pointing to a peasant who passed by them taking

off his cap) "from his animal condition and awaken in him spiritual

needs, while it seems to me that animal happiness is the only

happiness possible, and that is just what you want to deprive him

of. I envy him, but you want to make him what I am, without giving him

my means. Then you say, 'lighten his toil.' But as I see it,

physical labor is as essential to him, as much a condition of his

existence, as mental activity is to you or me. You can't help

thinking. I go to bed after two in the morning, thoughts come and I

can't sleep but toss about till dawn, because I think and can't help

thinking, just as he can't help plowing and mowing; if he didn't, he

would go to the drink shop or fall ill. Just as I could not stand

his terrible physical labor but should die of it in a week, so he

could not stand my physical idleness, but would grow fat and die.

The third thing--what else was it you talked about?" and Prince Andrew

crooked a third finger. "Ah, yes, hospitals, medicine. He has a fit,

he is dying, and you come and bleed him and patch him up. He will drag

about as a cripple, a burden to everybody, for another ten years. It

would be far easier and simpler for him to die. Others are being

born and there are plenty of them as it is. It would be different if

you grudged losing a laborer--that's how I regard him--but you want to

cure him from love of him. And he does not want that. And besides,

what a notion that medicine ever cured anyone! Killed them, yes!" said

he, frowning angrily and turning away from Pierre.



Prince Andrew expressed his ideas so clearly and distinctly that

it was evident he had reflected on this subject more than once, and he

spoke readily and rapidly like a man who has not talked for a long

time. His glance became more animated as his conclusions became more

hopeless.



"Oh, that is dreadful, dreadful!" said Pierre. "I don't understand

how one can live with such ideas. I had such moments myself not long

ago, in Moscow and when traveling, but at such times I collapsed so

that I don't live at all--everything seems hateful to me... myself

most of all. Then I don't eat, don't wash... and how is it with

you?..."



"Why not wash? That is not cleanly," said Prince Andrew; "on the

contrary one must try to make one's life as pleasant as possible.

I'm alive, that is not my fault, so I must live out my life as best

I can without hurting others."



"But with such ideas what motive have you for living? One would

sit without moving, undertaking nothing...."

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"Life as it is leaves one no peace. I should be thankful to do

nothing, but here on the one hand the local nobility have done me

the honor to choose me to be their marshal; it was all I could do to

get out of it. They could not understand that I have not the necessary

qualifications for it--the kind of good-natured, fussy shallowness

necessary for the position. Then there's this house, which must be

built in order to have a nook of one's own in which to be quiet. And

now there's this recruiting."



"Why aren't you serving in the army?"



"After Austerlitz!" said Prince Andrew gloomily. "No, thank you very

much! I have promised myself not to serve again in the active

Russian army. And I won't--not even if Bonaparte were here at Smolensk

threatening Bald Hills--even then I wouldn't serve in the Russian

army! Well, as I was saying," he continued, recovering his

composure, "now there's this recruiting. My father is chief in command

of the Third District, and my only way of avoiding active service is

to serve under him."



"Then you are serving?"



"I am."



He paused a little while.



"And why do you serve?"



"Why, for this reason! My father is one of the most remarkable men

of his time. But he is growing old, and though not exactly cruel he

has too energetic a character. He is so accustomed to unlimited

power that he is terrible, and now he has this authority of a

commander in chief of the recruiting, granted by the Emperor. If I had

been two hours late a fortnight ago he would have had a paymaster's

clerk at Yukhnovna hanged," said Prince Andrew with a smile. "So I

am serving because I alone have any influence with my father, and

now and then can save him from actions which would torment him

afterwards."



"Well, there you see!"



"Yes, but it is not as you imagine," Prince Andrew continued. "I did

not, and do not, in the least care about that scoundrel of a clerk who

had stolen some boots from the recruits; I should even have been

very glad to see him hanged, but I was sorry for my father--that again

is for myself."



Prince Andrew grew more and more animated. His eyes glittered

feverishly while he tried to prove to Pierre that in his actions there

was no desire to do good to his neighbor.



"There now, you wish to liberate your serfs," he continued; "that is

a very good thing, but not for you--I don't suppose you ever had

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anyone flogged or sent to Siberia--and still less for your serfs. If

they are beaten, flogged, or sent to Siberia, I don't suppose they are

any the worse off. In Siberia they lead the same animal life, and

the stripes on their bodies heal, and they are happy as before. But it

is a good thing for proprietors who perish morally, bring remorse upon

themselves, stifle this remorse and grow callous, as a result of being

able to inflict punishments justly and unjustly. It is those people

I pity, and for their sake I should like to liberate the serfs. You

may not have seen, but I have seen, how good men brought up in those

traditions of unlimited power, in time when they grow more

irritable, become cruel and harsh, are conscious of it, but cannot

restrain themselves and grow more and more miserable."



Prince Andrew spoke so earnestly that Pierre could not help thinking

that these thoughts had been suggested to Prince Andrew by his

father's case.



He did not reply.



"So that's what I'm sorry for--human dignity, peace of mind, purity,

and not the serfs' backs and foreheads, which, beat and shave as you

may, always remain the same backs and foreheads."



"No, no! A thousand times no! I shall never agree with you," said

Pierre.









CHAPTER XII





In the evening Andrew and Pierre got into the open carriage and

drove to Bald Hills. Prince Andrew, glancing at Pierre, broke the

silence now and then with remarks which showed that he was in a good

temper.



Pointing to the fields, he spoke of the improvements he was making

in his husbandry.



Pierre remained gloomily silent, answering in monosyllables and

apparently immersed in his own thoughts.



He was thinking that Prince Andrew was unhappy, had gone astray, did

not see the true light, and that he, Pierre, ought to aid,

enlighten, and raise him. But as soon as he thought of what he

should say, he felt that Prince Andrew with one word, one argument,

would upset all his teaching, and he shrank from beginning, afraid

of exposing to possible ridicule what to him was precious and sacred.



"No, but why do you think so?" Pierre suddenly began, lowering his

head and looking like a bull about to charge, "why do you think so?

You should not think so."

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"Think? What about?" asked Prince Andrew with surprise.



"About life, about man's destiny. It can't be so. I myself thought

like that, and do you know what saved me? Freemasonry! No, don't

smile. Freemasonry is not a religious ceremonial sect, as I thought it

was: Freemasonry is the best expression of the best, the eternal,

aspects of humanity."



And he began to explain Freemasonry as he understood it to Prince

Andrew. He said that Freemasonry is the teaching of Christianity freed

from the bonds of State and Church, a teaching of equality,

brotherhood, and love.



"Only our holy brotherhood has the real meaning of life, all the

rest is a dream," said Pierre. "Understand, my dear fellow, that

outside this union all is filled with deceit and falsehood and I agree

with you that nothing is left for an intelligent and good man but to

live out his life, like you, merely trying not to harm others. But

make our fundamental convictions your own, join our brotherhood,

give yourself up to us, let yourself be guided, and you will at once

feel yourself, as I have felt myself, a part of that vast invisible

chain the beginning of which is hidden in heaven," said Pierre.



Prince Andrew, looking straight in front of him, listened in silence

to Pierre's words. More than once, when the noise of the wheels

prevented his catching what Pierre said, he asked him to repeat it,

and by the peculiar glow that came into Prince Andrew's eyes and by

his silence, Pierre saw that his words were not in vain and that

Prince Andrew would not interrupt him or laugh at what he said.



They reached a river that had overflowed its banks and which they

had to cross by ferry. While the carriage and horses were being placed

on it, they also stepped on the raft.



Prince Andrew, leaning his arms on the raft railing, gazed

silently at the flooding waters glittering in the setting sun.



"Well, what do you think about it?" Pierre asked. "Why are you

silent?"



"What do I think about it? I am listening to you. It's all very

well.... You say: join our brotherhood and we will show you the aim of

life, the destiny of man, and the laws which govern the world. But who

are we? Men. How is it you know everything? Why do I alone not see

what you see? You see a reign of goodness and truth on earth, but I

don't see it."



Pierre interrupted him.



"Do you believe in a future life?" he asked.



"A future life?" Prince Andrew repeated, but Pierre, giving him no

time to reply, took the repetition for a denial, the more readily as

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he knew Prince Andrew's former atheistic convictions.



"You say you can't see a reign of goodness and truth on earth. Nor

could I, and it cannot be seen if one looks on our life here as the

end of everything. On earth, here on this earth" (Pierre pointed to

the fields), "there is no truth, all is false and evil; but in the

universe, in the whole universe there is a kingdom of truth, and we

who are now the children of earth are--eternally--children of the

whole universe. Don't I feel in my soul that I am part of this vast

harmonious whole? Don't I feel that I form one link, one step, between

the lower and higher beings, in this vast harmonious multitude of

beings in whom the Deity--the Supreme Power if you prefer the term--is

manifest? If I see, clearly see, that ladder leading from plant to

man, why should I suppose it breaks off at me and does not go

farther and farther? I feel that I cannot vanish, since nothing

vanishes in this world, but that I shall always exist and always

have existed. I feel that beyond me and above me there are spirits,

and that in this world there is truth."



"Yes, that is Herder's theory," said Prince Andrew, "but it is not

that which can convince me, dear friend--life and death are what

convince. What convinces is when one sees a being dear to one, bound

up with one's own life, before whom one was to blame and had hoped

to make it right" (Prince Andrew's voice trembled and he turned away),

"and suddenly that being is seized with pain, suffers, and ceases to

exist.... Why? It cannot be that there is no answer. And I believe

there is.... That's what convinces, that is what has convinced me,"

said Prince Andrew.



"Yes, yes, of course," said Pierre, "isn't that what I'm saying?"



"No. All I say is that it is not argument that convinces me of the

necessity of a future life, but this: when you go hand in hand with

someone and all at once that person vanishes there, into nowhere,

and you yourself are left facing that abyss, and look in. And I have

looked in...."



"Well, that's it then! You know that there is a there and there is a

Someone? There is the future life. The Someone is--God."



Prince Andrew did not reply. The carriage and horses had long

since been taken off, onto the farther bank, and reharnessed. The

sun had sunk half below the horizon and an evening frost was

starring the puddles near the ferry, but Pierre and Andrew, to the

astonishment of the footmen, coachmen, and ferrymen, still stood on

the raft and talked.



"If there is a God and future life, there is truth and good, and

man's highest happiness consists in striving to attain them. We must

live, we must love, and we must believe that we live not only today on

this scrap of earth, but have lived and shall live forever, there,

in the Whole," said Pierre, and he pointed to the sky.



Prince Andrew stood leaning on the railing of the raft listening

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to Pierre, and he gazed with his eyes fixed on the red reflection of

the sun gleaming on the blue waters. There was perfect stillness.

Pierre became silent. The raft had long since stopped and only the

waves of the current beat softly against it below. Prince Andrew

felt as if the sound of the waves kept up a refrain to Pierre's words,

whispering:



"It is true, believe it."



He sighed, and glanced with a radiant, childlike, tender look at

Pierre's face, flushed and rapturous, but yet shy before his

superior friend.



"Yes, if it only were so!" said Prince Andrew. "However, it is

time to get on," he added, and, stepping off the raft, he looked up at

the sky to which Pierre had pointed, and for the first time since

Austerlitz saw that high, everlasting sky he had seen while lying on

that battlefield; and something that had long been slumbering,

something that was best within him, suddenly awoke, joyful and

youthful, in his soul. It vanished as soon as he returned to the

customary conditions of his life, but he knew that this feeling

which he did not know how to develop existed within him. His meeting

with Pierre formed an epoch in Prince Andrew's life. Though

outwardly he continued to live in the same old way, inwardly he

began a new life.









CHAPTER XIII





It was getting dusk when Prince Andrew and Pierre drove up to the

front entrance of the house at Bald Hills. As they approached the

house, Prince Andrew with a smile drew Pierre's attention to a

commotion going on at the back porch. A woman, bent with age, with a

wallet on her back, and a short, long-haired, young man in a black

garment had rushed back to the gate on seeing the carriage driving up.

Two women ran out after them, and all four, looking round at the

carriage, ran in dismay up the steps of the back porch.



"Those are Mary's 'God's folk,'" said Prince Andrew. "They have

mistaken us for my father. This is the one matter in which she

disobeys him. He orders these pilgrims to be driven away, but she

receives them."



"But what are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.



Prince Andrew had no time to answer. The servants came out to meet

them, and he asked where the old prince was and whether he was

expected back soon.



The old prince had gone to the town and was expected back any

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minute.



Prince Andrew led Pierre to his own apartments, which were always

kept in perfect order and readiness for him in his father's house;

he himself went to the nursery.



"Let us go and see my sister," he said to Pierre when he returned.

"I have not found her yet, she is hiding now, sitting with her

'God's folk.' It will serve her right, she will be confused, but you

will see her 'God's folk.' It's really very curious."



"What are 'God's folk'?" asked Pierre.



"Come, and you'll see for yourself."



Princess Mary really was disconcerted and red patches came on her

face when they went in. In her snug room, with lamps burning before

the icon stand, a young lad with a long nose and long hair, wearing

a monk's cassock, sat on the sofa beside her, behind a samovar. Near

them, in an armchair, sat a thin, shriveled, old woman, with a meek

expression on her childlike face.



"Andrew, why didn't you warn me?" said the princess, with mild

reproach, as she stood before her pilgrims like a hen before her

chickens.



"Charmee de vous voir. Je suis tres contente de vous voir,"* she

said to Pierre as he kissed her hand. She had known him as a child,

and now his friendship with Andrew, his misfortune with his wife,

and above all his kindly, simple face disposed her favorably toward

him. She looked at him with her beautiful radiant eyes and seemed to

say, "I like you very much, but please don't laugh at my people."

After exchanging the first greetings, they sat down.





*"Delighted to see you. I am very glad to see you."





"Ah, and Ivanushka is here too!" said Prince Andrew, glancing with a

smile at the young pilgrim.



"Andrew!" said Princess Mary, imploringly. "Il faut que vous sachiez

que c'est une femme,"* said Prince Andrew to Pierre.



"Andrew, au nom de Dieu!"*[2] Princess Mary repeated.





*"You must know that this is a woman."



*[2] "For heaven's sake."





It was evident that Prince Andrew's ironical tone toward the

pilgrims and Princess Mary's helpless attempts to protect them were

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their customary long-established relations on the matter.



"Mais, ma bonne amie," said Prince Andrew, "vous devriez au

contraire m'etre reconnaissante de ce que j'explique a Pierre votre

intimite avec ce jeune homme."*





*"But, my dear, you ought on the contrary to be grateful to me for

explaining to Pierre your intimacy with this young man."





"Really?" said Pierre, gazing over his spectacles with curiosity and

seriousness (for which Princess Mary was specially grateful to him)

into Ivanushka's face, who, seeing that she was being spoken about,

looked round at them all with crafty eyes.



Princess Mary's embarrassment on her people's account was quite

unnecessary. They were not in the least abashed. The old woman,

lowering her eyes but casting side glances at the newcomers, had

turned her cup upside down and placed a nibbled bit of sugar beside

it, and sat quietly in her armchair, though hoping to be offered

another cup of tea. Ivanushka, sipping out of her saucer, looked

with sly womanish eyes from under her brows at the young men.



"Where have you been? To Kiev?" Prince Andrew asked the old woman.



"I have, good sir," she answered garrulously. "Just at Christmastime

I was deemed worthy to partake of the holy and heavenly sacrament at

the shrine of the saint. And now I'm from Kolyazin, master, where a

great and wonderful blessing has been revealed."



"And was Ivanushka with you?"



"I go by myself, benefactor," said Ivanushka, trying to speak in a

bass voice. "I only came across Pelageya in Yukhnovo..."



Pelageya interrupted her companion; she evidently wished to tell

what she had seen.



"In Kolyazin, master, a wonderful blessing has been revealed."



"What is it? Some new relics?" asked Prince Andrew.



"Andrew, do leave off," said Princess Mary. "Don't tell him,

Pelageya."



"No... why not, my dear, why shouldn't I? I like him. He is kind, he

is one of God's chosen, he's a benefactor, he once gave me ten rubles,

I remember. When I was in Kiev, Crazy Cyril says to me (he's one of

God's own and goes barefoot summer and winter), he says, 'Why are

you not going to the right place? Go to Kolyazin where a

wonder-working icon of the Holy Mother of God has been revealed.' On

hearing those words I said good-by to the holy folk and went."



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All were silent, only the pilgrim woman went on in measured tones,

drawing in her breath.



"So I come, master, and the people say to me: 'A great blessing

has been revealed, holy oil trickles from the cheeks of our blessed

Mother, the Holy Virgin Mother of God'...."



"All right, all right, you can tell us afterwards," said Princess

Mary, flushing.



"Let me ask her," said Pierre. "Did you see it yourselves?" he

inquired.



"Oh, yes, master, I was found worthy. Such a brightness on the

face like the light of heaven, and from the blessed Mother's cheek

it drops and drops...."



"But, dear me, that must be a fraud!" said Pierre, naively, who

had listened attentively to the pilgrim.



"Oh, master, what are you saying?" exclaimed the horrified Pelageya,

turning to Princess Mary for support.



"They impose on the people," he repeated.



"Lord Jesus Christ!" exclaimed the pilgrim woman, crossing

herself. "Oh, don't speak so, master! There was a general who did

not believe, and said, 'The monks cheat,' and as soon as he'd said

it he went blind. And he dreamed that the Holy Virgin Mother of the

Kiev catacombs came to him and said, 'Believe in me and I will make

you whole.' So he begged: 'Take me to her, take me to her.' It's the

real truth I'm telling you, I saw it myself. So he was brought,

quite blind, straight to her, and he goes up to her and falls down and

says, 'Make me whole,' says he, 'and I'll give thee what the Tsar

bestowed on me.' I saw it myself, master, the star is fixed into the

icon. Well, and what do you think? He received his sight! It's a sin

to speak so. God will punish you," she said admonishingly, turning

to Pierre.



"How did the star get into the icon?" Pierre asked.



"And was the Holy Mother promoted to the rank of general?" said

Prince Andrew, with a smile.



Pelageya suddenly grew quite pale and clasped her hands.



"Oh, master, master, what a sin! And you who have a son!" she began,

her pallor suddenly turning to a vivid red. "Master, what have you

said? God forgive you!" And she crossed herself. "Lord forgive him! My

dear, what does it mean?..." she asked, turning to Princess Mary.

She got up and, almost crying, began to arrange her wallet. She

evidently felt frightened and ashamed to have accepted charity in a

house where such things could be said, and was at the same time

sorry to have now to forgo the charity of this house.

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"Now, why need you do it?" said Princess Mary. "Why did you come

to me?..."



"Come, Pelageya, I was joking," said Pierre. "Princesse, ma

parole, je n'ai pas voulu l'offenser.* I did not mean anything, I

was only joking," he said, smiling shyly and trying to efface his

offense. "It was all my fault, and Andrew was only joking."





*"Princess, on my word, I did not wish to offend her."





Pelageya stopped doubtfully, but in Pierre's face there was such a

look of sincere penitence, and Prince Andrew glanced so meekly now

at her and now at Pierre, that she was gradually reassured.









CHAPTER XIV





The pilgrim woman was appeased and, being encouraged to talk, gave a

long account of Father Amphilochus, who led so holy a life that his

hands smelled of incense, and how on her last visit to Kiev some monks

she knew let her have the keys of the catacombs, and how she, taking

some dried bread with her, had spent two days in the catacombs with

the saints. "I'd pray awhile to one, ponder awhile, then go on to

another. I'd sleep a bit and then again go and kiss the relics, and

there was such peace all around, such blessedness, that one don't want

to come out, even into the light of heaven again."



Pierre listened to her attentively and seriously. Prince Andrew went

out of the room, and then, leaving "God's folk" to finish their tea,

Princess Mary took Pierre into the drawing room.



"You are very kind," she said to him.



"Oh, I really did not mean to hurt her feelings. I understand them

so well and have the greatest respect for them."



Princess Mary looked at him silently and smiled affectionately.



"I have known you a long time, you see, and am as fond of you as

of a brother," she said. "How do you find Andrew?" she added

hurriedly, not giving him time to reply to her affectionate words.

"I am very anxious about him. His health was better in the winter, but

last spring his wound reopened and the doctor said he ought to go away

for a cure. And I am also very much afraid for him spiritually. He has

not a character like us women who, when we suffer, can weep away our

sorrows. He keeps it all within him. Today he is cheerful and in

good spirits, but that is the effect of your visit--he is not often

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like that. If you could persuade him to go abroad. He needs

activity, and this quiet regular life is very bad for him. Others

don't notice it, but I see it."



Toward ten o'clock the men servants rushed to the front door,

hearing the bells of the old prince's carriage approaching. Prince

Andrew and Pierre also went out into the porch.



"Who's that?" asked the old prince, noticing Pierre as he got out

of, the carriage.



"Ah! Very glad! Kiss me," he said, having learned who the young

stranger was.



The old prince was in a good temper and very gracious to Pierre.



Before supper, Prince Andrew, coming back to his father's study,

found him disputing hotly with his visitor. Pierre was maintaining

that a time would come when there would be no more wars. The old

prince disputed it chaffingly, but without getting angry.



"Drain the blood from men's veins and put in water instead, then

there will be no more war! Old women's nonsense--old women's

nonsense!" he repeated, but still he patted Pierre affectionately on

the shoulder, and then went up to the table where Prince Andrew,

evidently not wishing to join in the conversation, was looking over

the papers his father had brought from town. The old prince went up to

him and began to talk business.



"The marshal, a Count Rostov, hasn't sent half his contingent. He

came to town and wanted to invite me to dinner--I gave him a pretty

dinner!... And there, look at this.... Well, my boy," the old prince

went on, addressing his son and patting Pierre on the shoulder. "A

fine fellow--your friend--I like him! He stirs me up. Another says

clever things and one doesn't care to listen, but this one talks

rubbish yet stirs an old fellow up. Well, go! Get along! Perhaps

I'll come and sit with you at supper. We'll have another dispute. Make

friends with my little fool, Princess Mary," he shouted after

Pierre, through the door.



Only now, on his visit to Bald Hills, did Pierre fully realize the

strength and charm of his friendship with Prince Andrew. That charm

was not expressed so much in his relations with him as with all his

family and with the household. With the stern old prince and the

gentle, timid Princess Mary, though he had scarcely known them, Pierre

at once felt like an old friend. They were all fond of him already.

Not only Princess Mary, who had been won by his gentleness with the

pilgrims, gave him her most radiant looks, but even the one-year-old

"Prince Nicholas" (as his grandfather called him) smiled at Pierre and

let himself be taken in his arms, and Michael Ivanovich and

Mademoiselle Bourienne looked at him with pleasant smiles when he

talked to the old prince.



The old prince came in to supper; this was evidently on Pierre's

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account. And during the two days of the young man's visit he was

extremely kind to him and told him to visit them again.



When Pierre had gone and the members of the household met

together, they began to express their opinions of him as people always

do after a new acquaintance has left, but as seldom happens, no one

said anything but what was good of him.









CHAPTER XV





When returning from his leave, Rostov felt, for the first time,

how close was the bond that united him to Denisov and and the whole

regiment.



On approaching it, Rostov felt as he had done when approaching his

home in Moscow. When he saw the first hussar with the unbuttoned

uniform of his regiment, when he recognized red-haired Dementyev and

saw the picket ropes of the roan horses, when Lavrushka gleefully

shouted to his master, "The count has come!" and Denisov, who had been

asleep on his bed, ran all disheveled out of the mud hut to embrace

him, and the officers collected round to greet the new arrival, Rostov

experienced the same feeling his mother, his father, and his sister

had embraced him, and tears of joy choked him so that he could not

speak. The regiment was also a home, and as unalterably dear and

precious as his parents' house.



When he had reported himself to the commander of the regiment and

had been reassigned to his former squadron, had been on duty and had

gone out foraging, when he had again entered into all the little

interests of the regiment and felt himself deprived of liberty and

bound in one narrow, unchanging frame, he experienced the same sense

of peace, of moral support, and the same sense being at home here in

his own place, as he had felt under the parental roof. But here was

none of all that turmoil of the world at large, where he did not

know his right place and took mistaken decisions; here was no Sonya

with whom he ought, or ought not, to have an explanation; here was

no possibility of going there or not going there; here there were

not twenty-four hours in the day which could be spent in such a

variety of ways; there was not that innumerable crowd of people of

whom not one was nearer to him or farther from him than another; there

were none of those uncertain and undefined money relations with his

father, and nothing to recall that terrible loss to Dolokhov. Here, in

the regiment, all was clear and simple. The whole world was divided

into two unequal parts: one, our Pavlograd regiment; the other, all

the rest. And the rest was no concern of his. In the regiment,

everything was definite: who was lieutenant, who captain, who was a

good fellow, who a bad one, and most of all, who was a comrade. The

canteenkeeper gave one credit, one's pay came every four months, there

was nothing to think out or decide, you had only to do nothing that

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was considered bad in the Pavlograd regiment and, when given an order,

to do what was clearly, distinctly, and definitely ordered--and all

would be well.



Having once more entered into the definite conditions of this

regimental life, Rostov felt the joy and relief a tired man feels on

lying down to rest. Life in the regiment, during this campaign, was

all the pleasanter for him, because, after his loss to Dolokhov (for

which, in spite of all his family's efforts to console him, he could

not forgive himself), he had made up his mind to atone for his fault

by serving, not as he had done before, but really well, and by being a

perfectly first-rate comrade and officer--in a word, a splendid man

altogether, a thing which seemed so difficult out in the world, but so

possible in the regiment.



After his losses, he had determined to pay back his debt to his

parents in five years. He received ten thousand rubles a year, but now

resolved to take only two thousand and leave the rest to repay the

debt to his parents.



Our army, after repeated retreats and advances and battles at

Pultusk and Preussisch-Eylau, was concentrated near Bartenstein. It

was awaiting the Emperor's arrival and the beginning of a new

campaign.



The Pavlograd regiment, belonging to that part of the army which had

served in the 1805 campaign, had been recruiting up to strength in

Russia, and arrived too late to take part in the first actions of

the campaign. It had been neither at Pultusk nor at Preussisch-Eylau

and, when it joined the army in the field in the second half of the

campaign, was attached to Platov's division.



Platov's division was acting independently of the main army. Several

times parts of the Pavlograd regiment had exchanged shots with the

enemy, had taken prisoners, and once had even captured Marshal

Oudinot's carriages. In April the Pavlograds were stationed

immovably for some weeks near a totally ruined and deserted German

village.



A thaw had set in, it was muddy and cold, the ice on the river

broke, and the roads became impassable. For days neither provisions

for the men nor fodder for the horses had been issued. As no

transports could arrive, the men dispersed about the abandoned and

deserted villages, searching for potatoes, but found few even of

these.



Everything had been eaten up and the inhabitants had all fled--if

any remained, they were worse than beggars and nothing more could be

taken from them; even the soldiers, usually pitiless enough, instead

of taking anything from them, often gave them the last of their

rations.



The Pavlograd regiment had had only two men wounded in action, but

had lost nearly half its men from hunger and sickness. In the

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hospitals, death was so certain that soldiers suffering from fever, or

the swelling that came from bad food, preferred to remain on duty, and

hardly able to drag their legs went to the front rather than to the

hospitals. When spring came on, the soldiers found a plant just

showing out of the ground that looked like asparagus, which, for

some reason, they called "Mashka's sweet root." It was very bitter,

but they wandered about the fields seeking it and dug it out with

their sabers and ate it, though they were ordered not to do so, as

it was a noxious plant. That spring a new disease broke

out among the soldiers, a swelling of the arms, legs, and face,

which the doctors attributed to eating this root. But in spite of

all this, the soldiers of Denisov's squadron fed chiefly on

"Mashka's sweet root," because it was the second week that the last of

the biscuits were being doled out at the rate of half a pound a man

and the last potatoes received had sprouted and frozen.



The horses also had been fed for a fortnight on straw from the

thatched roofs and had become terribly thin, though still covered with

tufts of felty winter hair.



Despite this destitution, the soldiers and officers went on living

just as usual. Despite their pale swollen faces and tattered uniforms,

the hussars formed line for roll call, kept things in order, groomed

their horses, polished their arms, brought in straw from the

thatched roofs in place of fodder, and sat down to dine round the

caldrons from which they rose up hungry, joking about their nasty food

and their hunger. As usual, in their spare time, they lit bonfires,

steamed themselves before them naked; smoked, picked out and baked

sprouting rotten potatoes, told and listened to stories of

Potemkin's and Suvorov's campaigns, or to legends of Alesha the Sly,

or the priest's laborer Mikolka.



The officers, as usual, lived in twos and threes in the roofless,

half-ruined houses. The seniors tried to collect straw and potatoes

and, in general, food for the men. The younger ones occupied

themselves as before, some playing cards (there was plenty of money,

though there was no food), some with more innocent games, such as

quoits and skittles. The general trend of the campaign was rarely

spoken of, partly because nothing certain was known about it, partly

because there was a vague feeling that in the main it was going badly.



Rostov lived, as before, with Denisov, and since their furlough they

had become more friendly than ever. Denisov never spoke of Rostov's

family, but by the tender friendship his commander showed him,

Rostov felt that the elder hussar's luckless love for Natasha played a

part in strengthening their friendship. Denisov evidently tried to

expose Rostov to danger as seldom as possible, and after an action

greeted his safe return with evident joy. On one of his foraging

expeditions, in a deserted and ruined village to which he had come

in search of provisions, Rostov found a family consisting of an old

Pole and his daughter with an infant in arms. They were half clad,

hungry, too weak to get away on foot and had no means of obtaining a

conveyance. Rostov brought them to his quarters, placed them in his

own lodging, and kept them for some weeks while the old man was

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recovering. One of his comrades, talking of women, began chaffing

Rostov, saying that he was more wily than any of them and that it

would not be a bad thing if he introduced to them the pretty Polish

girl he had saved. Rostov took the joke as an insult, flared up, and

said such unpleasant things to the officer that it was all Denisov

could do to prevent a duel. When the officer had gone away, Denisov,

who did not himself know what Rostov's relations with the Polish

girl might be, began to upbraid him for his quickness of temper, and

Rostov replied:



"Say what you like.... She is like a sister to me, and I can't

tell you how it offended me... because... well, for that reason...."



Denisov patted him on the shoulder and began rapidly pacing the room

without looking at Rostov, as was his way at moments of deep feeling.



"Ah, what a mad bweed you Wostovs are!" he muttered, and Rostov

noticed tears in his eyes.









CHAPTER XVI





In April the troops were enlivened by news of the Emperor's arrival,

but Rostov had no chance of being present at the review he held at

Bartenstein, as the Pavlograds were at the outposts far beyond that

place.



They were bivouacking. Denisov and Rostov were living in an earth

hut, dug out for them by the soldiers and roofed with branches and

turf. The hut was made in the following manner, which had then come

into vogue. A trench was dug three and a half feet wide, four feet

eight inches deep, and eight feet long. At one end of the trench,

steps were cut out and these formed the entrance and vestibule. The

trench itself was the room, in which the lucky ones, such as the

squadron commander, had a board, lying on piles at the end opposite

the entrance, to serve as a table. On each side of the trench, the

earth was cut out to a breadth of about two and a half feet, and

this did duty for bedsteads and couches. The roof was so constructed

that one could stand up in the middle of the trench and could even sit

up on the beds if one drew close to the table. Denisov, who was living

luxuriously because the soldiers of his squadron liked him, had also a

board in the roof at the farther end, with a piece of (broken but

mended) glass in it for a window. When it was very cold, embers from

the soldiers' campfire were placed on a bent sheet of iron on the

steps in the "reception room"--as Denisov called that part of the hut-

and it was then so warm that the officers, of whom there were always

some with Denisov and Rostov, sat in their shirt sleeves.



In April, Rostov was on orderly duty. One morning, between seven and

eight, returning after a sleepless night, he sent for embers,

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changed his rain-soaked underclothes, said his prayers, drank tea, got

warm, then tidied up the things on the table and in his own corner,

and, his face glowing from exposure to the wind and with nothing on

but his shirt, lay down on his back, putting his arms under his

head. He was pleasantly considering the probability of being

promoted in a few days for his last reconnoitering expedition, and

was awaiting Denisov, who had gone out somewhere and with whom he

wanted a talk.



Suddenly he heard Denisov shouting in a vibrating voice behind the

hut, evidently much excited. Rostov moved to the window to see whom he

was speaking to, and saw the quartermaster, Topcheenko.



"I ordered you not to let them eat that Mashka woot stuff!" Denisov

was shouting. "And I saw with my own eyes how Lazarchuk bwought some

fwom the fields."



"I have given the order again and again, your honor, but they

don't obey," answered the quartermaster.



Rostov lay down again on his bed and thought complacently: "Let

him fuss and bustle now, my job's done and I'm lying down--capitally!"

He could hear that Lavrushka--that sly, bold orderly of Denisov's--was

talking, as well as the quartermaster. Lavrushka was saying

something about loaded wagons, biscuits, and oxen he had seen when

he had gone out for provisions.



Then Denisov's voice was heard shouting farther and farther away.

"Saddle! Second platoon!"



"Where are they off to now?" thought Rostov.



Five minutes later, Denisov came into the hut, climbed with muddy

boots on the bed, lit his pipe, furiously scattered his things

about, took his leaded whip, buckled on his saber, and went out again.

In answer to Rostov's inquiry where he was going, he answered

vaguely and crossly that he had some business.



"Let God and our gweat monarch judge me afterwards!" said Denisov

going out, and Rostov heard the hoofs of several horses splashing

through the mud. He did not even trouble to find out where Denisov had

gone. Having got warm in his corner, he fell asleep and did not

leave the hut till toward evening. Denisov had not yet returned. The

weather had cleared up, and near the next hut two officers and a cadet

were playing svayka, laughing as they threw their missiles which

buried themselves in the soft mud. Rostov joined them. In the middle

of the game, the officers saw some wagons approaching with fifteen

hussars on their skinny horses behind them. The wagons escorted by the

hussars drew up to the picket ropes and a crowd of hussars

surrounded them.



"There now, Denisov has been worrying," said Rostov, "and here are

the provisions."



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"So they are!" said the officers. "Won't the soldiers be glad!"



A little behind the hussars came Denisov, accompanied by two

infantry officers with whom he was talking.



Rostov went to meet them.



"I warn you, Captain," one of the officers, a short thin man,

evidently very angry, was saying.



"Haven't I told you I won't give them up?" replied Denisov.



"You will answer for it, Captain. It is mutiny--seizing the

transport of one's own army. Our men have had nothing to eat for two

days."



"And mine have had nothing for two weeks," said Denisov.



"It is robbery! You'll answer for it, sir!" said the infantry

officer, raising his voice.



"Now, what are you pestewing me for?" cried Denisov, suddenly losing

his temper. "I shall answer for it and not you, and you'd better not

buzz about here till you get hurt. Be off! Go!" he shouted at the

officers.



"Very well, then!" shouted the little officer, undaunted and not

riding away. "If you are determined to rob, I'll..."



"Go to the devil! quick ma'ch, while you're safe and sound!" and

Denisov turned his horse on the officer.



"Very well, very well!" muttered the officer, threateningly, and

turning his horse he trotted away, jolting in his saddle.



"A dog astwide a fence! A weal dog astwide a fence!" shouted Denisov

after him (the most insulting expression a cavalryman can address to a

mounted infantryman) and riding up to Rostov, he burst out laughing.



"I've taken twansports from the infantwy by force!" he said.

"After all, can't let our men starve."



The wagons that had reached the hussars had been consigned to an

infantry regiment, but learning from Lavrushka that the transport

was unescorted, Denisov with his hussars had seized it by force. The

soldiers had biscuits dealt out to them freely, and they even shared

them with the other squadrons.



The next day the regimental commander sent for Denisov, and

holding his fingers spread out before his eyes said:



"This is how I look at this affair: I know nothing about it and

won't begin proceedings, but I advise you to ride over to the staff

and settle the business there in the commissariat department and if

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possible sign a receipt for such and such stores received. If not,

as the demand was booked against an infantry regiment, there will be a

row and the affair may end badly."



From the regimental commander's, Denisov rode straight to the

staff with a sincere desire to act on this advice. In the evening he

came back to his dugout in a state such as Rostov had never yet seen

him in. Denisov could not speak and gasped for breath. When Rostov

asked what was the matter, he only uttered some incoherent oaths and

threats in a hoarse, feeble voice.



Alarmed at Denisov's condition, Rostov suggested that he should

undress, drink some water, and send for the doctor.



"Twy me for wobbewy... oh! Some more water... Let them twy me, but

I'll always thwash scoundwels... and I'll tell the Empewo'...

Ice..." he muttered.



The regimental doctor, when he came, said it was absolutely

necessary to bleed Denisov. A deep saucer of black blood was taken

from his hairy arm and only then was he able to relate what had

happened to him.



"I get there," began Denisov. "'Now then, where's your chief's

quarters?' They were pointed out. 'Please to wait.' 'I've widden

twenty miles and have duties to attend to and no time to wait.

Announce me.' Vewy well, so out comes their head chief--also took it

into his head to lecture me: 'It's wobbewy!'--'Wobbewy,' I say, 'is

not done by man who seizes pwovisions to feed his soldiers, but by him

who takes them to fill his own pockets!' 'Will you please be

silent?' 'Vewy good!' Then he says: 'Go and give a weceipt to the

commissioner, but your affair will be passed on to headquarters.' I go

to the commissioner. I enter, and at the table... who do you think?

No, but wait a bit!... Who is it that's starving us?" shouted Denisov,

hitting the table with the fist of his newly bled arm so violently

that the table nearly broke down and the tumblers on it jumped

about. "Telyanin! 'What? So it's you who's starving us to death! Is

it? Take this and this!' and I hit him so pat, stwaight on his

snout... 'Ah, what a... what...!' and I sta'ted fwashing him...

Well, I've had a bit of fun I can tell you!" cried Denisov, gleeful

and yet angry, his showing under his black mustache. "I'd have

killed him if they hadn't taken him away!"



"But what are you shouting for? Calm yourself," said Rostov. "You've

set your arm bleeding afresh. Wait, we must tie it up again."



Denisov was bandaged up again and put to bed. Next day he woke

calm and cheerful.



But at noon the adjutant of the regiment came into Rostov's and

Denisov's dugout with a grave and serious face and regretfully

showed them a paper addressed to Major Denisov from the regimental

commander in which inquiries were made about yesterday's occurrence.

The adjutant told them that the affair was likely to take a very bad

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turn: that a court-martial had been appointed, and that in view of the

severity with which marauding and insubordination were now regarded,

degradation to the ranks would be the best that could be hoped for.



The case, as represented by the offended parties, was that, after

seizing the transports, Major Denisov, being drunk, went to the

chief quartermaster and without any provocation called him a thief,

threatened to strike him, and on being led out had rushed into the

office and given two officials a thrashing, and dislocated the arm

of one of them.



In answer to Rostov's renewed questions, Denisov said, laughing,

that he thought he remembered that some other fellow had got mixed

up in it, but that it was all nonsense and rubbish, and he did not

in the least fear any kind of trial, and that if those scoundrels

dared attack him he would give them an answer that they would not

easily forget.



Denisov spoke contemptuously of the whole matter, but Rostov knew

him too well not to detect that (while hiding it from others) at heart

he feared a court-martial and was worried over the affair, which was

evidently taking a bad turn. Every day, letters of inquiry and notices

from the court arrived, and on the first of May, Denisov was ordered

to hand the squadron over to the next in seniority and appear before

the staff of his division to explain his violence at the

commissariat office. On the previous day Platov reconnoitered with two

Cossack regiments and two squadrons of hussars. Denisov, as was his

wont, rode out in front of the outposts, parading his courage. A

bullet fired by a French sharpshooter hit him in the fleshy part of

his leg. Perhaps at another time Denisov would not have left the

regiment for so slight a wound, but now he took advantage of it to

excuse himself from appearing at the staff and went into hospital.









CHAPTER XVII





In June the battle of Friedland was fought, in which the

Pavlograds did not take part, and after that an armistice was

proclaimed. Rostov, who felt his friend's absence very much, having no

news of him since he left and feeling very anxious about his wound and

the progress of his affairs, took advantage of the armistice to get

leave to visit Denisov in hospital.



The hospital was in a small Prussian town that had been twice

devastated by Russian and French troops. Because it was summer, when

it is so beautiful out in the fields, the little town presented a

particularly dismal appearance with its broken roofs and fences, its

foul streets, tattered inhabitants, and the sick and drunken

soldiers wandering about.



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The hospital was in a brick building with some of the window

frames and panes broken and a courtyard surrounded by the remains of a

wooden fence that had been pulled to pieces. Several bandaged

soldiers, with pale swollen faces, were sitting or walking about in

the sunshine in the yard.



Directly Rostov entered the door he was enveloped by a smell of

putrefaction and hospital air. On the stairs he met a Russian army

doctor smoking a cigar. The doctor was followed by a Russian

assistant.



"I can't tear myself to pieces," the doctor was saying. "Come to

Makar Alexeevich in the evening. I shall be there."



The assistant asked some further questions.



"Oh, do the best you can! Isn't it all the same?" The doctor noticed

Rostov coming upstairs.



"What do you want, sir?" said the doctor. "What do you want? The

bullets having spared you, do you want to try typhus? This is a

pesthouse, sir."



"How so?" asked Rostov.



"Typhus, sir. It's death to go in. Only we two, Makeev and I" (he

pointed to the assistant), "keep on here. Some five of us doctors have

died in this place.... When a new one comes he is done for in a week,"

said the doctor with evident satisfaction. "Prussian doctors have been

invited here, but our allies don't like it at all."



Rostov explained that he wanted to see Major Denisov of the hussars,

who was wounded.



"I don't know. I can't tell you, sir. Only think! I am alone in

charge of three hospitals with more than four hundred patients! It's

well that the charitable Prussian ladies send us two pounds of

coffee and some lint each month or we should be lost!" he laughed.

"Four hundred, sir, and they're always sending me fresh ones. There

are four hundred? Eh?" he asked, turning to the assistant.



The assistant looked fagged out. He was evidently vexed and

impatient for the talkative doctor to go.



"Major Denisov," Rostov said again. "He was wounded at Molliten."



"Dead, I fancy. Eh, Makeev?" queried the doctor, in a tone of

indifference.



The assistant, however, did not confirm the doctor's words.



"Is he tall and with reddish hair?" asked the doctor.



Rostov described Denisov's appearance.

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"There was one like that," said the doctor, as if pleased. "That one

is dead, I fancy. However, I'll look up our list. We had a list.

Have you got it, Makeev?"



"Makar Alexeevich has the list," answered the assistant. "But if

you'll step into the officers' wards you'll see for yourself," he

added, turning to Rostov.



"Ah, you'd better not go, sir," said the doctor, "or you may have to

stay here yourself."



But Rostov bowed himself away from the doctor and asked the

assistant to show him the way.



"Only don't blame me!" the doctor shouted up after him.



Rostov and the assistant went into the dark corridor. The smell

was so strong there that Rostov held his nose and had to pause and

collect his strength before he could go on. A door opened to the

right, and an emaciated sallow man on crutches, barefoot and in

underclothing, limped out and, leaning against the doorpost, looked

with glittering envious eyes at those who were passing. Glancing in at

the door, Rostov saw that the sick and wounded were lying on the floor

on straw and overcoats.



"May I go in and look?"



"What is there to see?" said the assistant.



But, just because the assistant evidently did not want him to go in,

Rostov entered the soldiers' ward. The foul air, to which he had

already begun to get used in the corridor, was still stronger here. It

was a little different, more pungent, and one felt that this was where

it originated.



In the long room, brightly lit up by the sun through the large

windows, the sick and wounded lay in two rows with their heads to

the walls, and leaving a passage in the middle. Most of them were

unconscious and paid no attention to the newcomers. Those who were

conscious raised themselves or lifted their thin yellow faces, and all

looked intently at Rostov with the same expression of hope, of relief,

reproach, and envy of another's health. Rostov went to the middle of

the room and looking through the open doors into the two adjoining

rooms saw the same thing there. He stood still, looking silently

around. He had not at all expected such a sight. Just before him,

almost across the middle of the passage on the bare floor, lay a

sick man, probably a Cossack to judge by the cut of his hair. The

man lay on his back, his huge arms and legs outstretched. His face was

purple, his eyes were rolled back so that only the whites were seen,

and on his bare legs and arms which were still red, the veins stood

out like cords. He was knocking the back of his head against the

floor, hoarsely uttering some word which he kept repeating. Rostov

listened and made out the word. It was "drink, drink, a drink!" Rostov

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glanced round, looking for someone who would put this man back in

his place and bring him water.



"Who looks after the sick here?" he asked the assistant.



Just then a commissariat soldier, a hospital orderly, came in from

the next room, marching stiffly, and drew up in front of Rostov.



"Good day, your honor!" he shouted, rolling his eyes at Rostov and

evidently mistaking him for one of the hospital authorities.



"Get him to his place and give him some water," said Rostov,

pointing to the Cossack.



"Yes, your honor," the soldier replied complacently, and rolling his

eyes more than ever he drew himself up still straighter, but did not

move.



"No, it's impossible to do anything here," thought Rostov,

lowering his eyes, and he was going out, but became aware of an

intense look fixed on him on his right, and he turned. Close to the

corner, on an overcoat, sat an old, unshaven, gray-bearded soldier

as thin as a skeleton, with a stern sallow face and eyes intently

fixed on Rostov. The man's neighbor on one side whispered something to

him, pointing at Rostov, who noticed that the old man wanted to

speak to him. He drew nearer and saw that the old man had only one leg

bent under him, the other had been amputated above the knee. His

neighbor on the other side, who lay motionless some distance from

him with his head thrown back, was a young soldier with a snub nose.

His pale waxen face was still freckled and his eyes were rolled

back. Rostov looked at the young soldier and a cold chill ran down his

back.



"Why, this one seems..." he began, turning to the assistant.



"And how we've been begging, your honor," said the old soldier,

his jaw quivering. "He's been dead since morning. After all we're men,

not dogs."



"I'll send someone at once. He shall be taken away--taken away at

once," said the assistant hurriedly. "Let us go, your honor."



"Yes, yes, let us go," said Rostov hastily, and lowering his eyes

and shrinking, he tried to pass unnoticed between the rows of

reproachful envious eyes that were fixed upon him, and went out of the

room.









CHAPTER XVIII





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Going along the corridor, the assistant led Rostov to the

officers' wards, consisting of three rooms, the doors of which stood

open. There were beds in these rooms and the sick and wounded officers

were lying or sitting on them. Some were walking about the rooms in

hospital dressing gowns. The first person Rostov met in the

officers' ward was a thin little man with one arm, who was walking

about the first room in a nightcap and hospital dressing gown, with

a pipe between his teeth. Rostov looked at him, trying to remember

where he had seen him before.



"See where we've met again!" said the little man. "Tushin, Tushin,

don't you remember, who gave you a lift at Schon Grabern? And I've had

a bit cut off, you see..." he went on with a smile, pointing to the

empty sleeve of his dressing gown. "Looking for Vasili Dmitrich

Denisov? My neighbor," he added, when he heard who Rostov wanted.

"Here, here," and Tushin led him into the next room, from whence

came sounds of several laughing voices.



"How can they laugh, or even live at all here?" thought Rostov,

still aware of that smell of decomposing flesh that had been so strong

in the soldiers' ward, and still seeming to see fixed on him those

envious looks which had followed him out from both sides, and the face

of that young soldier with eyes rolled back.



Denisov lay asleep on his bed with his head under the blanket,

though it was nearly noon.



"Ah, Wostov? How are you, how are you?" he called out, still in

the same voice as in the regiment, but Rostov noticed sadly that under

this habitual ease and animation some new, sinister, hidden feeling

showed itself in the expression of Denisov's face and the

intonations of his voice.



His wound, though a slight one, had not yet healed even now, six

weeks after he had been hit. His face had the same swollen pallor as

the faces of the other hospital patients, but it was not this that

struck Rostov. What struck him was that Denisov did not seem glad to

see him, and smiled at him unnaturally. He did not ask about the

regiment, nor about the general state of affairs, and when Rostov

spoke of these matters did not listen.



Rostov even noticed that Denisov did not like to be reminded of

the regiment, or in general of that other free life which was going on

outside the hospital. He seemed to try to forget that old life and was

only interested in the affair with the commissariat officers. On

Rostov's inquiry as to how the matter stood, he at once produced

from under his pillow a paper he had received from the commission

and the rough draft of his answer to it. He became animated when he

began reading his paper and specially drew Rostov's attention to the

stinging rejoinders he made to his enemies. His hospital companions,

who had gathered round Rostov--a fresh arrival from the world outside-

gradually began to disperse as soon as Denisov began reading his

answer. Rostov noticed by their faces that all those gentlemen had

already heard that story more than once and were tired of it. Only the

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man who had the next bed, a stout Uhlan, continued to sit on his

bed, gloomily frowning and smoking a pipe, and little one-armed Tushin

still listened, shaking his head disapprovingly. In the middle of

the reading, the Uhlan interrupted Denisov.



"But what I say is," he said, turning to Rostov, "it would be best

simply to petition the Emperor for pardon. They say great rewards will

now be distributed, and surely a pardon would be granted...."



"Me petition the Empewo'!" exclaimed Denisov, in a voice to which he

tried hard to give the old energy and fire, but which sounded like

an expression of irritable impotence. "What for? If I were a wobber

I would ask mercy, but I'm being court-martialed for bwinging

wobbers to book. Let them twy me, I'm not afwaid of anyone. I've

served the Tsar and my countwy honowably and have not stolen! And am I

to be degwaded?... Listen, I'm w'iting to them stwaight. This is

what I say: 'If I had wobbed the Tweasuwy...'"



"It's certainly well written," said Tushin, "but that's not the

point, Vasili Dmitrich," and he also turned to Rostov. "One has to

submit, and Vasili Dmitrich doesn't want to. You know the auditor told

you it was a bad business."



"Well, let it be bad," said Denisov.



"The auditor wrote out a petition for you," continued Tushin, "and

you ought to sign it and ask this gentleman to take it. No doubt he"

(indicating Rostov) "has connections on the staff. You won't find a

better opportunity."



"Haven't I said I'm not going to gwovel?" Denisov interrupted him,

went on reading his paper.



Rostov had not the courage to persuade Denisov, though he

instinctively felt that the way advised by Tushin and the other

officers was the safest, and though he would have been glad to be of

service to Denisov. He knew his stubborn will and straightforward

hasty temper.



When the reading of Denisov's virulent reply, which took more than

an hour, was over, Rostov said nothing, and he spent the rest of the

day in a most dejected state of mind amid Denisov's hospital comrades,

who had round him, telling them what he knew and listening to their

stories. Denisov was moodily silent all the evening.



Late in the evening, when Rostov was about to leave, he asked

Denisov whether he had no commission for him.



"Yes, wait a bit," said Denisov, glancing round at the officers, and

taking his papers from under his pillow he went to the window, where

he had an inkpot, and sat down to write.



"It seems it's no use knocking one's head against a wall!" he

said, coming from the window and giving Rostov a large envelope. In it

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was the petition to the Emperor drawn up by the auditor, in which

Denisov, without alluding to the offenses of the commissariat

officials, simply asked for pardon.



"Hand it in. It seems..."



He did not finish, but gave a painfully unnatural smile.









CHAPTER XIX





Having returned to the regiment and told the commander the state

of Denisov's affairs, Rostov rode to Tilsit with the letter to the

Emperor.



On the thirteenth of June the French and Russian Emperors arrived in

Tilsit. Boris Drubetskoy had asked the important personage on whom

he was in attendance, to include him in the suite appointed for the

stay at Tilsit.



"I should like to see the great man," he said, alluding to Napoleon,

whom hitherto he, like everyone else, had always called Buonaparte.



"You are speaking of Buonaparte?" asked the general, smiling.



Boris looked at his general inquiringly and immediately saw that

he was being tested.



"I am speaking, Prince, of the Emperor Napoleon," he replied. The

general patted him on the shoulder, with a smile.



"You will go far," he said, and took him to Tilsit with him.



Boris was among the few present at the Niemen on the day the two

Emperors met. He saw the raft, decorated with monograms, saw

Napoleon pass before the French Guards on the farther bank of the

river, saw the pensive face of the Emperor Alexander as he sat in

silence in a tavern on the bank of the Niemen awaiting Napoleon's

arrival, saw both Emperors get into boats, and saw how Napoleon-

reaching the raft first--stepped quickly forward to meet Alexander and

held out his hand to him, and how they both retired into the pavilion.

Since he had begun to move in the highest circles Boris had made it

his habit to watch attentively all that went on around him and to note

it down. At the time of the meeting at Tilsit he asked the names of

those who had come with Napoleon and about the uniforms they wore, and

listened attentively to words spoken by important personages. At the

moment the Emperors went into the pavilion he looked at his watch, and

did not forget to look at it again when Alexander came out. The

interview had lasted an hour and fifty-three minutes. He noted this

down that same evening, among other facts he felt to be of historic

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importance. As the Emperor's suite was a very small one, it was a

matter of great importance, for a man who valued his success in the

service, to be at Tilsit on the occasion of this interview between the

two Emperors, and having succeeded in this, Boris felt that henceforth

his position was fully assured. He had not only become known, but

people had grown accustomed to him and accepted him. Twice he had

executed commissions to the Emperor himself, so that the latter knew

his face, and all those at court, far from cold-shouldering him as

at first when they considered him a newcomer, would now have been

surprised had he been absent.



Boris lodged with another adjutant, the Polish Count Zhilinski.

Zhilinski, a Pole brought up in Paris, was rich, and passionately fond

of the French, and almost every day of the stay at Tilsit, French

officers of the Guard and from French headquarters were dining and

lunching with him and Boris.



On the evening of the twenty-fourth of June, Count Zhilinski

arranged a supper for his French friends. The guest of honor was an

aide-de-camp of Napoleon's, there were also several French officers of

the Guard, and a page of Napoleon's, a young lad of an old

aristocratic French family. That same day, Rostov, profiting by the

darkness to avoid being recognized in civilian dress, came to Tilsit

and went to the lodging occupied by Boris and Zhilinski.



Rostov, in common with the whole army from which he came, was far

from having experienced the change of feeling toward Napoleon and

the French--who from being foes had suddenly become friends--that

had taken place at headquarters and in Boris. In the army, Bonaparte

and the French were still regarded with mingled feelings of anger,

contempt, and fear. Only recently, talking with one of Platov's

Cossack officers, Rostov had argued that if Napoleon were taken

prisoner he would be treated not as a sovereign, but as a criminal.

Quite lately, happening to meet a wounded French colonel on the

road, Rostov had maintained with heat that peace was impossible

between a legitimate sovereign and the criminal Bonaparte. Rostov

was therefore unpleasantly struck by the presence of French officers

in Boris' lodging, dressed in uniforms he had been accustomed to see

from quite a different point of view from the outposts of the flank.

As soon as he noticed a French officer, who thrust his head out of the

door, that warlike feeling of hostility which he always experienced at

the sight of the enemy suddenly seized him. He stopped at the

threshold and asked in Russian whether Drubetskoy lived there.

Boris, hearing a strange voice in the anteroom, came out to meet

him. An expression of annoyance showed itself for a moment on his face

on first recognizing Rostov.



"Ah, it's you? Very glad, very glad to see you," he said, however,

coming toward him with a smile. But Rostov had noticed his first

impulse.



"I've come at a bad time I think. I should not have come, but I have

business," he said coldly.



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"No, I only wonder how you managed to get away from your regiment.

Dans un moment je suis a vous,"* he said, answering someone who called

him.





*"In a minute I shall be at your disposal."





"I see I'm intruding," Rostov repeated.



The look of annoyance had already disappeared from Boris' face:

having evidently reflected and decided how to act, he very quietly

took both Rostov's hands and led him into the next room. His eyes,

looking serenely and steadily at Rostov, seemed to be veiled by

something, as if screened by blue spectacles of conventionality. So it

seemed to Rostov.



"Oh, come now! As if you could come at a wrong time!" said Boris,

and he led him into the room where the supper table was laid and

introduced him to his guests, explaining that he was not a civilian,

but an hussar officer, and an old friend of his.



"Count Zhilinski--le Comte N. N.--le Capitaine S. S.," said he,

naming his guests. Rostov looked frowningly at the Frenchmen, bowed

reluctantly, and remained silent.



Zhilinski evidently did not receive this new Russian person very

willingly into his circle and did not speak to Rostov. Boris did not

appear to notice the constraint the newcomer produced and, with the

same pleasant composure and the same veiled look in his eyes with

which he had met Rostov, tried to enliven the conversation. One of the

Frenchmen, with the politeness characteristic of his countrymen,

addressed the obstinately taciturn Rostov, saying that the latter

had probably come to Tilsit to see the Emperor.



"No, I came on business," replied Rostov, briefly.



Rostov had been out of humor from the moment he noticed the look

of dissatisfaction on Boris' face, and as always happens to those in a

bad humor, it seemed to him that everyone regarded him with aversion

and that he was in everybody's way. He really was in their way, for he

alone took no part in the conversation which again became general. The

looks the visitors cast on him seemed to say: "And what is he

sitting here for?" He rose and went up to Boris.



"Anyhow, I'm in your way," he said in a low tone. "Come and talk

over my business and I'll go away."



"Oh, no, not at all," said Boris. "But if you are tired, come and

lie down in my room and have a rest."



"Yes, really..."



They went into the little room where Boris slept. Rostov, without

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sitting down, began at once, irritably (as if Boris were to blame in

some way) telling him about Denisov's affair, asking him whether,

through his general, he could and would intercede with the Emperor

on Denisov's behalf and get Denisov's petition handed in. When he

and Boris were alone, Rostov felt for the first time that he could not

look Boris in the face without a sense of awkwardness. Boris, with one

leg crossed over the other and stroking his left hand with the slender

fingers of his right, listened to Rostov as a general listens to the

report of a subordinate, now looking aside and now gazing straight

into Rostov's eyes with the same veiled look. Each time this

happened Rostov felt uncomfortable and cast down his eyes.



"I have heard of such cases and know that His Majesty is very severe

in such affairs. I think it would be best not to bring it before the

Emperor, but to apply to the commander of the corps.... But in

general, I think..."



"So you don't want to do anything? Well then, say so!" Rostov almost

shouted, not looking Boris in the face.



Boris smiled.



"On the contrary, I will do what I can. Only I thought..."



At that moment Zhilinski's voice was heard calling Boris.



"Well then, go, go, go..." said Rostov, and refusing supper and

remaining alone in the little room, he walked up and down for a long

time, hearing the lighthearted French conversation from the next room.









CHAPTER XX





Rostov had come to Tilsit the day least suitable for a petition on

Denisov's behalf. He could not himself go to the general in attendance

as he was in mufti and had come to Tilsit without permission to do so,

and Boris, even had he wished to, could not have done so on the

following day. On that day, June 27, the preliminaries of peace were

signed. The Emperors exchanged decorations: Alexander received the

Cross of the Legion of Honor and Napoleon the Order of St. Andrew of

the First Degree, and a dinner had been arranged for the evening,

given by a battalion of the French Guards to the Preobrazhensk

battalion. The Emperors were to be present at that banquet.



Rostov felt so ill at ease and uncomfortable with Boris that, when

the latter looked in after supper, he pretended to be asleep, and

early next morning went away, avoiding Boris. In his civilian

clothes and a round hat, he wandered about the town, staring at the

French and their uniforms and at the streets and houses where the

Russian and French Emperors were staying. In a square he saw tables

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being set up and preparations made for the dinner; he saw the

Russian and French colors draped from side to side of the streets,

with hugh monograms A and N. In the windows of the houses also flags

and bunting were displayed.



"Boris doesn't want to help me and I don't want to ask him. That's

settled," thought Nicholas. "All is over between us, but I won't leave

here without having done all I can for Denisov and certainly not

without getting his letter to the Emperor. The Emperor!... He is

here!" thought Rostov, who had unconsciously returned to the house

where Alexander lodged.



Saddled horses were standing before the house and the suite were

assembling, evidently preparing for the Emperor to come out.



"I may see him at any moment," thought Rostov. "If only I were to

hand the letter direct to him and tell him all... could they really

arrest me for my civilian clothes? Surely not! He would understand

on whose side justice lies. He understands everything, knows

everything. Who can be more just, more magnanimous than he? And even

if they did arrest me for being here, what would it matter?" thought

he, looking at an officer who was entering the house the Emperor

occupied. "After all, people do go in.... It's all nonsense! I'll go

in and hand the letter to the Emperor myself so much the worse for

Drubetskoy who drives me to it!" And suddenly with a determination

he himself did not expect, Rostov felt for the letter in his pocket

and went straight to the house.



"No, I won't miss my opportunity now, as I did after Austerlitz," he

thought, expecting every moment to meet the monarch, and conscious

of the blood that rushed to his heart at the thought. "I will fall

at his feet and beseech him. He will lift me up, will listen, and will

even thank me. 'I am happy when I can do good, but to remedy injustice

is the greatest happiness,'" Rostov fancied the sovereign saying.

And passing people who looked after him with curiosity, he entered the

porch of the Emperor's house.



A broad staircase led straight up from the entry, and to the right

he saw a closed door. Below, under the staircase, was a door leading

to the lower floor.



"Whom do you want?" someone inquired.



"To hand in a letter, a petition, to His Majesty," said Nicholas,

with a tremor in his voice.



"A petition? This way, to the officer on duty" (he was

shown the door leading downstairs), "only it won't be accepted."



On hearing this indifferent voice, Rostov grew frightened at what he

was doing; the thought of meeting the Emperor at any moment was so

fascinating and consequently so alarming that he was ready to run

away, but the official who had questioned him opened the door, and

Rostov entered.

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A short stout man of about thirty, in white breeches and high

boots and a batiste shirt that he had evidently only just put on,

standing in that room, and his valet was buttoning on to the back of

his breeches a new pair of handsome silk-embroidered braces that,

for some reason, attracted Rostov's attention. This man was was

speaking to someone in the adjoining room.



"A good figure and in her first bloom," he was saying, but on seeing

Rostov, he stopped short and frowned.



"What is it? A petition?"



"What is it?" asked the person in the other room.



"Another petitioner," answered the man with the braces.



"Tell him to come later. He'll be coming out directly, we must go."



"Later... later! Tomorrow. It's too late..."



Rostov turned and was about to go, but the man in the braces stopped

him.



"Whom have you come from? Who are you?"



"I come from Major Denisov," answered Rostov.



"Are you an officer?"



"Lieutenant Count Rostov."



"What audacity! Hand it in through your commander. And go along with

you... go," and he continued to put on the uniform the valet handed

him.



Rostov went back into the hall and noticed that in the porch there

were many officers and generals in full parade uniform, whom he had to

pass.



Cursing his temerity, his heart sinking at the thought of finding

himself at any moment face to face with the Emperor and being put to

shame and arrested in his presence, fully alive now to the impropriety

of his conduct and repenting of it, Rostov, with downcast eyes, was

making his way out of the house through the brilliant suite when a

familiar voice called him and a hand detained him.



"What are you doing here, sir, in civilian dress?" asked a deep

voice.



It was a cavalry general who had obtained the Emperor's special

favor during this campaign, and who had formerly commanded the

division in which Rostov was serving.



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Rostov, in dismay, began justifying himself, but seeing the

kindly, jocular face of the general, he took him aside and in an

excited voice told him the whole affair, asking him to intercede for

Denisov, whom the general knew. Having heard Rostov to the end, the

general shook his head gravely.



"I'm sorry, sorry for that fine fellow. Give me the letter."



Hardly had Rostov handed him the letter and finished explaining

Denisov's case, when hasty steps and the jingling of spurs were

heard on the stairs, and the general, leaving him, went to the

porch. The gentlemen of the Emperor's suite ran down the stairs and

went to their horses. Hayne, the same groom who had been at

Austerlitz, led up the Emperor's horse, and the faint creak of a

footstep Rostov knew at once was heard on the stairs. Forgetting the

danger of being recognized, Rostov went close to the porch, together

with some inquisitive civilians, and again, after two years, saw those

features he adored: that same face and same look and step, and the

same union of majesty and mildness.... And the feeling of enthusiasm

and love for his sovereign rose again in Rostov's soul in all its

old force. In the uniform of the Preobrazhensk regiment--white

chamois-leather breeches and high boots--and wearing a star Rostov did

not know (it was that of the Legion d'honneur), the monarch came out

into the porch, putting on his gloves and carrying his hat under his

arm. He stopped and looked about him, brightening everything around by

his glance. He spoke a few words to some of the generals, and,

recognizing the former commander of Rostov's division, smiled and

beckoned to him.



All the suite drew back and Rostov saw the general talking for

some time to the Emperor.



The Emperor said a few words to him and took a step toward his

horse. Again the crowd of members of the suite and street gazers

(among whom was Rostov) moved nearer to the Emperor. Stopping beside

his horse, with his hand on the saddle, the Emperor turned to the

cavalry general and said in a loud voice, evidently wishing to be

heard by all:



"I cannot do it, General. I cannot, because the law is stronger than

I," and he raised his foot to the stirrup.



The general bowed his head respectfully, and the monarch mounted and

rode down the street at a gallop. Beside himself with enthusiasm,

Rostov ran after him with the crowd.









CHAPTER XXI





The Emperor rode to the square where, facing one another, a

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battalion of the Preobrazhensk regiment stood on the right and a

battalion of the French Guards in their bearskin caps on the left.



As the Tsar rode up to one flank of the battalions, which

presented arms, another group of horsemen galloped up to the

opposite flank, and at the head of them Rostov recognized Napoleon. It

could be no one else. He came at a gallop, wearing a small hat, a blue

uniform open over a white vest, and the St. Andrew ribbon over his

shoulder. He was riding a very fine thoroughbred gray Arab horse

with a crimson gold-embroidered saddlecloth. On approaching

Alexander he raised his hat, and as he did so, Rostov, with his

cavalryman's eye, could not help noticing that Napoleon did not sit

well or firmly in the saddle. The battalions shouted "Hurrah!" and

"Vive l'Empereur!" Napoleon said something to Alexander, and both

Emperors dismounted and took each other's hands. Napoleon's face

wore an unpleasant and artificial smile. Alexander was saying

something affable to him.



In spite of the trampling of the French gendarmes' horses, which

were pushing back the crowd, Rostov kept his eyes on every movement of

Alexander and Bonaparte. It struck him as a surprise that Alexander

treated Bonaparte as an equal and that the latter was quite at ease

with the Tsar, as if such relations with an Emperor were an everyday

matter to him.



Alexander and Napoleon, with the long train of their suites,

approached the right flank of the Preobrazhensk battalion and came

straight up to the crowd standing there. The crowd unexpectedly

found itself so close to the Emperors that Rostov, standing in the

front row, was afraid he might be recognized.



"Sire, I ask your permission to present the Legion of Honor to the

bravest of your soldiers," said a sharp, precise voice, articulating

every letter.



This was said by the undersized Napoleon, looking up straight into

Alexander's eyes. Alexander listened attentively to what was said to

him and, bending his head, smiled pleasantly.



"To him who has borne himself most bravely in this last war,"

added Napoleon, accentuating each syllable, as with a composure and

assurance exasperating to Rostov, he ran his eyes over the Russian

ranks drawn up before him, who all presented arms with their eyes

fixed on their Emperor.



"Will Your Majesty allow me to consult the colonel?" said

Alexander and took a few hasty steps toward Prince Kozlovski, the

commander of the battalion.



Bonaparte meanwhile began taking the glove off his small white hand,

tore it in doing so, and threw it away. An aide-de-camp behind him

rushed forward and picked it up.



"To whom shall it be given?" the Emperor Alexander asked

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Koslovski, in Russian in a low voice.



"To whomever Your Majesty commands."



The Emperor knit his brows with dissatisfaction and, glancing

back, remarked:



"But we must give him an answer."



Kozlovski scanned the ranks resolutely and included Rostov in his

scrutiny.



"Can it be me?" thought Rostov.



"Lazarev!" the colonel called, with a frown, and Lazarev, the

first soldier in the rank, stepped briskly forward.



"Where are you off to? Stop here!" voices whispered to Lazarev who

did not know where to go. Lazarev stopped, casting a sidelong look

at his colonel in alarm. His face twitched, as often happens to

soldiers called before the ranks.



Napoleon slightly turned his head, and put his plump little hand out

behind him as if to take something. The members of his suite, guessing

at once what he wanted, moved about and whispered as they passed

something from one to another, and a page--the same one Rostov had

seen the previous evening at Boris'--ran forward and, bowing

respectfully over the outstretched hand and not keeping it waiting a

moment, laid in it an Order on a red ribbon. Napoleon, without

looking, pressed two fingers together and the badge was between

them. Then he approached Lazarev (who rolled his eyes and persistently

gazed at his own monarch), looked round at the Emperor Alexander to

imply that what he was now doing was done for the sake of his ally,

and the small white hand holding the Order touched one of Lazarev's

buttons. It was as if Napoleon knew that it was only necessary for his

hand to deign to touch that soldier's breast for the soldier to be

forever happy, rewarded, and distinguished from everyone else in the

world. Napoleon merely laid the cross on Lazarev's breast and,

dropping his hand, turned toward Alexander as though sure that the

cross would adhere there. And it really did.



Officious hands, Russian and French, immediately seized the cross

and fastened it to the uniform. Lazarev glanced morosely at the little

man with white hands who was doing something to him and, still

standing motionless presenting arms, looked again straight into

Alexander's eyes, as if asking whether he should stand there, or go

away, or do something else. But receiving no orders, he remained for

some time in that rigid position.



The Emperors remounted and rode away. The Preobrazhensk battalion,

breaking rank, mingled with the French Guards and sat down at the

tables prepared for them.



Lazarev sat in the place of honor. Russian and French officers

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embraced him, congratulated him, and pressed his hands. Crowds of

officers and civilians drew near merely to see him. A rumble of

Russian and French voices and laughter filled the air round the tables

in the square. Two officers with flushed faces, looking cheerful and

happy, passed by Rostov.



"What d'you think of the treat? All on silver plate," one of them

was saying. "Have you seen Lazarev?"



"I have."



"Tomorrow, I hear, the Preobrazhenskis will give them a dinner."



"Yes, but what luck for Lazarev! Twelve hundred francs' pension

for life."



"Here's a cap, lads!" shouted a Preobrazhensk soldier, donning a

shaggy French cap.



"It's a fine thing! First-rate!"



"Have you heard the password?" asked one Guards' officer of another.

"The day before yesterday it was 'Napoleon, France, bravoure';

yesterday, 'Alexandre, Russie, grandeur.' One day our Emperor gives it

and next day Napoleon. Tomorrow our Emperor will send a St. George's

Cross to the bravest of the French Guards. It has to be done. He

must respond in kind."



Boris, too, with his friend Zhilinski, came to see the Preobrazhensk

banquet. On his way back, he noticed Rostov standing by the corner

of a house.



"Rostov! How d'you do? We missed one another," he said, and could

not refrain from asking what was the matter, so strangely dismal and

troubled was Rostov's face.



"Nothing, nothing," replied Rostov.



"You'll call round?"



"Yes, I will."



Rostov stood at that corner for a long time, watching the feast from

a distance. In his mind, a painful process was going on

which he could not bring to a conclusion. Terrible doubts rose in

his soul. Now he remembered Denisov with his changed expression, his

submission, and the whole hospital, with arms and legs torn off and

its dirt and disease. So vividly did he recall that hospital stench of

dead flesh that he looked round to see where the smell came from. Next

he thought of that self-satisfied Bonaparte, with his small white

hand, who was now an Emperor, liked and respected by Alexander. Then

why those severed arms and legs and those dead men?... Then again he

thought of Lazarev rewarded and Denisov punished and unpardoned. He

caught himself harboring such strange thoughts that he was frightened.

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The smell of the food the Preobrazhenskis were eating and a sense of

hunger recalled him from these reflections; he had to get something to

eat before going away. He went to a hotel he had noticed that morning.

There he found so many people, among them officers who, like

himself, had come in civilian clothes, that he had difficulty in

getting a dinner. Two officers of his own division joined him. The

conversation naturally turned on the peace. The officers, his

comrades, like most of the army, were dissatisfied with the peace

concluded after the battle of Friedland. They said that had we held

out a little longer Napoleon would have been done for, as his troops

had neither provisions nor ammunition. Nicholas ate and drank (chiefly

the latter) in silence. He finished a couple of bottles of wine by

himself. The process in his mind went on tormenting him without

reaching a conclusion. He feared to give way to his thoughts, yet

could not get rid of them. Suddenly, on one of the officers' saying

that it was humiliating to look at the French, Rostov began shouting

with uncalled-for wrath, and therefore much to the surprise of the

officers:



"How can you judge what's best?" he cried, the blood suddenly

rushing to his face. "How can you judge the Emperor's actions? What

right have we to argue? We cannot comprehend either the Emperor's or

his actions!"



"But I never said a word about the Emperor!" said the officer,

justifying himself, and unable to understand Rostov's outburst, except

on the supposition that he was drunk.



But Rostov did not listen to him.



"We are not diplomatic officials, we are soldiers and nothing more,"

he went on. "If we are ordered to die, we must die. If we're punished,

it means that we have deserved it, it's not for us to judge. If the

Emperor pleases to recognize Bonaparte as Emperor and to conclude an

alliance with him, it means that that is the right thing to do. If

once we begin judging and arguing about everything, nothing sacred

will be left! That way we shall be saying there is no God--nothing!"

shouted Nicholas, banging the table--very little to the point as it

seemed to his listeners, but quite relevantly to the course of his own

thoughts.



"Our business is to do our duty, to fight and not to think! That's

all...." said he.



"And to drink," said one of the officers, not wishing to quarrel.



"Yes, and to drink," assented Nicholas. "Hullo there! Another

bottle!" he shouted.



In 1808 the Emperor Alexander went to Erfurt for a fresh interview

with the Emperor Napoleon, and in the upper circles of Petersburg

there was much talk of the grandeur of this important meeting.



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CHAPTER XXII





In 1809 the intimacy between "the world's two arbiters," as Napoleon

and Alexander were called, was such that when Napoleon declared war on

Austria a Russian corps crossed the frontier to co-operate with our

old enemy Bonaparte against our old ally the Emperor of Austria, and

in court circles the possibility of marriage between Napoleon and

one of Alexander's sisters was spoken of. But besides considerations

of foreign policy, the attention of Russian society was at that time

keenly directed on the internal changes that were being undertaken

in all the departments of government.



Life meanwhile--real life, with its essential interests of health

and sickness, toil and rest, and its intellectual interests in

thought, science, poetry, music, love, friendship, hatred, and

passions--went on as usual, independently of and apart from

political friendship or enmity with Napoleon Bonaparte and from all

the schemes of reconstruction.









BOOK SIX: 1808 --10









CHAPTER I





Prince Andrew had spent two years continuously in the country.



All the plans Pierre had attempted on his estates--and constantly

changing from one thing to another had never accomplished--were

carried out by Prince Andrew without display and without perceptible

difficulty.



He had in the highest degree a practical tenacity which Pierre

lacked, and without fuss or strain on his part this set things going.



On one of his estates the three hundred serfs were liberated and

became free agricultural laborers--this being one of the first

examples of the kind in Russia. On other estates the serfs' compulsory

labor was commuted for a quitrent. A trained midwife was engaged for

Bogucharovo at his expense, and a priest was paid to teach reading and

writing to the children of the peasants and household serfs.



Prince Andrew spent half his time at Bald Hills with his father

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and his son, who was still in the care of nurses. The other half he

spent in "Bogucharovo Cloister," as his father called Prince

Andrew's estate. Despite the indifference to the affairs of the

world he had expressed to Pierre, he diligently followed all that went

on, received many books, and to his surprise noticed that when he or

his father had visitors from Petersburg, the very vortex of life,

these people lagged behind himself--who never left the country--in

knowledge of what was happening in home and foreign affairs.



Besides being occupied with his estates and reading a great

variety of books, Prince Andrew was at this time busy with a

critical of survey our last two unfortunate campaigns, and with

drawing up a proposal for a reform of the army rules and regulations.



In the spring of 1809 he went to visit the Ryazan estates which

had been inherited by his son, whose guardian he was.



Warmed by the spring sunshine he sat in the caleche looking at the

new grass, the first leaves on the birches, and the first puffs of

white spring clouds floating across the clear blue sky. He was not

thinking of anything, but looked absent-mindedly and cheerfully from

side to side.



They crossed the ferry where he had talked with Pierre the year

before. They went through the muddy village, past threshing floors and

green fields of winter rye, downhill where snow still lodged near

the bridge, uphill where the clay had been liquefied by the rain, past

strips of stubble land and bushes touched with green here and there,

and into a birch forest growing on both sides of the road. In the

forest it was almost hot, no wind could be felt. The birches with

their sticky green leaves were motionless, and lilac-colored flowers

and the first blades of green grass were pushing up and lifting last

year's leaves. The coarse evergreen color of the small fir trees

scattered here and there among the birches was an unpleasant

reminder of winter. On entering the forest the horses began to snort

and sweated visibly.



Peter the footman made some remark to the coachman; the latter

assented. But apparently the coachman's sympathy was not enough for

Peter, and he turned on the box toward his master.



"How pleasant it is, your excellency!" he said with a respectful

smile.



"What?"



"It's pleasant, your excellency!"



"What is he talking about?" thought Prince Andrew. "Oh, the

spring, I suppose," he thought as he turned round. "Yes, really

everything is green already.... How early! The birches and cherry

and alders too are coming out.... But the oaks show no sign yet. Ah,

here is one oak!"



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At the edge of the road stood an oak. Probably ten times the age of

the birches that formed the forest, it was ten times as thick and

twice as tall as they. It was an enormous tree, its girth twice as

great as a man could embrace, and evidently long ago some of its

branches had been broken off and its bark scarred. With its huge

ungainly limbs sprawling unsymmetrically, and its gnarled hands and

fingers, it stood an aged, stern, and scornful monster among the

smiling birch trees. Only the dead-looking evergreen firs dotted about

in the forest, and this oak, refused to yield to the charm of spring

or notice either the spring or the sunshine.



"Spring, love, happiness!" this oak seemed to say. "Are you not

weary of that stupid, meaningless, constantly repeated fraud? Always

the same and always a fraud? There is no spring, no sun, no happiness!

Look at those cramped dead firs, ever the same, and at me too,

sticking out my broken and barked fingers just where they have

grown, whether from my back or my sides: as they have grown so I

stand, and I do not believe in your hopes and your lies."



As he passed through the forest Prince Andrew turned several times

to look at that oak, as if expecting something from it. Under the oak,

too, were flowers and grass, but it stood among them scowling,

rigid, misshapen, and grim as ever.



"Yes, the oak is right, a thousand times right," thought Prince

Andrew. "Let others--the young--yield afresh to that fraud, but we

know life, our life is finished!"



A whole sequence of new thoughts, hopeless but mournfully

pleasant, rose in his soul in connection with that tree. During this

journey he, as it were, considered his life afresh and arrived at

his old conclusion, restful in its hopelessness: that it was not for

him to begin anything anew--but that he must live out his life,

content to do no harm, and not disturbing himself or desiring

anything.









CHAPTER II





Prince Andrew had to see the Marshal of the Nobility for the

district in connection with the affairs of the Ryazan estate of

which he was trustee. This Marshal was Count Ilya Rostov, and in the

middle of May Prince Andrew went to visit him.



It was now hot spring weather. The whole forest was already

clothed in green. It was dusty and so hot that on passing near water

one longed to bathe.



Prince Andrew, depressed and preoccupied with the business about

which he had to speak to the Marshal, was driving up the avenue in the

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grounds of the Rostovs' house at Otradnoe. He heard merry girlish

cries behind some trees on the right and saw a group of girls running to

cross the path of his caleche. Ahead of the rest and nearer to him ran

a dark-haired, remarkably slim, pretty girl in a yellow chintz

dress, with a white handkerchief on her head from under which loose

locks of hair escaped. The girl was shouting something but, seeing

that he was a stranger, ran back laughing without looking at him.



Suddenly, he did not know why, he felt a pang. The day was so

beautiful, the sun so bright, everything around so gay, but that

slim pretty girl did not know, or wish to know, of his existence and

was contented and cheerful in her own separate--probably foolish-

but bright and happy life. "What is she so glad about? What is she

thinking of? Not of the military regulations or of the arrangement

of the Ryazan serfs' quitrents. Of what is she thinking? Why is she so

happy?" Prince Andrew asked himself with instinctive curiosity.



In 1809 Count Ilya Rostov was living at Otradnoe just as he had done

in former years, that is, entertaining almost the whole province

with hunts, theatricals, dinners, and music. He was glad to see Prince

Andrew, as he was to see any new visitor, and insisted on his

staying the night.



During the dull day, in the course of which he was entertained by

his elderly hosts and by the more important of the visitors (the old

count's house was crowded on account of an approaching name day),

Prince Andrew repeatedly glanced at Natasha, gay and laughing among

the younger members of the company, and asked himself each time, "What

is she thinking about? Why is she so glad?"



That night, alone in new surroundings, he was long unable to

sleep. He read awhile and then put out his candle, but relit it. It

was hot in the room, the inside shutters of which were closed. He

was cross with the stupid old man (as he called Rostov), who had

made him stay by assuring him that some necessary documents had not

yet arrived from town, and he was vexed with himself for having

stayed.



He got up and went to the window to open it. As soon as he opened

the shutters the moonlight, as if it had long been watching for

this, burst into the room. He opened the casement. The night was

fresh, bright, and very still. Just before the window was a row of

pollard trees, looking black on one side and with a silvery light on

the other. Beneath the trees grewsome kind of lush, wet, bushy

vegetation with silver-lit leaves and stems here and there. Farther

back beyond the dark trees a roof glittered with dew, to the right was

a leafy tree with brilliantly white trunk and branches, and above it

shone the moon, nearly at its full, in a pale, almost starless, spring

sky. Prince Andrew leaned his elbows on the window ledge and his

eyes rested on that sky.



His room was on the first floor. Those in the rooms above were

also awake. He heard female voices overhead.



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"Just once more," said a girlish voice above him which Prince Andrew

recognized at once.



"But when are you coming to bed?" replied another voice.



"I won't, I can't sleep, what's the use? Come now for the last

time."



Two girlish voices sang a musical passage--the end of some song.



"Oh, how lovely! Now go to sleep, and there's an end of it."



"You go to sleep, but I can't," said the first voice, coming

nearer to the window. She was evidently leaning right out, for the

rustle of her dress and even her breathing could be heard.

Everything was stone-still, like the moon and its light and the

shadows. Prince Andrew, too, dared not stir, for fear of betraying his

unintentional presence.



"Sonya! Sonya!" he again heard the first speaker. "Oh, how can you

sleep? Only look how glorious it is! Ah, how glorious! Do wake up,

Sonya!" she said almost with tears in her voice. "There never, never

was such a lovely night before!"



Sonya made some reluctant reply.



"Do just come and see what a moon!... Oh, how lovely! Come

here.... Darling, sweetheart, come here! There, you see? I feel like

sitting down on my heels, putting my arms round my knees like this,

straining tight, as tight as possible, and flying away! Like this...."



"Take care, you'll fall out."



He heard the sound of a scuffle and Sonya's disapproving voice:

"It's past one o'clock."



"Oh, you only spoil things for me. All right, go, go!"



Again all was silent, but Prince Andrew knew she was still sitting

there. From time to time he heard a soft rustle and at times a sigh.



"O God, O God! What does it mean?" she suddenly exclaimed. "To bed

then, if it must be!" and she slammed the casement.



"For her I might as well not exist!" thought Prince Andrew while

he listened to her voice, for some reason expecting yet fearing that

she might say something about him. "There she is again! As if it

were on purpose," thought he.



In his soul there suddenly arose such an unexpected turmoil of

youthful thoughts and hopes, contrary to the whole tenor of his

life, that unable to explain his condition to himself he lay down

and fell asleep at once.



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CHAPTER III





Next morning, having taken leave of no one but the count, and not

waiting for the ladies to appear, Prince Andrew set off for home.



It was already the beginning of June when on his return journey he

drove into the birch forest where the gnarled old oak had made so

strange and memorable an impression on him. In the forest the

harness bells sounded yet more muffled than they had done six weeks

before, for now all was thick, shady, and dense, and the young firs

dotted about in the forest did not jar on the general beauty but,

lending themselves to the mood around, were delicately green with

fluffy young shoots.



The whole day had been hot. Somewhere a storm was gathering, but

only a small cloud had scattered some raindrops lightly, sprinkling

the road and the sappy leaves. The left side of the forest was dark in

the shade, the right side glittered in the sunlight, wet and shiny and

scarcely swayed by the breeze. Everything was in blossom, the

nightingales trilled, and their voices reverberated now near, now

far away.



"Yes, here in this forest was that oak with which I agreed," thought

Prince Andrew. "But where is it?" he again wondered, gazing at the

left side of the road, and without recognizing it he looked with

admiration at the very oak he sought. The old oak, quite transfigured,

spreading out a canopy of sappy dark-green foliage, stood rapt and

slightly trembling in the rays of the evening sun. Neither gnarled

fingers nor old scars nor old doubts and sorrows were any of them in

evidence now. Through the hard century-old bark, even where there were

no twigs, leaves had sprouted such as one could hardly believe the old

veteran could have produced.



"Yes, it is the same oak," thought Prince Andrew, and all at once he

was seized by an unreasoning springtime feeling of joy and renewal.

All the best moments of his life suddenly rose to his memory.

Austerlitz with the lofty heavens, his wife's dead reproachful face,

Pierre at the ferry, that girl thrilled by the beauty of the night,

and that night itself and the moon, and.... all this rushed suddenly

to his mind.



"No, life is not over at thirty-one!" Prince Andrew suddenly decided

finally and decisively. "It is not enough for me to know what I have

in me--everyone must know it: Pierre, and that young girl who wanted

to fly away into the sky, everyone must know me, so that my life may

not be lived for myself alone while others live so apart from it,

but so that it may be reflected in them all, and they and I may live

in harmony!"



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On reaching home Prince Andrew decided to go to Petersburg that

autumn and found all sorts of reasons for this decision. A whole

serics of sensible and logical considerations showing it to be

essential for him to go to Petersburg, and even to re-enter the

service, kept springing up in his mind. He could not now understand

how he could ever even have doubted the necessity of taking an

active share in life, just as a month before he had not understood how

the idea of leaving the quiet country could ever enter his head. It

now seemed clear to him that all his experience of life must be

senselessly wasted unless he applied it to some kind of work and again

played an active part in life. He did not even remember how

formerly, on the strength of similar wretched logical arguments, it

had seemed obvious that he would be degrading himself if he now, after

the lessons he had had in life, allowed himself to believe in the

possibility of being useful and in the possibility of happiness or

love. Now reason suggested quite the opposite. After that journey to

Ryazan he found the country dull; his former pursuits no longer

interested him, and often when sitting alone in his study he got up,

went to the mirror, and gazed a long time at his own face. Then he

would turn away to the portrait of his dead Lise, who with hair curled

a la grecque looked tenderly and gaily at him out of the gilt frame.

She did not now say those former terrible words to him, but looked

simply, merrily, and inquisitively at him. And Prince Andrew, crossing

his arms behind him, long paced the room, now frowning, now smiling,

as he reflected on those irrational, inexpressible thoughts, secret as

a crime, which altered his whole life and were connected with

Pierre, with fame, with the girl at the window, the oak, and woman's

beauty and love. And if anyone came into his room at such moments he

was particularly cold, stern, and above all unpleasantly logical.



"My dear," Princess Mary entering at such a moment would say,

"little Nicholas can't go out today, it's very cold."



"If it were hot," Prince Andrew would reply at such times very dryly

to his sister, "he could go out in his smock, but as it is cold he

must wear warm clothes, which were designed for that purpose. That

is what follows from the fact that it is cold; and not that a child

who needs fresh air should remain at home," he would add with

extreme logic, as if punishing someone for those secret illogical

emotions that stirred within him.



At such moments Princess Mary would think how intellectual work

dries men up.









CHAPTER IV





Prince Andrew arrived in Petersburg in August, 1809. It was the time

when the youthful Speranski was at the zenith of his fame and his

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reforms were being pushed forward with the greatest energy. That

same August the Emperor was thrown from his caleche, injured his

leg, and remained three weeks at Peterhof, receiving Speranski every

day and no one else. At that time the two famous decrees were being

prepared that so agitated society--abolishing court ranks and

introducing examinations to qualify for the grades of Collegiate

Assessor and State Councilor--and not merely these but a whole state

constitution, intended to change the existing order of government in

Russia: legal, administrative, and financial, from the Council of

State down to the district tribunals. Now those vague liberal dreams

with which the Emperor Alexander had ascended the throne, and which he

had tried to put into effect with the aid of his associates,

Czartoryski, Novosiltsev, Kochubey, and Strogonov--whom he himself

in jest had called his Comite de salut public--were taking shape and

being realized.



Now all these men were replaced by Speranski on the civil side,

and Arakcheev on the military. Soon after his arrival Prince Andrew,

as a gentleman of the chamber, presented himself at court and at a

levee. The Emperor, though he met him twice, did not favor him with

a single word. It had always seemed to Prince Andrew before that he

was antipathetic to the Emperor and that the latter disliked his

face and personality generally, and in the cold, repellent glance

the Emperor gave him, he now found further confirmation of this

surmise. The courtiers explained the Emperor's neglect of him by His

Majesty's displeasure at Bolkonski's not having served since 1805.



"I know myself that one cannot help one's sympathies and

antipathies," thought Prince Andrew, "so it will not do to present

my proposal for the reform of the army regulations to the Emperor

personally, but the project will speak for itself."



He mentioned what he had written to an old field marshal, a friend

of his father's. The field marshal made an appointment to see him,

received him graciously, and promised to inform the Emperor. A few

days later Prince Andrew received notice that he was to go to see

the Minister of War, Count Arakcheev.





On the appointed day Prince Andrew entered Count Arakcheev's waiting

room at nine in the morning.



He did not know Arakcheev personally, had never seen him, and all he

had heard of him inspired him with but little respect for the man.



"He is Minister of War, a man trusted by the Emperor, and I need not

concern myself about his personal qualities: he has been

commissioned to consider my project, so he alone can get it

adopted," thought Prince Andrew as he waited among a number of

important and unimportant people in Count Arakcheev's waiting room.



During his service, chiefly as an adjutant, Prince Andrew had seen

the anterooms of many important men, and the different types of such

rooms were well known to him. Count Arakcheev's anteroom had quite a

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special character. The faces of the unimportant people awaiting

their turn for an audience showed embarrassment and servility; the

faces of those of higher rank expressed a common feeling of

awkwardness, covered by a mask of unconcern and ridicule of

themselves, their situation, and the person for whom they were

waiting. Some walked thoughtfully up and down, others whispered and

laughed. Prince Andrew heard the nickname "Sila Andreevich" and the

words, "Uncle will give it to us hot," in reference to Count

Arakcheev. One general (an important personage), evidently feeling

offended at having to wait so long, sat crossing and uncrossing his

legs and smiling contemptuously to himself.



But the moment the door opened one feeling alone appeared on all

faces--that of fear. Prince Andrew for the second time asked the

adjutant on duty to take in his name, but received an ironical look

and was told that his turn would come in due course. After some others

had been shown in and out of the minister's room by the adjutant on

duty, an officer who struck Prince Andrew by his humiliated and

frightened air was admitted at that terrible door. This officer's

audience lasted a long time. Then suddenly the grating sound of a

harsh voice was heard from the other side of the door, and the

officer--with pale face and trembling lips--came out and passed

through the waiting room, clutching his head.



After this Prince Andrew was conducted to the door and the officer

on duty said in a whisper, "To the right, at the window."



Prince Andrew entered a plain tidy room and saw at the table a man

of forty with a long waist, a long closely cropped head, deep

wrinkles, scowling brows above dull greenish-hazel eyes and an

overhanging red nose. Arakcheev turned his head toward him without

looking at him.



"What is your petition?" asked Arakcheev.



"I am not petitioning, your excellency," returned Prince Andrew

quietly.



Arakcheev's eyes turned toward him.



"Sit down," said he. "Prince Bolkonski?"



"I am not petitioning about anything. His Majesty the Emperor has

deigned to send your excellency a project submitted by me..."



"You see, my dear sir, I have read your project," interrupted

Arakcheev, uttering only the first words amiably and then--again

without looking at Prince Andrew--relapsing gradually into a tone of

grumbling contempt. "You are proposing new military laws? There are

many laws but no one to carry out the old ones. Nowadays everybody

designs laws, it is easier writing than doing."



"I came at His Majesty the Emperor's wish to learn from your

excellency how you propose to deal with the memorandum I have

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presented," said Prince Andrew politely.



"I have endorsed a resolution on your memorandum and sent it to

the committee. I do not approve of it," said Arakcheev, rising and

taking a paper from his writing table. "Here!" and he handed it to

Prince Andrew.



Across the paper was scrawled in pencil, without capital letters,

misspelled, and without punctuation: "Unsoundly constructed because

resembles an imitation of the French military code and from the

Articles of War needlessly deviating."



"To what committee has the memorandum been referred?" inquired

Prince Andrew.



"To the Committee on Army Regulations, and I have recommended that

your honor should be appointed a member, but without a salary."



Prince Andrew smiled.



"I don't want one."



"A member without salary," repeated Arakcheev. "I have the

honor... Eh! Call the next one! Who else is there?" he shouted, bowing

to Prince Andrew.









CHAPTER V





While waiting for the announcement of his appointment to the

committee Prince Andrew looked up his former acquaintances,

particularly those he knew to be in power and whose aid he might need.

In Petersburg he now experienced the same feeling he had had on the

eve of a battle, when troubled by anxious curiosity and irresistibly

attracted to the ruling circles where the future, on which the fate of

millions depended, was being shaped. From the irritation of the

older men, the curiosity of the uninitiated, the reserve of the

initiated, the hurry and preoccupation of everyone, and the

innumerable committees and commissions of whose existence he learned

every day, he felt that now, in 1809, here in Petersburg a vast

civil conflict was in preparation, the commander in chief of which was

a mysterious person he did not know, but who was supposed to be a

man of genius--Speranski. And this movement of reconstruction of which

Prince Andrew had a vague idea, and Speranski its chief promoter,

began to interest him so keenly that the question of the army

regulations quickly receded to a secondary place in his consciousness.



Prince Andrew was most favorably placed to secure good reception

in the highest and most diverse Petersburg circles of the day. The

reforming party cordially welcomed and courted him, the first place

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because he was reputed to be clever and very well read, and secondly

because by liberating his serfs he had obtained the reputation of

being a liberal. The party of the old and dissatisfied, who censured

the innovations, turned to him expecting his sympathy in their

disapproval of the reforms, simply because he was the son of his

father. The feminine society world welcomed him gladly, because he was

rich, distinguished, a good match, and almost a newcomer, with a

halo of romance on account of his supposed death and the tragic loss

of his wife. Besides this the general opinion of all who had known him

previously was that he had greatly improved during these last five

years, having softened and grown more manly, lost his former

affectation, pride, and contemptuous irony, and acquired the

serenity that comes with years. People talked about him, were

interested in him, and wanted to meet him.



The day after his interview with Count Arakcheev, Prince Andrew

spent the evening at Count Kochubey's. He told the count of his

interview with Sila Andreevich (Kochubey spoke of Arakcheev by that

nickname with the same vague irony Prince Andrew had noticed in the

Minister of War's anteroom).



"Mon cher, even in this case you can't do without Michael

Mikhaylovich Speranski. He manages everything. I'll speak to him. He

has promised to come this evening."



"What has Speranski to do with the army regulations?" asked Prince

Andrew.



Kochubey shook his head smilingly, as if surprised at Bolkonski's

simplicity.



"We were talking to him about you a few days ago," Kochubey

continued, "and about your freed plowmen."



"Oh, is it you, Prince, who have freed your serfs?" said an old

man of Catherine's day, turning contemptuously toward Bolkonski.



"It was a small estate that brought in no profit," replied Prince

Andrew, trying to extenuate his action so as not to irritate the old

man uselessly.



"Afraid of being late..." said the old man, looking at Kochubey.



"There's one thing I don't understand," he continued. "Who will plow

the land if they are set free? It is easy to write laws, but difficult

to rule.... Just the same as now--I ask you, Count--who will be

heads of the departments when everybody has to pass examinations?"



"Those who pass the examinations, I suppose," replied Kochubey,

crossing his legs and glancing round.



"Well, I have Pryanichnikov serving under me, a splendid man, a

priceless man, but he's sixty. Is he to go up for examination?"



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"Yes, that's a difficulty, as education is not at all general,

but..."



Count Kochubey did not finish. He rose, took Prince Andrew by the

arm, and went to meet a tall, bald, fair man of about forty with a

large open forehead and a long face of unusual and peculiar whiteness,

who was just entering. The newcomer wore a blue swallow-tail coat with

a cross suspended from his neck and a star on his left breast. It

was Speranski. Prince Andrew recognized him at once, and felt a

throb within him, as happens at critical moments of life. Whether it

was from respect, envy, or anticipation, he did not know.

Speranski's whole figure was of a peculiar type that made him easily

recognizable. In the society in which Prince Andrew lived he had never

seen anyone who together with awkward and clumsy gestures possessed

such calmness and self-assurance; he had never seen so resolute yet

gentle an expression as that in those half-closed, rather humid

eyes, or so firm a smile that expressed nothing; nor had he heard such

a refined, smooth, soft voice; above all he had never seen such

delicate whiteness of face or hands--hands which were broad, but

very plump, soft, and white. Such whiteness and softness Prince Andrew

had only seen on the faces of soldiers who had been long in

hospital. This was Speranski, Secretary of State, reporter to the

Emperor and his companion at Erfurt, where he had more than once met

and talked with Napoleon.



Speranski did not shift his eyes from one face to another as

people involuntarily do on entering a large company and was in no

hurry to speak. He spoke slowly, with assurance that he would be

listened to, and he looked only at the person with whom he was

conversing.



Prince Andrew followed Speranski's every word and movement with

particular attention. As happens to some people, especially to men who

judge those near to them severely, he always on meeting anyone new-

especially anyone whom, like Speranski, he knew by reputation-

expected to discover in him the perfection of human qualities.



Speranski told Kochubey he was sorry he had been unable to come

sooner as he had been detained at the palace. He did not say that

the Emperor had kept him, and Prince Andrew noticed this affectation

of modesty. When Kochubey introduced Prince Andrew, Speranski slowly

turned his eyes to Bolkonski with his customary smile and looked at

him in silence.



"I am very glad to make your acquaintance. I had heard of you, as

everyone has," he said after a pause.



Kochubey said a few words about the reception Arakcheev had given

Bolkonski. Speranski smiled more markedly.



"The chairman of the Committee on Army Regulations is my good friend

Monsieur Magnitski," he said, fully articulating every word and

syllable, "and if you like I can put you in touch with him." He paused

at the full stop. "I hope you will find him sympathetic and ready to

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co-operate in promoting all that is reasonable."



A circle soon formed round Speranski, and the old man who had talked

about his subordinate Pryanichnikov addressed a question to him.



Prince Andrew without joining in the conversation watched every

movement of Speranski's: this man, not long since an insignificant

divinity student, who now, Bolkonski thought, held in his hands--those

plump white hands--the fate of Russia. Prince Andrew was struck by the

extraordinarily disdainful composure with which Speranski answered the

old man. He appeared to address condescending words to him from an

immeasurable height. When the old man began to speak too loud,

Speranski smiled and said he could not judge of the advantage or

disadvantage of what pleased the sovereign.



Having talked for a little while in the general circle, Speranski

rose and coming up to Prince Andrew took him along to the other end of

the room. It was clear that he thought it necessary to interest

himself in Bolkonski.



"I had no chance to talk with you, Prince, during the animated

conversation in which that venerable gentleman involved me," he said

with a mildly contemptuous smile, as if intimating by that smile

that he and Prince Andrew understood the insignificance of the

people with whom he had just been talking. This flattered Prince

Andrew. "I have known of you for a long time: first from your action

with regard to your serfs, a first example, of which it is very

desirable that there should be more imitators; and secondly because

you are one of those gentlemen of the chamber who have not

considered themselves offended by the new decree concerning the

ranks allotted to courtiers, which is causing so much gossip and

tittle-tattle."



"No," said Prince Andrew, "my father did not wish me to take

advantage of the privilege. I began the service from the lower grade."



"Your father, a man of the last century, evidently stands above

our contemporaries who so condemn this measure which merely

reestablishes natural justice."



"I think, however, that these condemnations have some ground,"

returned Prince Andrew, trying to resist Speranski's influence, of

which he began to be conscious. He did not like to agree with him in

everything and felt a wish to contradict. Though he usually spoke

easily and well, he felt a difficulty in expressing himself now

while talking with Speranski. He was too much absorbed in observing

the famous man's personality.



"Grounds of personal ambition maybe," Speranski put in quietly.



"And of state interest to some extent," said Prince Andrew.



"What do you mean?" asked Speranski quietly, lowering his eyes.



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"I am an admirer of Montesquieu," replied Prince Andrew, "and his

idea that le principe des monarchies est l'honneur me parait

incontestable. Certains droits et privileges de la noblesse me

paraissent etre des moyens de soutenir ce sentiment."*





*"The principle of monarchies is honor seems to me incontestable.

Certain rights and privileges for the aristocracy appear to me a means

of maintaining that sentiment."





The smile vanished from Speranski's white face, which was much

improved by the change. Probably Prince Andrew's thought interested

him.



"Si vous envisagez la question sous ce point de vue,"* he began,

pronouncing French with evident difficulty, and speaking even slower

than in Russian but quite calmly.





*"If you regard the question from that point of view."





Speranski went on to say that honor, l'honeur, cannot be upheld by

privileges harmful to the service; that honor, l'honneur, is either

a negative concept of not doing what is blameworthy or it is a

source of emulation in pursuit of commendation and rewards, which

recognize it. His arguments were concise, simple, and clear.



"An institution upholding honor, the source of emulation, is one

similar to the Legion d'honneur of the great Emperor Napoleon, not

harmful but helpful to the success of the service, but not a class

or court privilege."



"I do not dispute that, but it cannot be denied that court

privileges have attained the same end," returned Prince Andrew. "Every

courtier considers himself bound to maintain his position worthily."



"Yet you do not care to avail yourself of the privilege, Prince,"

said Speranski, indicating by a smile that he wished to finish amiably

an argument which was embarrassing for his companion. "If you will

do me the honor of calling on me on Wednesday," he added, "I will,

after talking with Magnitski, let you know what may interest you,

and shall also have the pleasure of a more detailed chat with you."



Closing his eyes, he bowed a la francaise, without taking leave, and

trying to attract as little attention as possible, he left the room.









CHAPTER VI



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During the first weeks of his stay in Petersburg Prince Andrew

felt the whole trend of thought he had formed during his life of

seclusion quite overshadowed by the trifling cares that engrossed

him in that city.



On returning home in the evening he would jot down in his notebook

four or five necessary calls or appointments for certain hours. The

mechanism of life, the arrangement of the day so as to be in time

everywhere, absorbed the greater part of his vital energy. He did

nothing, did not even think or find time to think, but only talked,

and talked successfully, of what he had thought while in the country.



He sometimes noticed with dissatisfaction that he repeated the

same remark on the same day in different circles. But he was so busy

for whole days together that he had no time to notice that he was

thinking of nothing.



As he had done on their first meeting at Kochubey's, Speranski

produced a strong impression on Prince Andrew on the Wednesday, when

he received him tete-a-tate at his own house and talked to him long

and confidentially.



To Bolkonski so many people appeared contemptible and

insignificant creatures, and he so longed to find in someone the

living ideal of that perfection toward which he strove, that he

readily believed that in Speranski he had found this ideal of a

perfectly rational and virtuous man. Had Speranski sprung from the

same class as himself and possessed the same breeding and

traditions, Bolkonski would soon have discovered his weak, human,

unheroic sides; but as it was, Speranski's strange and logical turn of

mind inspired him with respect all the more because he did not quite

understand him. Moreover, Speranski, either because he appreciated the

other's capacity or because he considered it necessary to win him to

his side, showed off his dispassionate calm reasonableness before

Prince Andrew and flattered him with that subtle flattery which goes

hand in hand with self-assurance and consists in a tacit assumption

that one's companion is the only man besides oneself capable of

understanding the folly of the rest of mankind and the

reasonableness and profundity of one's own ideas.



During their long conversation on Wednesday evening, Speranski

more than once remarked: "We regard everything that is above the

common level of rooted custom..." or, with a smile: "But we want the

wolves to be fed and the sheep to be safe..." or: "They cannot

understand this..." and all in a way that seemed to say: "We, you

and I, understand what they are and who we are."



This first long conversation with Speranski only strengthened in

Prince Andrew the feeling he had experienced toward him at their first

meeting. He saw in him a remarkable, clear-thinking man of vast

intellect who by his energy and persistence had attained power,

which he was using solely for the welfare of Russia. In Prince

Andrew's eyes Speranski was the man he would himself have wished to

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be--one who explained all the facts of life reasonably, considered

important only what was rational, and was capable of applying the

standard of reason to everything. Everything seemed so simple and

clear in Speranski's exposition that Prince Andrew involuntarily

agreed with him about everything. If he replied and argued, it was

only because he wished to maintain his independence and not submit

to Speranski's opinions entirely. Everything was right and

everything was as it should be: only one thing disconcerted Prince

Andrew. This was Speranski's cold, mirrorlike look, which did not

allow one to penetrate to his soul, and his delicate white hands,

which Prince Andrew involuntarily watched as one does watch the

hands of those who possess power. This mirrorlike gaze and those

delicate hands irritated Prince Andrew, he knew not why. He was

unpleasantly struck, too, by the excessive contempt for others that he

observed in Speranski, and by the diversity of lines of argument he

used to support his opinions. He made use of every kind of mental

device, except analogy, and passed too boldly, it seemed to Prince

Andrew, from one to another. Now he would take up the position of a

practical man and condemn dreamers; now that of a satirist, and

laugh ironically at his opponents; now grow severely logical, or

suddenly rise to the realm of metaphysics. (This last resource was one

he very frequently employed.) He would transfer a question to

metaphysical heights, pass on to definitions of space, time, and

thought, and, having deduced the refutation he needed, would again

descend to the level of the original discussion.



In general the trait of Speranski's mentality which struck Prince

Andrew most was his absolute and unshakable belief in the power and

authority of reason. It was evident that the thought could never occur

to him which to Prince Andrew seemed so natural, namely, that it is

after all impossible to express all one thinks; and that he had

never felt the doubt, "Is not all I think and believe nonsense?" And

it was just this peculiarity of Speranski's mind that particularly

attracted Prince Andrew.



During the first period of their acquaintance Bolkonski felt a

passionate admiration for him similar to that which he had once felt

for Bonaparte. The fact that Speranski was the son of a village

priest, and that stupid people might meanly despise him on account

of his humble origin (as in fact many did), caused Prince Andrew to

cherish his sentiment for him the more, and unconsciously to

strengthen it.



On that first evening Bolkonski spent with him, having mentioned the

Commission for the Revision of the Code of Laws, Speranski told him

sarcastically that the Commission had existed for a hundred and

fifty years, had cost millions, and had done nothing except that

Rosenkampf had stuck labels on the corresponding paragraphs of the

different codes.



"And that is all the state has for the millions it has spent,"

said he. "We want to give the Senate new juridical powers, but we have

no laws. That is why it is a sin for men like you, Prince, not to

serve in these times!"

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Prince Andrew said that for that work an education in

jurisprudence was needed which he did not possess.



"But nobody possesses it, so what would you have? It is a vicious

circle from which we must break a way out."



A week later Prince Andrew was a member of the Committee on Army

Regulations and--what he had not at all expected--was chairman of a

section of the committee for the revision of the laws. At

Speranski's request he took the first part of the Civil Code that

was being drawn up and, with the aid of the Code Napoleon and the

Institutes of Justinian, he worked at formulating the section on

Personal Rights.









CHAPTER VII





Nearly two years before this, in 1808, Pierre on returning to

Petersburg after visiting his estates had involuntarily found

himself in a leading position among the Petersburg Freemasons. He

arranged dining and funeral lodge meetings, enrolled new members,

and busied himself uniting various lodges and acquiring authentic

charters. He gave money for the erection of temples and supplemented

as far as he could the collection of alms, in regard to which the

majority of members were stingy and irregular. He supported almost

singlehanded a poorhouse the order had founded in Petersburg.



His life meanwhile continued as before, with the same infatuations

and dissipations. He liked to dine and drink well, and though he

considered it immoral and humiliating could not resist the temptations

of the bachelor circles in which he moved.



Amid the turmoil of his activities and distractions, however, Pierre

at the end of a year began to feel that the more firmly he tried to

rest upon it, the more Masonic ground on which he stood gave way under

him. At the same time he felt that the deeper the ground sank under

him the closer bound he involuntarily became to the order. When he had

joined the Freemasons he had experienced the feeling of one who

confidently steps onto the smooth surface of a bog. When he put his

foot down it sank in. To make quite sure of the firmness the ground,

he put his other foot down and sank deeper still, became stuck in

it, and involuntarily waded knee-deep in the bog.



Joseph Alexeevich was not in Petersburg--he had of late stood

aside from the affairs of the Petersburg lodges, and lived almost

entirely in Moscow. All the members of the lodges were men Pierre knew

in ordinary life, and it was difficult for him to regard them merely

as Brothers in Freemasonry and not as Prince B. or Ivan Vasilevich D.,

whom he knew in society mostly as weak and insignificant men. Under

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the Masonic aprons and insignia he saw the uniforms and decorations at

which they aimed in ordinary life. Often after collecting alms, and

reckoning up twenty to thirty rubles received for the most part in

promises from a dozen members, of whom half were as well able to pay

as himself, Pierre remembered the Masonic vow in which each Brother

promised to devote all his belongings to his neighbor, and doubts on

which he tried not to dwell arose in his soul.



He divided the Brothers he knew into four categories. In the first

he put those who did not take an active part in the affairs of the

lodges or in human affairs, but were exclusively occupied with the

mystical science of the order: with questions of the threefold

designation of God, the three primordial elements--sulphur, mercury,

and salt--or the meaning of the square and all the various figures

of the temple of Solomon. Pierre respected this class of Brothers to

which the elder ones chiefly belonged, including, Pierre thought,

Joseph Alexeevich himself, but he did not share their interests. His

heart was not in the mystical aspect of Freemasonry.



In the second category Pierre reckoned himself and others like

him, seeking and vacillating, who had not yet found in Freemasonry a

straight and comprehensible path, but hoped to do so.



In the third category he included those Brothers (the majority)

who saw nothing in Freemasonry but the external forms and

ceremonies, and prized the strict performance of these forms without

troubling about their purport or significance. Such were Willarski and

even the Grand Master of the principal lodge.



Finally, to the fourth category also a great many Brothers belonged,

particularly those who had lately joined. These according to

Pierre's observations were men who had no belief in anything, nor

desire for anything, but joined the Freemasons merely to associate

with the wealthy young Brothers who were influential through their

connections or rank, and of whom there were very many in the lodge.



Pierre began to feel dissatisfied with what he was doing.

Freemasonry, at any rate as he saw it here, sometimes seemed to him

based merely on externals. He did not think of doubting Freemasonry

itself, but suspected that Russian Masonry had taken a wrong path

and deviated from its original principles. And so toward the end of

the year he went abroad to be initiated into the higher secrets of the

order.



In the summer of 1809 Pierre returned to Petersburg. Our

Freemasons knew from correspondence with those abroad that Bezukhov

had obtained the confidence of many highly placed persons, had been

initiated into many mysteries, had been raised to a higher grade,

and was bringing back with him much that might conduce to the

advantage of the Masonic cause in Russia. The Petersburg Freemasons

all came to see him, tried to ingratiate themselves with him, and it

seemed to them all that he was preparing something for them and

concealing it.



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A solemn meeting of the lodge of the second degree was convened,

at which Pierre promised to communicate to the Petersburg Brothers

what he had to deliver to them from the highest leaders of their

order. The meeting was a full one. After the usual ceremonies Pierre

rose and began his address.



"Dear Brothers," he began, blushing and stammering, with a written

speech in his hand, "it is not sufficient to observe our mysteries

in the seclusion of our lodge--we must act--act! We are drowsing,

but we must act." Pierre raised his notebook and began to read.



"For the dissemination of pure truth and to secure the triumph of

virtue," he read, "we must cleanse men from prejudice, diffuse

principles in harmony with the spirit of the times, undertake the

education of the young, unite ourselves in indissoluble bonds with the

wisest men, boldly yet prudently overcome superstitions, infidelity,

and folly, and form of those devoted to us a body linked together by

unity of purpose and possessed of authority and power.



"To attain this end we must secure a preponderance of virtue over

vice and must endeavor to secure that the honest man may, even in this

world, receive a lasting reward for his virtue. But in these great

endeavors we are gravely hampered by the political institutions of

today. What is to be done in these circumstances? To favor

revolutions, overthrow everything, repel force by force?... No! We are

very far from that. Every violent reform deserves censure, for it

quite fails to remedy evil while men remain what they are, and also

because wisdom needs no violence.



"The whole plan of our order should be based on the idea of

preparing men of firmness and virtue bound together by unity of

conviction--aiming at the punishment of vice and folly, and

patronizing talent and virtue: raising worthy men from the dust and

attaching them to our Brotherhood. Only then will our order have the

power unobtrusively to bind the hands of the protectors of disorder

and to control them without their being aware of it. In a word, we

must found a form of government holding universal sway, which should

be diffused over the whole world without destroying the bonds of

citizenship, and beside which all other governments can continue in

their customary course and do everything except what impedes the great

aim of our order, which is to obtain for virtue the victory over vice.

This aim was that of Christianity itself. It taught men to be wise and

good and for their own benefit to follow the example and instruction

of the best and wisest men.



"At that time, when everything was plunged in darkness, preaching

alone was of course sufficient. The novelty of Truth endowed her

with special strength, but now we need much more powerful methods.

It is now necessary that man, governed by his senses, should find in

virtue a charm palpable to those senses. It is impossible to eradicate

the passions; but we must strive to direct them to a noble aim, and it

is therefore necessary that everyone should be able to satisfy his

passions within the limits of virtue. Our order should provide means

to that end.

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"As soon as we have a certain number of worthy men in every state,

each of them again training two others and all being closely united,

everything will be possible for our order, which has already in secret

accomplished much for the welfare of mankind."



This speech not only made a strong impression, but created

excitement in the lodge. The majority of the Brothers, seeing in it

dangerous designs of Illuminism,* met it with a coldness that

surprised Pierre. The Grand Master began answering him, and Pierre

began developing his views with more and more warmth. It was long

since there had been so stormy a meeting. Parties were formed, some

accusing Pierre of Illuminism, others supporting him. At that

meeting he was struck for the first time by the endless variety of

men's minds, which prevents a truth from ever presenting itself

identically to two persons. Even those members who seemed to be on his

side understood him in their own way with limitations and

alterations he could not agree to, as what he always wanted most was

to convey his thought to others just as he himself understood it.





*The Illuminati sought to substitute republican for monarchical

institutions.





At the end of the meeting the Grand Master with irony and ill-will

reproved Bezukhov for his vehemence and said it was not love of virtue

alone, but also a love of strife that had moved him in the dispute.

Pierre did not answer him and asked briefly whether his proposal would

be accepted. He was told that it would not, and without waiting for

the usual formalities he left the lodge and went home.









CHAPTER VIII





Again Pierre was overtaken by the depression he so dreaded. For

three days after the delivery of his speech at the lodge he lay on a

sofa at home receiving no one and going nowhere.



It was just then that he received a letter from his wife, who

implored him to see her, telling him how grieved she was about him and

how she wished to devote her whole life to him.



At the end of the letter she informed him that in a few days she

would return to Petersburg from abroad.



Following this letter one of the Masonic Brothers whom Pierre

respected less than the others forced his way in to see him and,

turning the conversation upon Pierre's matrimonial affairs, by way

of fraternal advice expressed the opinion that his severity to his

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wife was wrong and that he was neglecting one of the first rules of

Freemasonry by not forgiving the penitent.



At the same time his mother-in-law, Prince Vasili's wife, sent to

him imploring him to come if only for a few minutes to discuss a

most important matter. Pierre saw that there was a conspiracy

against him and that they wanted to reunite him with his wife, and

in the mood he then was, this was not even unpleasant to him.

Nothing mattered to him. Nothing in life seemed to him of much

importance, and under the influence of the depression that possessed

him he valued neither his liberty nor his resolution to punish his

wife.



"No one is right and no one is to blame; so she too is not to

blame," he thought.



If he did not at once give his consent to a reunion with his wife,

it was only because in his state of depression he did not feel able to

take any step. Had his wife come to him, he would not have turned

her away. Compared to what preoccupied him, was it not a matter of

indifference whether he lived with his wife or not?



Without replying either to his wife or his mother-in-law, Pierre

late one night prepared for a journey and started for Moscow to see

Joseph Alexeevich. This is what he noted in his diary:





Moscow, 17th November



I have just returned from my benefactor, and hasten to write down

what I have experienced. Joseph Alexeevich is living poorly and has

for three years been suffering from a painful disease of the

bladder. No one has ever heard him utter a groan or a word of

complaint. From morning till late at night, except when he eats his

very plain food, he is working at science. He received me graciously

and made me sit down on the bed on which he lay. I made the sign of

the Knights of the East and of Jerusalem, and he responded in the same

manner, asking me with a mild smile what I had learned and gained in

the Prussian and Scottish lodges. I told him everything as best I

could, and told him what I had proposed to our Petersburg lodge, of

the bad reception I had encountered, and of my rupture with the

Brothers. Joseph Alexeevich, having remained silent and thoughtful for

a good while, told me his view of the matter, which at once lit up for

me my whole past and the future path I should follow. He surprised

me by asking whether I remembered the threefold aim of the order:

(1) The preservation and study of the mystery. (2) The purification

and reformation of oneself for its reception, and (3) The

improvement of the human race by striving for such purification. Which

is the principal aim of these three? Certainly self-reformation and

self-purification. Only to this aim can we always strive independently

of circumstances. But at the same time just this aim demands the

greatest efforts of us; and so, led astray by pride, losing sight of

this aim, we occupy ourselves either with the mystery which in our

impurity we are unworthy to receive, or seek the reformation of the

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human race while ourselves setting an example of baseness and

profligacy. Illuminism is not a pure doctrine, just because it is

attracted by social activity and puffed up by pride. On this ground

Joseph Alexeevich condemned my speech and my whole activity, and in

the depth of my soul I agreed with him. Talking of my family affairs

he said to me, "the chief duty of a true Mason, as I have told you,

lies in perfecting himself. We often think that by removing all the

difficulties of our life we shall more quickly reach our aim, but on

the contrary, my dear sir, it is only in the midst of worldly cares

that we can attain our three chief aims: (1) Self-knowledge--for man

can only know himself by comparison, (2) Self-perfecting, which can

only be attained by conflict, and (3) The attainment of the chief

virtue--love of death. Only the vicissitudes of life can show us its

vanity and develop our innate love of death or of rebirth to a new

life." These words are all the more remarkable because, in spite of

his great physical sufferings, Joseph Alexeevich is never weary of

life though he loves death, for which--in spite of the purity and

loftiness of his inner man--he does not yet feel himself

sufficiently prepared. My benefactor then explained to me fully the

meaning of the Great Square of creation and pointed out to me that the

numbers three and seven are the basis of everything. He advised me not

to avoid intercourse with the Petersburg Brothers, but to take up only

second-grade posts in the lodge, to try, while diverting the

Brothers from pride, to turn them toward the true path

self-knowledge and self-perfecting. Besides this he advised me for

myself personally above all to keep a watch over myself, and to that

end he gave me a notebook, the one I am now writing in and in which

I will in future note down all my actions.





Petersburg, 23rd November



I am again living with my wife. My mother-in-law came to me in tears

and said that Helene was here and that she implored me to hear her;

that she was innocent and unhappy at my desertion, and much more. I

knew that if I once let myself see her I should not have strength to

go on refusing what she wanted. In my perplexity I did not know

whose aid and advice to seek. Had my benefactor been here he would

have told me what to do. I went to my room and reread Joseph

Alexeevich's letters and recalled my conversations with him, and

deduced from it all that I ought not to refuse a suppliant, and

ought to reach a helping hand to everyone--especially to one so

closely bound to me--and that I must bear my cross. But if I forgive

her for the sake of doing right, then let union with her have only a

spiritual aim. That is what I decided, and what I wrote to Joseph

Alexeevich. I told my wife that I begged her to forget the past, to

forgive me whatever wrong I may have done her, and that I had

nothing to forgive. It gave me joy to tell her this. She need not know

how hard it was for me to see her again. I have settled on the upper

floor of this big house and am experiencing a happy feeling of

regeneration.









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CHAPTER IX





At that time, as always happens, the highest society that met at

court and at the grand balls was divided into several circles, each

with its own particular tone. The largest of these was the French

circle of the Napoleonic alliance, the circle of Count Rumyantsev

and Caulaincourt. In this group Helene, as soon as she had settled

in Petersburg with her husband, took a very prominent place. She was

visited by the members of the French embassy and by many belonging

to that circle and noted for their intellect and polished manners.



Helene had been at Erfurt during the famous meeting of the

Emperors and had brought from there these connections with the

Napoleonic notabilities. At Erfurt her success had been brilliant.

Napoleon himself had noticed her in the theater and said of her:

"C'est un superbe animal."* Her success as a beautiful and elegant

woman did not surprise Pierre, for she had become even handsomer

than before. What did surprise him was that during these last two

years his wife had succeeded in gaining the reputation "d' une femme

charmante, aussi spirituelle que belle."*[2] The distinguished

Prince de Ligne wrote her eight-page letters. Bilibin saved up his

epigrams to produce them in Countess Bezukhova's presence. To be

received in the Countess Bezukhova's salon was regarded as a diploma

of intellect. Young men read books before attending Helene's evenings,

to have something to say in her salon, and secretaries of the embassy,

and even ambassadors, confided diplomatic secrets to her, so that in a

way Helene was a power. Pierre, who knew she was very stupid,

sometimes attended, with a strange feeling of perplexity and fear, her

evenings and dinner parties, where politics, poetry, and philosophy

were discussed. At these parties his feelings were like those of a

conjuror who always expects his trick to be found out at any moment.

But whether because stupidity was just what was needed to run such a

salon, or because those who were deceived found pleasure in the

deception, at any rate it remained unexposed and Helene Bezukhova's

reputation as a lovely and clever woman became so firmly established

that she could say the emptiest and stupidest things and everybody

would go into raptures over every word of hers and look for a profound

meaning in it of which she herself had no conception.





*"That's a superb animal."



*[2] "Of a charming woman, as witty as she is lovely."





Pierre was just the husband needed for a brilliant society woman. He

was that absent-minded crank, a grand seigneur husband who was in no

one's way, and far from spoiling the high tone and general

impression of the drawing room, he served, by the contrast he

presented to her, as an advantageous background to his elegant and

tactful wife. Pierre during the last two years, as a result of his

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continual absorption in abstract interests and his sincere contempt

for all else, had acquired in his wife's circle, which did not

interest him, that air of unconcern, indifference, and benevolence

toward all, which cannot be acquired artificially and therefore

inspires involuntary respect. He entered his wife's drawing room as

one enters a theater, was acquainted with everybody, equally pleased

to see everyone, and equally indifferent to them all. Sometimes he

joined in a conversation which interested him and, regardless of

whether any "gentlemen of the embassy" were present or not,

lispingly expressed his views, which were sometimes not at all in

accord with the accepted tone of the moment. But the general opinion

concerning the queer husband of "the most distinguished woman in

Petersburg" was so well established that no one took his freaks

seriously.



Among the many young men who frequented her house every day, Boris

Drubetskoy, who had already achieved great success in the service, was

the most intimate friend of the Bezukhov household since Helene's

return from Erfurt. Helene spoke of him as "mon page" and treated

him like a child. Her smile for him was the same as for everybody, but

sometimes that smile made Pierre uncomfortable. Toward him Boris

behaved with a particularly dignified and sad deference. This shade of

deference also disturbed Pierre. He had suffered so painfully three

years before from the mortification to which his wife had subjected

him that he now protected himself from the danger of its repetition,

first by not being a husband to his wife, and secondly by not allowing

himself to suspect.



"No, now that she has become a bluestocking she has finally

renounced her former infatuations," he told himself. "There has

never been an instance of a bluestocking being carried away by affairs

of the heart"--a statement which, though gathered from an unknown

source, he believed implicitly. Yet strange to say Boris' presence

in his wife's drawing room (and he was almost always there) had a

physical effect upon Pierre; it constricted his limbs and destroyed

the unconsciousness and freedom of his movements.



"What a strange antipathy," thought Pierre, "yet I used to like

him very much."



In the eyes of the world Pierre was a great gentleman, the rather

blind and absurd husband of a distinguished wife, a clever crank who

did nothing but harmed nobody and was a first-rate, good-natured

fellow. But a complex and difficult process of internal development

was taking place all this time in Pierre's soul, revealing much to him

and causing him many spiritual doubts and joys.









CHAPTER X





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Pierre went on with his diary, and this is what he wrote in it

during that time:





24th November



Got up at eight, read the Scriptures, then went to my duties. [By

Joseph Alexeevich's advice Pierre had entered the service of the state

and served on one of the committees.] Returned home for dinner and

dined alone--the countess had many visitors I do not like. I ate and

drank moderately and after dinner copied out some passages for the

Brothers. In the evening I went down to the countess and told a

funny story about B., and only remembered that I ought not to have

done so when everybody laughed loudly at it.



I am going to bed with a happy and tranquil mind. Great God, help me

to walk in Thy paths, (1) to conquer anger by calmness and

deliberation, (2) to vanquish lust by self-restraint and repulsion,

(3) to withdraw from worldliness, but not avoid (a) the service of the

state, (b) family duties, (c) relations with my friends, and the

management of my affairs.





27th November



I got up late. On waking I lay long in bed yielding to sloth. O God,

help and strengthen me that I may walk in Thy ways! Read the

Scriptures, but without proper feeling. Brother Urusov came and we

talked about worldly vanities. He told me of the Emperor's new

projects. I began to criticize them, but remembered my rules and my

benefactor's words--that a true Freemason should be a zealous worker

for the state when his aid is required and a quiet onlooker when not

called on to assist. My tongue is my enemy. Brothers G. V. and O.

visited me and we had a preliminary talk about the reception of a

new Brother. They laid on me the duty of Rhetor. I feel myself weak

and unworthy. Then our talk turned to the interpretation of the

seven pillars and steps of the Temple, the seven sciences, the seven

virtues, the seven vices, and the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit.

Brother O. was very eloquent. In the evening the admission took place.

The new decoration of the Premises contributed much to the

magnificence of the spectacle. It was Boris Drubetskoy who was

admitted. I nominated him and was the Rhetor. A strange feeling

agitated me all the time I was alone with him in the dark chamber. I

caught myself harboring a feeling of hatred toward him which I

vainly tried to overcome. That is why I should really like to save him

from evil and lead him into the path of truth, but evil thoughts of

him did not leave me. It seemed to me that his object in entering

the Brotherhood was merely to be intimate and in favor with members of

our lodge. Apart from the fact that he had asked me several times

whether N. and S. were members of our lodge (a question to which I

could not reply) and that according to my observation he is

incapable of feeling respect for our holy order and is too preoccupied

and satisfied with the outer man to desire spiritual improvement, I

had no cause to doubt him, but he seemed to me insincere, and all

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the time I stood alone with him in the dark temple it seemed to me

that he was smiling contemptuously at my words, and I wished really to

stab his bare breast with the sword I held to it. I could not be

eloquent, nor could I frankly mention my doubts to the Brothers and to

the Grand Master. Great Architect of Nature, help me to find the

true path out of the labyrinth of lies!





After this, three pages were left blank in the diary, and then

the following was written:





I have had a long and instructive talk alone with Brother V., who

advised me to hold fast by brother A. Though I am unworthy, much was

revealed to me. Adonai is the name of the creator of the world. Elohim

is the name of the ruler of all. The third name is the name

unutterable which means the All. Talks with Brother V. strengthen,

refresh, and support me in the path of virtue. In his presence doubt

has no place. The distinction between the poor teachings of mundane

science and our sacred all-embracing teaching is clear to me. Human

sciences dissect everything to comprehend it, and kill everything to

examine it. In the holy science of our order all is one, all is

known in its entirety and life. The Trinity--the three elements of

matter--are sulphur, mercury, and salt. Sulphur is of an oily and

fiery nature; in combination with salt by its fiery nature it

arouses a desire in the latter by means of which it attracts

mercury, seizes it, holds it, and in combination produces other

bodies. Mercury is a fluid, volatile, spiritual essence. Christ, the

Holy Spirit, Him!...





3rd December



Awoke late, read the Scriptures but was apathetic. Afterwards went

and paced up and down the large hall. I wished to meditate, but

instead my imagination pictured an occurrence of four years ago,

when Dolokhov, meeting me in Moscow after our duel, said he hoped I

was enjoying perfect peace of mind in spite of my wife's absence. At

the time I gave him no answer. Now I recalled every detail of that

meeting and in my mind gave him the most malevolent and bitter

replies. I recollected myself and drove away that thought only when

I found myself glowing with anger, but I did not sufficiently

repent. Afterwards Boris Drubetskoy came and began relating various

adventures. His coming vexed me from the first, and I said something

disagreeable to him. He replied. I flared up and said much that was

unpleasant and even rude to him. He became silent, and I recollected

myself only when it was too late. My God, I cannot get on with him

at all. The cause of this is my egotism. I set myself above him and so

become much worse than he, for he is lenient to my rudeness while I on

the contrary nourish contempt for him. O God, grant that in his

presence I may rather see my own vileness, and behave so that he too

may benefit. After dinner I fell asleep and as I was drowsing off I

clearly heard a voice saying in my left ear, "Thy day!"



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I dreamed that I was walking in the dark and was suddenly surrounded

by dogs, but I went on undismayed. Suddenly a smallish dog seized my

left thigh with its teeth and would not let go. I began to throttle it

with my hands. Scarcely had I torn it off before another, a bigger

one, began biting me. I lifted it up, but the higher I lifted it the

bigger and heavier it grew. And suddenly Brother A. came and, taking

my arm, led me to a building to enter which we had to pass along a

narrow plank. I stepped on it, but it bent and gave way and I began to

clamber up a fence which I could scarcely reach with my hands. After

much effort I dragged myself up, so that my leg hung down on one

side and my body on the other. I looked round and saw Brother A.

standing on the fence and pointing me to a broad avenue and garden,

and in the garden was a large and beautiful building. I woke up. O

Lord, great Architect of Nature, help me to tear from myself these

dogs--my passions especially the last, which unites in itself the

strength of all the former ones, and aid me to enter that temple of

virtue to a vision of which I attained in my dream.





7th December



I dreamed that Joseph Alexeevich was sitting in my house, and that I

was very glad and wished to entertain him. It seemed as if I chattered

incessantly with other people and suddenly remembered that this

could not please him, and I wished to come close to him and embrace

him. But as soon as I drew near I saw that his face had changed and

grown young, and he was quietly telling me something about the

teaching of our order, but so softly that I could not hear it. Then it

seemed that we all left the room and something strange happened. We

were sitting or lying on the floor. He was telling me something, and I

wished to show him my sensibility, and not listening to what he was

saying I began picturing to myself the condition of my inner man and

the grace of God sanctifying me. And tears came into my eyes, and I

was glad he noticed this. But he looked at me with vexation and jumped

up, breaking off his remarks. I felt abashed and asked whether what he

had been saying did not concern me; but he did not reply, gave me a

kind look, and then we suddenly found ourselves in my bedroom where

there is a double bed. He lay down on the edge of it and I burned with

longing to caress him and lie down too. And he said, "Tell me

frankly what is your chief temptation? Do you know it? I think you

know it already." Abashed by this question, I replied that sloth was

my chief temptation. He shook his head incredulously; and even more

abashed, I said that though I was living with my wife as he advised, I

was not living with her as her husband. To this he replied that one

should not deprive a wife of one's embraces and gave me to

understand that that was my duty. But I replied that I should be

ashamed to do it, and suddenly everything vanished. And I awoke and

found in my mind the text from the Gospel: "The life was the light

of men. And the light shineth in darkness; and the darkness

comprehended it not." Joseph Alexeevich's face had looked young and

bright. That day I received a letter from my benefactor in which he

wrote about "conjugal duties."





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9th December



I had a dream from which I awoke with a throbbing heart. I saw

that I was in Moscow in my house, in the big sitting room, and

Joseph Alexeevich came in from the drawing room. I seemed to know at

once that the process of regeneration had already taken place in

him, and I rushed to meet him. I embraced him and kissed his hands,

and he said, "Hast thou noticed that my face is different?" I looked

at him, still holding him in my arms, and saw that his face was young,

but that he had no hair on his head and his features were quite

changed. And I said, "I should have known you had I met you by

chance," and I thought to myself, "Am I telling the truth?" And

suddenly I saw him lying like a dead body; then he gradually recovered

and went with me into my study carrying a large book of sheets of

drawing paper; I said, "I drew that," and he answered by bowing his

head. I opened the book, and on all the pages there were excellent

drawings. And in my dream I knew that these drawings represented the

love adventures of the soul with its beloved. And on its pages I saw a

beautiful representation of a maiden in transparent garments and

with a transparent body, flying up to the clouds. And I seemed to know

that this maiden was nothing else than a representation of the Song of

Songs. And looking at those drawings I dreamed I felt that I was doing

wrong, but could not tear myself away from them. Lord, help me! My

God, if Thy forsaking me is Thy doing, Thy will be done; but if I am

myself the cause, teach me what I should do! I shall perish of my

debauchery if Thou utterly desertest me!









CHAPTER XI





The Rostovs' monetary affairs had not improved during the two

years they had spent in the country.



Though Nicholas Rostov had kept firmly to his resolution and was

still serving modestly in an obscure regiment, spending

comparatively little, the way of life at Otradnoe--Mitenka's

management of affairs, in particular--was such that the debts

inevitably increased every year. The only resource obviously

presenting itself to the old count was to apply for an official

post, so he had come to Petersburg to look for one and also, as he

said, to let the lassies enjoy themselves for the last time.



Soon after their arrival in Petersburg Berg proposed to Vera and was

accepted.



Though in Moscow the Rostovs belonged to the best society without

themselves giving it a thought, yet in Petersburg their circle of

acquaintances was a mixed and indefinite one. In Petersburg they

were provincials, and the very people they had entertained in Moscow

without inquiring to what set they belonged, here looked down on them.

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The Rostovs lived in the same hospitable way in Petersburg as in

Moscow, and the most diverse people met at their suppers. Country

neighbors from Otradnoe, impoverished old squires and their daughters,

Peronskaya a maid of honor, Pierre Bezukhov, and the son of their

district postmaster who had obtained a post in Petersburg. Among the

men who very soon became frequent visitors at the Rostovs' house in

Petersburg were Boris, Pierre whom the count had met in the street and

dragged home with him, and Berg who spent whole days at the Rostovs'

and paid the eldest daughter, Countess Vera, the attentions a young

man pays when he intends to propose.



Not in vain had Berg shown everybody his right hand wounded at

Austerlitz and held a perfectly unnecessary sword in his left. He

narrated that episode so persistently and with so important an air

that everyone believed in the merit and usefulness of his deed, and he

had obtained two decorations for Austerlitz.



In the Finnish war he also managed to distinguish himself. He had

picked up the scrap of a grenade that had killed an aide-de-camp

standing near the commander in chief and had taken it to his

commander. Just as he had done after Austerlitz, he related this

occurrence at such length and so insistently that everyone again

believed it had been necessary to do this, and he received two

decorations for the Finnish war also. In 1809 he was a captain in

the Guards, wore medals, and held some special lucrative posts in

Petersburg.



Though some skeptics smiled when told of Berg's merits, it could not

be denied that he was a painstaking and brave officer, on excellent

terms with his superiors, and a moral young man with a brilliant

career before him and an assured position in society.



Four years before, meeting a German comrade in the stalls of a

Moscow theater, Berg had pointed out Vera Rostova to him and had

said in German, "das soll mein Weib werden,"* and from that moment had

made up his mind to marry her. Now in Petersburg, having considered

the Rostovs' position and his own, he decided that the time had come

to propose.





*"That girl shall be my wife."





Berg's proposal was at first received with a perplexity that was not

flattering to him. At first it seemed strange that the son of an

obscure Livonian gentleman should propose marriage to a Countess

Rostova; but Berg's chief characteristic was such a naive and good

natured egotism that the Rostovs involuntarily came to think it

would be a good thing, since he himself was so firmly convinced that

it was good, indeed excellent. Moreover, the Rostovs' affairs were

seriously embarrassed, as the suitor could not but know; and above

all, Vera was twenty-four, had been taken out everywhere, and though

she was certainly good-looking and sensible, no one up to now had

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proposed to her. So they gave their consent.



"You see," said Berg to his comrade, whom he called "friend" only

because he knew that everyone has friends, "you see, I have considered

it all, and should not marry if I had not thought it all out or if

it were in any way unsuitable. But on the contrary, my papa and

mamma are now provided for--I have arranged that rent for them in

the Baltic Provinces--and I can live in Petersburg on my pay, and with

her fortune and my good management we can get along nicely. I am not

marrying for money--I consider that dishonorable--but a wife should

bring her share and a husband his. I have my position in the

service, she has connections and some means. In our times that is

worth something, isn't it? But above all, she is a handsome, estimable

girl, and she loves me..."



Berg blushed and smiled.



"And I love her, because her character is sensible and very good.

Now the other sister, though they are the same family, is quite

different--an unpleasant character and has not the same

intelligence. She is so... you know?... Unpleasant... But my

fiancee!... Well, you will be coming," he was going to say, "to dine,"

but changed his mind and said "to take tea with us," and quickly

doubling up his tongue he blew a small round ring of tobacco smoke,

perfectly embodying his dream of happiness.



After the first feeling of perplexity aroused in the parents by

Berg's proposal, the holiday tone of joyousness usual at such times

took possession of the family, but the rejoicing was external and

insincere. In the family's feeling toward this wedding a certain

awkwardness and constraint was evident, as if they were ashamed of not

having loved Vera sufficiently and of being so ready to get her off

their hands. The old count felt this most. He would probably have been

unable to state the cause of his embarrassment, but it resulted from

the state of his affairs. He did not know at all how much he had, what

his debts amounted to, or what dowry he could give Vera. When his

daughters were born he had assigned to each of them, for her dowry, an

estate with three hundred serfs; but one of these estates had

already been sold, and the other was mortgaged and the interest so

much in arrears that it would have to be sold, so that it was

impossible to give it to Vera. Nor had he any money.



Berg had already been engaged a month, and only a week remained

before the wedding, but the count had not yet decided in his own

mind the question of the dowry, nor spoken to his wife about it. At

one time the count thought of giving her the Ryazan estate or of

selling a forest, at another time of borrowing money on a note of

hand. A few days before the wedding Berg entered the count's study

early one morning and, with a pleasant smile, respectfully asked his

future father-in-law to let him know what Vera's dowry would be. The

count was so disconcerted by this long-foreseen inquiry that without

consideration he gave the first reply that came into his head. "I like

your being businesslike about it.... I like it. You shall be

satisfied...."

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And patting Berg on the shoulder he got up, wishing to end the

conversation. But Berg, smiling pleasantly, explained that if he did

not know for certain how much Vera would have and did not receive at

least part of the dowry in advance, he would have to break matters

off.



"Because, consider, Count--if I allowed myself to marry now

without having definite means to maintain my wife, I should be

acting badly...."



The conversation ended by the count, who wished to be generous and

to avoid further importunity, saying that he would give a note of hand

for eighty thousand rubles. Berg smiled meekly, kissed the count on

the shoulder, and said that he was very grateful, but that it was

impossible for him to arrange his new life without receiving thirty

thousand in ready money. "Or at least twenty thousand, Count," he

added, "and then a note of hand for only sixty thousand."



"Yes, yes, all right!" said the count hurriedly. "Only excuse me, my

dear fellow, I'll give you twenty thousand and a note of hand for

eighty thousand as well. Yes, yes! Kiss me."









CHAPTER XII





Natasha was sixteen and it was the year 1809, the very year to which

she had counted on her fingers with Boris after they had kissed four

years ago. Since then she had not seen him. Before Sonya and her

mother, if Boris happened to be mentioned, she spoke quite freely of

that episode as of some childish, long-forgotten matter that was not

worth mentioning. But in the secret depths of her soul the question

whether her engagement to Boris was a jest or an important, binding

promise tormented her.



Since Boris left Moscow in 1805 to join the army he had had not seen

the Rostovs. He had been in Moscow several times, and had passed

near Otradnoe, but had never been to see them.



Sometimes it occurred to Natasha that he not wish to see her, and

this conjecture was confirmed by the sad tone in which her elders

spoke of him.



"Nowadays old friends are not remembered," the countess would say

when Boris was mentioned.



Anna Mikhaylovna also had of late visited them less frequently,

seemed to hold herself with particular dignity, and always spoke

rapturously and gratefully of the merits of her son and the

brilliant career on which he had entered. When the Rostovs came to

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Petersburg Boris called on them.



He drove to their house in some agitation. The memory of Natasha was

his most poetic recollection. But he went with the firm intention of

letting her and her parents feel that the childish relations between

himself and Natasha could not be binding either on her or on him. He

had a brilliant position in society thanks to his intimacy with

Countess Bezukhova, a brilliant position in the service thanks to

the patronage of an important personage whose complete confidence he

enjoyed, and he was beginning to make plans for marrying one of the

richest heiresses in Petersburg, plans which might very easily be

realized. When he entered the Rostovs' drawing room Natasha was in her

own room. When she heard of his arrival she almost ran into the

drawing room, flushed and beaming with a more than cordial smile.



Boris remembered Natasha in a short dress, with dark eyes shining

from under her curls and boisterous, childish laughter, as he had

known her four years before; and so he was taken aback when quite a

different Natasha entered, and his face expressed rapturous

astonishment. This expression on his face pleased Natasha.



"Well, do you recognize your little madcap playmate?" asked the

countess.



Boris kissed Natasha's hand and said that he was astonished at the

change in her.



"How handsome you have grown!"



"I should think so!" replied Natasha's laughing eyes.



"And is Papa older?" she asked.



Natasha sat down and, without joining in Boris' conversation with

the countess, silently and minutely studied her childhood's suitor. He

felt the weight of that resolute and affectionate scrutiny and glanced

at her occasionally.



Boris' uniform, spurs, tie, and the way his hair was brushed were

all comme il faut and in the latest fashion. This Natasha noticed at

once. He sat rather sideways in the armchair next to the countess,

arranging with his right hand the cleanest of gloves that fitted his

left hand like a skin, and he spoke with a particularly refined

compression of his lips about the amusements of the highest Petersburg

society, recalling with mild irony old times in Moscow and Moscow

acquaintances. It was not accidentally, Natasha felt, that he alluded,

when speaking of the highest aristocracy, to an ambassador's ball he

had attended, and to invitations he had received from N.N. and S.S.



All this time Natasha sat silent, glancing up at him from under

her brows. This gaze disturbed and confused Boris more and more. He

looked round more frequently toward her, and broke off in what he

was saying. He did not stay more than ten minutes, then rose and

took his leave. The same inquisitive, challenging, and rather

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mocking eyes still looked at him. After his first visit Boris said

to himself that Natasha attracted him just as much as ever, but that

he must not yield to that feeling, because to marry her, a girl almost

without fortune, would mean ruin to his career, while to renew their

former relations without intending to marry her would be dishonorable.

Boris made up his mind to avoid meeting Natasha, but despite that

resolution he called again a few days later and began calling often

and spending whole days at the Rostovs'. It seemed to him that he

ought to have an explanation with Natasha and tell her that the old

times must be forgotten, that in spite of everything... she could

not be his wife, that he had no means, and they would never let her

marry him. But he failed to do so and felt awkward about entering on

such an explanation. From day to day he became more and more

entangled. It seemed to her mother and Sonya that Natasha was in

love with Boris as of old. She sang him his favorite songs, showed him

her album, making him write in it, did not allow him to allude to

the past, letting it be understood how was the present; and every

day he went away in a fog, without having said what he meant to, and

not knowing what he was doing or why he came, or how it would all end.

He left off visiting Helene and received reproachful notes from her

every day, and yet he continued to spend whole days with the Rostovs.









CHAPTER XIII





One night when the old countess, in nightcap and dressing jacket,

without her false curls, and with her poor little knob of hair showing

under her white cotton cap, knelt sighing and groaning on a rug and

bowing to the ground in prayer, her door creaked and Natasha, also

in a dressing jacket with slippers on her bare feet and her hair in

curlpapers, ran in. The countess--her prayerful mood dispelled--looked

round and frowned. She was finishing her last prayer: "Can it be

that this couch will be my grave?" Natasha, flushed and eager,

seeing her mother in prayer, suddenly checked her rush, half sat down,

and unconsciously put out her tongue as if chiding herself. Seeing

that her mother was still praying she ran on tiptoe to the bed and,

rapidly slipping one little foot against the other, pushed off her

slippers and jumped onto the bed the countess had feared might

become her grave. This couch was high, with a feather bed and five

pillows each smaller than the one below. Natasha jumped on it, sank

into the feather bed, rolled over to the wall, and began snuggling

up the bedclothes as she settled down, raising her knees to her

chin, kicking out and laughing almost inaudibly, now covering

herself up head and all, and now peeping at her mother. The countess

finished her prayers and came to the bed with a stern face, but

seeing, that Natasha's head was covered, she smiled in her kind,

weak way.



"Now then, now then!" said she.



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"Mamma, can we have a talk? Yes?" said Natasha. "Now, just one on

your throat and another... that'll do!" And seizing her mother round

the neck, she kissed her on the throat. In her behavior to her

mother Natasha seemed rough, but she was so sensitive and tactful that

however she clasped her mother she always managed to do it without

hurting her or making her feel uncomfortable or displeased.



"Well, what is it tonight?" said the mother, having arranged her

pillows and waited until Natasha, after turning over a couple of

times, had settled down beside her under the quilt, spread out her

arms, and assumed a serious expression.



These visits of Natasha's at night before the count returned from

his club were one of the greatest pleasures of both mother, and

daughter.



"What is it tonight?--But I have to tell you..."



Natasha put her hand on her mother's mouth.



"About Boris... I know," she said seriously; "that's what I have

come about. Don't say it--I know. No, do tell me!" and she removed her

hand. "Tell me, Mamma! He's nice?"



"Natasha, you are sixteen. At your age I was married. You say

Boris is nice. He is very nice, and I love him like a son. But what

then?... What are you thinking about? You have quite turned his

head, I can see that...."



As she said this the countess looked round at her daughter.

Natasha was lying looking steadily straight before her at one of the

mahogany sphinxes carved on the corners of the bedstead, so that the

countess only saw her daughter's face in profile. That face struck her

by its peculiarly serious and concentrated expression.



Natasha was listening and considering.



"Well, what then?" said she.



"You have quite turned his head, and why? What do you want of him?

You know you can't marry him."



"Why not?" said Natasha, without changing her position.



"Because he is young, because he is poor, because he is a

relation... and because you yourself don't love him."



"How do you know?"



"I know. It is not right, darling!"



"But if I want to..." said Natasha.



"Leave off talking nonsense," said the countess.

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"But if I want to..."



"Natasha, I am in earnest..."



Natasha did not let her finish. She drew the countess' large hand to

her, kissed it on the back and then on the palm, then again turned

it over and began kissing first one knuckle, then the space between

the knuckles, then the next knuckle, whispering, "January, February,

March, April, May. Speak, Mamma, why don't you say anything? Speak!"

said she, turning to her mother, who was tenderly gazing at her

daughter and in that contemplation seemed to have forgotten all she

had wished to say.



"It won't do, my love! Not everyone will understand this

friendship dating from your childish days, and to see him so

intimate with you may injure you in the eyes of other young men who

visit us, and above all it torments him for nothing. He may already

have found a suitable and wealthy match, and now he's half crazy."



"Crazy?" repeated Natasha.



"I'll tell you some things about myself. I had a cousin..."



"I know! Cyril Matveich... but he is old."



"He was not always old. But this is what I'll do, Natasha, I'll have

a talk with Boris. He need not come so often...."



"Why not, if he likes to?"



"Because I know it will end in nothing...."



"How can you know? No, Mamma, don't speak to him! What nonsense!"

said Natasha in the tone of one being deprived of her property. "Well,

I won't marry, but let him come if he enjoys it and I enjoy it."

Natasha smiled and looked at her mother. "Not to marry, but just

so," she added.



"How so, my pet?"



"Just so. There's no need for me to marry him. But... just so."



"Just so, just so," repeated the countess, and shaking all over, she

went off into a good humored, unexpected, elderly laugh.



"Don't laugh, stop!" cried Natasha. "You're shaking the whole bed!

You're awfully like me, just such another giggler.... Wait..." and she

seized the countess' hands and kissed a knuckle of the little

finger, saying, "June," and continued, kissing, "July, August," on the

other hand. "But, Mamma, is he very much in love? What do you think?

Was anybody ever so much in love with you? And he's very nice, very,

very nice. Only not quite my taste--he is so narrow, like the

dining-room clock.... Don't you understand? Narrow, you know--gray,

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light gray..."



"What rubbish you're talking!" said the countess.



Natasha continued: "Don't you really understand? Nicholas would

understand.... Bezukhov, now, is blue, dark-blue and red, and he is

square."



"You flirt with him too," said the countess, laughing.



"No, he is a Freemason, I have found out. He is fine, dark-blue

and red.... How can I explain it to you?"



"Little countess!" the count's voice called from behind the door.

"You're not asleep?" Natasha jumped up, snatched up her slippers,

and ran barefoot to her own room.



It was a long time before she could sleep. She kept thinking that no

one could understand all that she understood and all there was in her.



"Sonya?" she thought, glancing at that curled-up, sleeping little

kitten with her enormous plait of hair. "No, how could she? She's

virtuous. She fell in love with Nicholas and does not wish to know

anything more. Even Mamma does not understand. It is wonderful how

clever I am and how... charming she is," she went on, speaking of

herself in the third person, and imagining it was some very wise

man--the wisest and best of men--who was saying it of her. "There is

everything, everything in her," continued this man. "She is

unusually intelligent, charming... and then she is pretty,

uncommonly pretty, and agile--she swims and rides splendidly... and

her voice! One can really say it's a wonderful voice!"



She hummed a scrap from her favorite opera by Cherubini, threw

herself on her bed, laughed at the pleasant thought that she would

immediately fall asleep, called Dunyasha the maid to put out the

candle, and before Dunyasha had left the room had already passed

into yet another happier world of dreams, where everything was as

light and beautiful as in reality, and even more so because it was

different.





Next day the countess called Boris aside and had a talk with him,

after which he ceased coming to the Rostovs'.









CHAPTER XIV





On the thirty-first of December, New Year's Eve, 1809 --10 an old

grandee of Catherine's day was giving a ball and midnight supper.

The diplomatic corps and the Emperor himself were to be present.

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The grandee's well-known mansion on the English Quay glittered

with innumerable lights. Police were stationed at the brightly lit

entrance which was carpeted with red baize, and not only gendarmes but

dozens of police officers and even the police master himself stood

at the porch. Carriages kept driving away and fresh ones arriving,

with red-liveried footmen and footmen in plumed hats. From the

carriages emerged men wearing uniforms, stars, and ribbons, while

ladies in satin and ermine cautiously descended the carriage steps

which were let down for them with a clatter, and then walked hurriedly

and noiselessly over the baize at the entrance.



Almost every time a new carriage drove up a whisper ran through

the crowd and caps were doffed.



"The Emperor?... No, a minister.... prince... ambassador. Don't

you see the plumes?..." was whispered among the crowd.



One person, better dressed than the rest, seemed to know everyone

and mentioned by name the greatest dignitaries of the day.



A third of the visitors had already arrived, but the Rostovs, who

were to be present, were still hurrying to get dressed.



There had been many discussions and preparations for this ball in

the Rostov family, many fears that the invitation would not arrive,

that the dresses would not be ready, or that something would not be

arranged as it should be.



Marya Ignatevna Peronskaya, a thin and shallow maid of honor at

the court of the Dowager Empress, who was a friend and relation of the

countess and piloted the provincial Rostovs in Petersburg high

society, was to accompany them to the ball.



They were to call for her at her house in the Taurida Gardens at ten

o'clock, but it was already five minutes to ten, and the girls were

not yet dressed.



Natasha was going to her first grand ball. She had got up at eight

that morning and had been in a fever of excitement and activity all

day. All her powers since morning had been concentrated on ensuring

that they all--she herself, Mamma, and Sonya--should be as well

dressed as possible. Sonya and her mother put themselves entirely in

her hands. The countess was to wear a claret-colored velvet dress, and

the two girls white gauze over pink silk slips, with roses on their

bodices and their hair dressed a la grecque.



Everything essential had already been done; feet, hands, necks,

and ears washed, perfumed, and powdered, as befits a ball; the

openwork silk stockings and white satin shoes with ribbons were

already on; the hairdressing was almost done. Sonya was finishing

dressing and so was the countess, but Natasha, who had bustled about

helping them all, was behindhand. She was still sitting before a

looking-glass with a dressing jacket thrown over her slender

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shoulders. Sonya stood ready dressed in the middle of the room and,

pressing the head of a pin till it hurt her dainty finger, was

fixing on a last ribbon that squeaked as the pin went through it.



"That's not the way, that's not the way, Sonya!" cried Natasha

turning her head and clutching with both hands at her hair which the

maid who was dressing it had not time to release. "That bow is not

right. Come here!"



Sonya sat down and Natasha pinned the ribbon on differently.



"Allow me, Miss! I can't do it like that," said the maid who was

holding Natasha's hair.



"Oh, dear! Well then, wait. That's right, Sonya."



"Aren't you ready? It is nearly ten," came the countess' voice.



"Directly! Directly! And you, Mamma?"



"I have only my cap to pin on."



"Don't do it without me!" called Natasha. "You won't do it right."



"But it's already ten."



They had decided to be at the ball by half past ten, and Natasha had

still to get dressed and they had to call at the Taurida Gardens.



When her hair was done, Natasha, in her short petticoat from under

which her dancing shoes showed, and in her mother's dressing jacket,

ran up to Sonya, scrutinized her, and then ran to her mother.

Turning her mother's head this way and that, she fastened on the cap

and, hurriedly kissing her gray hair, ran back to the maids who were

turning up the hem of her skirt.



The cause of the delay was Natasha's skirt, which was too long.

Two maids were turning up the hem and hurriedly biting off the ends of

thread. A third with pins in her mouth was running about between the

countess and Sonya, and a fourth held the whole of the gossamer

garment up high on one uplifted hand.



"Mavra, quicker, darling!"



"Give me my thimble, Miss, from there..."



"Whenever will you be ready?" asked the count coming to the door.

"Here is here is some scent. Peronskaya must be tired of waiting."



"It's ready, Miss," said the maid, holding up the shortened gauze

dress with two fingers, and blowing and shaking something off it, as

if by this to express a consciousness of the airiness and purity of

what she held.



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Natasha began putting on the dress.



"In a minute! In a minute! Don't come in, Papa!" she cried to her

father as he opened the door--speaking from under the filmy skirt

which still covered her whole face.



Sonya slammed the door to. A minute later they let the count in.

He was wearing a blue swallow-tail coat, shoes and stockings, and

was perfumed and his hair pomaded.



"Oh, Papa! how nice you look! Charming!" cried Natasha, as she stood

in the middle of the room smoothing out the folds of the gauze.



"If you please, Miss! allow me," said the maid, who on her knees was

pulling the skirt straight and shifting the pins from one side of

her mouth to the other with her tongue.



"Say what you like," exclaimed Sonya, in a despairing voice as she

looked at Natasha, "say what you like, it's still too long."



Natasha stepped back to look at herself in the pier glass. The dress

was too long.



"Really, madam, it is not at all too long," said Mavra, crawling

on her knees after her young lady.



"Well, if it's too long we'll take it up... we'll tack it up in

one minute," said the resolute Dunyasha taking a needle that was stuck

on the front of her little shawl and, still kneeling on the floor, set

to work once more.



At that moment, with soft steps, the countess came in shyly, in

her cap and velvet gown.



"Oo-oo, my beauty!" exclaimed the count, "she looks better than

any of you!"



He would have embraced her but, blushing, she stepped aside

fearing to be rumpled.



"Mamma, your cap, more to this side," said Natasha. "I'll arrange

it," and she rushed forward so that the maids who were tacking up

her skirt could not move fast enough and a piece of gauze was torn

off.



"Oh goodness! What has happened? Really it was not my fault!"



"Never mind, I'll run it up, it won't show," said Dunyasha.



"What a beauty--a very queen!" said the nurse as she came to the

door. "And Sonya! They are lovely!"



At a quarter past ten they at last got into their carriages and

started. But they had still to call at the Taurida Gardens.

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Peronskaya was quite ready. In spite of her age and plainness she

had gone through the same process as the Rostovs, but with less

flurry--for to her it was a matter of routine. Her ugly old body was

washed, perfumed, and powdered in just the same way. She had washed

behind her ears just as carefully, and when she entered her drawing

room in her yellow dress, wearing her badge as maid of honor, her

old lady's maid was as full of rapturous admiration as the Rostovs'

servants had been.



She praised the Rostovs' toilets. They praised her taste and toilet,

and at eleven o'clock, careful of their coiffures and dresses, they

settled themselves in their carriages and drove off.









CHAPTER XV





Natasha had not had a moment free since early morning and had not

once had time to think of what lay before her.



In the damp chill air and crowded closeness of the swaying carriage,

she for the first time vividly imagined what was in store for her

there at the ball, in those brightly lighted rooms--with music,

flowers, dances, the Emperor, and all the brilliant young people of

Petersburg. The prospect was so splendid that she hardly believed it

would come true, so out of keeping was it with the chill darkness

and closeness of the carriage. She understood all that awaited her

only when, after stepping over the red baize at the entrance, she

entered the hall, took off her fur cloak, and, beside Sonya and in

front of her mother, mounted the brightly illuminated stairs between

the flowers. Only then did she remember how she must behave at a ball,

and tried to assume the majestic air she considered indispensable

for a girl on such an occasion. But, fortunately for her, she felt her

eyes growing misty, she saw nothing clearly, her pulse beat a

hundred to the minute, and the blood throbbed at her heart. She

could not assume that pose, which would have made her ridiculous,

and she moved on almost fainting from excitement and trying with all

her might to conceal it. And this was the very attitude that became

her best. Before and behind them other visitors were entering, also

talking in low tones and wearing ball dresses. The mirrors on the

landing reflected ladies in white, pale-blue, and pink dresses, with

diamonds and pearls on their bare necks and arms.



Natasha looked in the mirrors and could not distinguish her

reflection from the others. All was blended into one brilliant

procession. On entering the ballroom the regular hum of voices,

footsteps, and greetings deafened Natasha, and the light and glitter

dazzled her still more. The host and hostess, who had already been

standing at the door for half an hour repeating the same words to

the various arrivals, "Charme de vous voir,"* greeted the Rostovs

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and Peronskaya in the same manner.





*"Delighted to see you."





The two girls in their white dresses, each with a rose in her

black hair, both curtsied in the same way, but the hostess' eye

involuntarily rested longer on the slim Natasha. She looked at her and

gave her alone a special smile in addition to her usual smile as

hostess. Looking at her she may have recalled the golden,

irrecoverable days of her own girlhood and her own first ball. The

host also followed Natasha with his eyes and asked the count which was

his daughter.



"Charming!" said he, kissing the tips of his fingers.



In the ballroom guests stood crowding at the entrance doors awaiting

the Emperor. The countess took up a position in one of the front

rows of that crowd. Natasha heard and felt that several people were

asking about her and looking at her. She realized that those

noticing her liked her, and this observation helped to calm her.



"There are some like ourselves and some worse," she thought.



Peronskaya was pointing out to the countess the most important

people at the ball.



"That is the Dutch ambassador, do you see? That gray-haired man,"

she said, indicating an old man with a profusion of silver-gray

curly hair, who was surrounded by ladies laughing at something he

said.



"Ah, here she is, the Queen of Petersburg, Countess Bezukhova," said

Peronskaya, indicating Helene who had just entered. "How lovely! She

is quite equal to Marya Antonovna. See how the men, young and old, pay

court to her. Beautiful and clever... they say Prince--is quite mad

about her. But see, those two, though not good-looking, are even

more run after."



She pointed to a lady who was crossing the room followed by a very

plain daughter.



"She is a splendid match, a millionairess," said Peronskaya. "And

look, here come her suitors."



"That is Bezukhova's brother, Anatole Kuragin," she said, indicating

a handsome officer of the Horse Guards who passed by them with head

erect, looking at something over the heads of the ladies. "He's

handsome, isn't he? I hear they will marry him to that rich girl.

But your cousin, Drubetskoy, is also very attentive to her. They say

she has millions. Oh yes, that's the French ambassador himself!" she

replied to the countess' inquiry about Caulaincourt. "Looks as if he

were a king! All the same, the French are charming, very charming.

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No one more charming in society. Ah, here she is! Yes, she is still

the most beautiful of them all, our Marya Antonovna! And how simply

she is dressed! Lovely! And that stout one in spectacles is the

universal Freemason," she went on, indicating Pierre. "Put him

beside his wife and he looks a regular buffoon!"



Pierre, swaying his stout body, advanced, making way through the

crowd and nodding to right and left as casually and good-naturedly

as if he were passing through a crowd at a fair. He pushed through,

evidently looking for someone.



Natasha looked joyfully at the familiar face of Pierre, "the

buffoon," as Peronskaya had called him, and knew he was looking for

them, and for her in particular. He had promised to be at the ball and

introduce partners to her.



But before he reached them Pierre stopped beside a very handsome,

dark man of middle height, and in a white uniform, who stood by a

window talking to a tall man wearing stars and a ribbon. Natasha at

once recognized the shorter and younger man in the white uniform: it

was Bolkonski, who seemed to her to have grown much younger,

happier, and better-looking.



"There's someone else we know--Bolkonski, do you see, Mamma?" said

Natasha, pointing out Prince Andrew. "You remember, he stayed a

night with us at Otradnoe."



"Oh, you know him?" said Peronskaya. "I can't bear him. Il fait a

present la pluie et le beau temps.* He's too proud for anything.

Takes after his father. And he's hand in glove with Speranski, writing

some project or other. Just look how he treats the ladies! There's one

talking to him and he has turned away," she said, pointing at him.

"I'd give it to him if he treated me as he does those ladies."





*"He is all the rage just now.









CHAPTER XVI





Suddenly everybody stirred, began talking, and pressed forward and

then back, and between the two rows, which separated, the Emperor

entered to the sounds of music that had immediately struck up.

Behind him walked his host and hostess. He walked in rapidly, bowing

to right and left as if anxious to get the first moments of the

reception over. The band played the polonaise in vogue at that time on

account of the words that had been set to it, beginning: "Alexander,

Elisaveta, all our hearts you ravish quite..." The Emperor passed on

to the drawing room, the crowd made a rush for the doors, and

several persons with excited faces hurried there and back again.

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Then the crowd hastily retired from the drawing-room door, at which

the Emperor reappeared talking to the hostess. A young man, looking

distraught, pounced down on the ladies, asking them to move aside.

Some ladies, with faces betraying complete forgetfulness of all the

rules of decorum, pushed forward to the detriment of their toilets.

The men began to choose partners and take their places for the

polonaise.



Everyone moved back, and the Emperor came smiling out of the drawing

room leading his hostess by the hand but not keeping time to the

music. The host followed with Marya Antonovna Naryshkina; then came

ambassadors, ministers, and various generals, whom Peronskaya

diligently named. More than half the ladies already had partners and

were taking up, or preparing to take up, their positions for the

polonaise. Natasha felt that she would be left with her mother and

Sonya among a minority of women who crowded near the wall, not

having been invited to dance. She stood with her slender arms

hanging down, her scarcely defined bosom rising and falling regularly,

and with bated breath and glittering, frightened eyes gazed straight

before her, evidently prepared for the height of joy or misery. She

was not concerned about the Emperor or any of those great people

whom Peronskaya was pointing out--she had but one thought: "Is it

possible no one will ask me, that I shall not be among the first to

dance? Is it possible that not one of all these men will notice me?

They do not even seem to see me, or if they do they look as if they

were saying, 'Ah, she's not the one I'm after, so it's not worth

looking at her!' No, it's impossible," she thought. "They must know

how I long to dance, how splendidly I dance, and how they would

enjoy dancing with me."



The strains of the polonaise, which had continued for a considerable

time, had begun to sound like a sad reminiscence to Natasha's ears.

She wanted to cry. Peronskaya had left them. The count was at the

other end of the room. She and the countess and Sonya were standing by

themselves as in the depths of a forest amid that crowd of

strangers, with no one interested in them and not wanted by anyone.

Prince Andrew with a lady passed by, evidently not recognizing them.

The handsome Anatole was smilingly talking to a partner on his arm and

looked at Natasha as one looks at a wall. Boris passed them twice

and each time turned away. Berg and his wife, who were not dancing,

came up to them.



This family gathering seemed humiliating to Natasha--as if there

were nowhere else for the family to talk but here at the ball. She did

not listen to or look at Vera, who was telling her something about her

own green dress.



At last the Emperor stopped beside his last partner (he had danced

with three) and the music ceased. A worried aide-de-camp ran up to the

Rostovs requesting them to stand farther back, though as it was they

were already close to the wall, and from the gallery resounded the

distinct, precise, enticingly rhythmical strains of a waltz. The

Emperor looked smilingly down the room. A minute passed but no one had

yet begun dancing. An aide-de-camp, the Master of Ceremonies, went

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up to Countess Bezukhova and asked her to dance. She smilingly

raised her hand and laid it on his shoulder without looking at him.

The aide-de-camp, an adept in his art, grasping his partner firmly

round her waist, with confident deliberation started smoothly, gliding

first round the edge of the circle, then at the corner of the room

he caught Helene's left hand and turned her, the only sound audible,

apart from the ever-quickening music, being the rhythmic click of

the spurs on his rapid, agile feet, while at every third beat his

partner's velvet dress spread out and seemed to flash as she whirled

round. Natasha gazed at them and was ready to cry because it was not

she who was dancing that first turn of the waltz.



Prince Andrew, in the white uniform of a cavalry colonel, wearing

stockings and dancing shoes, stood looking animated and bright in

the front row of the circle not far from the Rostovs. Baron Firhoff

was talking to him about the first sitting of the Council of State

to be held next day. Prince Andrew, as one closely connected with

Speranski and participating in the work of the legislative commission,

could give reliable information about that sitting, concerning which

various rumors were current. But not listening to what Firhoff was

saying, he was gazing now at the sovereign and now at the men

intending to dance who had not yet gathered courage to enter the

circle.



Prince Andrew was watching these men abashed by the Emperor's

presence, and the women who were breathlessly longing to be asked to

dance.



Pierre came up to him and caught him by the arm.



"You always dance. I have a protegee, the young Rostova, here. Ask

her," he said.



"Where is she?" asked Bolkonski. "Excuse me!" he added, turning to

the baron, "we will finish this conversation elsewhere--at a ball

one must dance." He stepped forward in the direction Pierre indicated.

The despairing, dejected expression of Natasha's face caught his

eye. He recognized her, guessed her feelings, saw that it was her

debut, remembered her conversation at the window, and with an

expression of pleasure on his face approached Countess Rostova.



"Allow me to introduce you to my daughter," said the countess,

with heightened color.



"I have the pleasure of being already acquainted, if the countess

remembers me," said Prince Andrew with a low and courteous bow quite

belying Peronskaya's remarks about his rudeness, and approaching

Natasha he held out his arm to grasp her waist before he had completed

his invitation. He asked her to waltz. That tremulous expression on

Natasha's face, prepared either for despair or rapture, suddenly

brightened into a happy, grateful, childlike smile.



"I have long been waiting for you," that frightened happy little

girl seemed to say by the smile that replaced the threatened tears, as

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she raised her hand to Prince Andrew's shoulder. They were the

second couple to enter the circle. Prince Andrew was one of the best

dancers of his day and Natasha danced exquisitely. Her little feet

in their white satin dancing shoes did their work swiftly, lightly,

and independently of herself, while her face beamed with ecstatic

happiness. Her slender bare arms and neck were not beautiful--compared

to Helene's her shoulders looked thin and her bosom undeveloped. But

Helene seemed, as it were, hardened by a varnish left by the thousands

of looks that had scanned her person, while Natasha was like a girl

exposed for the first time, who would have felt very much ashamed

had she not been assured that this was absolutely necessary.



Prince Andrew liked dancing, and wishing to escape as quickly as

possible from the political and clever talk which everyone addressed

to him, wishing also to break up the circle of restraint he

disliked, caused by the Emperor's presence, he danced, and had

chosen Natasha because Pierre pointed her out to him and because she

was the first pretty girl who caught his eye; but scarcely had he

embraced that slender supple figure and felt her stirring so close

to him and smiling so near him than the wine of her charm rose to

his head, and he felt himself revived and rejuvenated when after

leaving her he stood breathing deeply and watching the other dancers.









CHAPTER XVII





After Prince Andrew, Boris came up to ask Natasha for dance, and

then the aide-de-camp who had opened the ball, and several other young

men, so that, flushed and happy, and passing on her superfluous

partners to Sonya, she did not cease dancing all the evening. She

noticed and saw nothing of what occupied everyone else. Not only did

she fail to notice that the Emperor talked a long time with the French

ambassador, and how particularly gracious he was to a certain lady, or

that Prince So-and-so and So-and-so did and said this and that, and

that Helene had great success and was honored was by the special

attention of So-and-so, but she did not even see the Emperor, and only

noticed that he had gone because the ball became livelier after his

departure. For one of the merry cotillions before supper Prince Andrew

was again her partner. He reminded her of their first encounter in the

Otradnoe avenue, and how she had been unable to sleep that moonlight

night, and told her how he had involuntarily overheard her. Natasha

blushed at that recollection and tried to excuse herself, as if

there had been something to be ashamed of in what Prince Andrew had

overheard.



Like all men who have grown up in society, Prince Andrew liked

meeting someone there not of the conventional society stamp. And

such was Natasha, with her surprise, her delight, her shyness, and

even her mistakes in speaking French. With her he behaved with special

care and tenderness, sitting beside her and talking of the simplest

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and most unimportant matters; he admired her shy grace. In the

middle of the cotillion, having completed one of the figures, Natasha,

still out of breath, was returning to her seat when another dancer

chose her. She was tired and panting and evidently thought of

declining, but immediately put her hand gaily on the man's shoulder,

smiling at Prince Andrew.



"I'd be glad to sit beside you and rest: I'm tired; but you see

how they keep asking me, and I'm glad of it, I'm happy and I love

everybody, and you and I understand it all," and much, much more was

said in her smile. When her partner left her Natasha ran across the

room to choose two ladies for the figure.



"If she goes to her cousin first and then to another lady, she

will be my wife," said Prince Andrew to himself quite to his own

surprise, as he watched her. She did go first to her cousin.



"What rubbish sometimes enters one's head!" thought Prince Andrew,

"but what is certain is that that girl is so charming, so original,

that she won't be dancing here a month before she will be

married.... Such as she are rare here," he thought, as Natasha,

readjusting a rose that was slipping on her bodice, settled herself

beside him.



When the cotillion was over the old count in his blue coat came up

to the dancers. He invited Prince Andrew to come and see them, and

asked his daughter whether she was enjoying herself. Natasha did not

answer at once but only looked up with a smile that said

reproachfully: "How can you ask such a question?"



"I have never enjoyed myself so much before!" she said, and Prince

Andrew noticed how her thin arms rose quickly as if to embrace her

father and instantly dropped again. Natasha was happier than she had

ever been in her life. She was at that height of bliss when one

becomes completely kind and good and does not believe in the

possibility of evil, unhappiness, or sorrow.



At that ball Pierre for the first time felt humiliated by the

position his wife occupied in court circles. He was gloomy and

absent-minded. A deep furrow ran across his forehead, and standing

by a window he stared over his spectacles seeing no one.



On her way to supper Natasha passed him.



Pierre's gloomy, unhappy look struck her. She stopped in front of

him. She wished to help him, to bestow on him the superabundance of

her own happiness.



"How delightful it is, Count!" said she. "Isn't it?"



Pierre smiled absent-mindedly, evidently not grasping what she said.



"Yes, I am very glad," he said.



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"How can people be dissatisfied with anything?" thought Natasha.

"Especially such a capital fellow as Bezukhov!" In Natasha's eyes

all the people at the ball alike were good, kind, and splendid people,

loving one another; none of them capable of injuring another--and so

they ought all to be happy.









CHAPTER XVIII





Next day Prince Andrew thought of the ball, but his mind did not

dwell on it long. "Yes, it was a very brilliant ball," and then...

"Yes, that little Rostova is very charming. There's something fresh,

original, un-Petersburg-like about her that distinguishes her." That

was all he thought about yesterday's ball, and after his morning tea

he set to work.



But either from fatigue or want of sleep he was ill-disposed for

work and could get nothing done. He kept criticizing his own work,

as he often did, and was glad when he heard someone coming.



The visitor was Bitski, who served on various committees, frequented

all the societies in Petersburg, and a passionate devotee of the new

ideas and of Speranski, and a diligent Petersburg newsmonger--one of

those men who choose their opinions like their clothes according to

the fashion, but who for that very reason appear to be the warmest

partisans. Hardly had he got rid of his hat before he ran into

Prince Andrew's room with a preoccupied air and at once began talking.

He had just heard particulars of that morning's sitting of the Council

of State opened by the Emperor, and he spoke of it enthusiastically.

The Emperor's speech had been extraordinary. It had been a speech such

as only constitutional monarchs deliver. "The Sovereign plainly said

that the Council and Senate are estates of the realm, he said that the

government must rest not on authority but on secure bases. The Emperor

said that the fiscal system must be reorganized and the accounts

published," recounted Bitski, emphasizing certain words and opening

his eyes significantly.



"Ah, yes! Today's events mark an epoch, the greatest epoch in our

history," he concluded.



Prince Andrew listened to the account of the opening of the

Council of State, which he had so impatiently awaited and to which

he had attached such importance, and was surprised that this event,

now that it had taken place, did not affect him, and even seemed quite

insignificant. He listened with quiet irony to Bitski's enthusiastic

account of it. A very simple thought occurred to him: "What does it

matter to me or to Bitski what the Emperor was pleased to say at the

Council? Can all that make me any happier or better?"



And this simple reflection suddenly destroyed all the interest

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Prince Andrew had felt in the impending reforms. He was going to

dine that evening at Speranski's, "with only a few friends," as the

host had said when inviting him. The prospect of that dinner in the

intimate home circle of the man he so admired had greatly interested

Prince Andrew, especially as he had not yet seen Speranski in his

domestic surroundings, but now he felt disinclined to go to it.



At the appointed hour, however, he entered the modest house

Speranski owned in the Taurida Gardens. In the parqueted dining room

this small house, remarkable for its extreme cleanliness (suggesting

that of a monastery), Prince Andrew, who was rather late, found the

friendly gathering of Speranski's intimate acquaintances already

assembled at five o'clock. There were no ladies present except

Speranski's little daughter (long-faced like her father) and her

governess. The other guests were Gervais, Magnitski, and Stolypin.

While still in the anteroom Prince Andrew heard loud voices and a

ringing staccato laugh--a laugh such as one hears on the stage.

Someone--it sounded like Speranski--was distinctly ejaculating

ha-ha-ha. Prince Andrew had never before heard Speranski's famous

laugh, and this ringing, high pitched laughter from a statesman made a

strange impression on him.



He entered the dining room. The whole company were standing

between two windows at a small table laid with hors-d'oeuvres.

Speranski, wearing a gray swallow-tail coat with a star on the breast,

and evidently still the same waistcoat and high white stock he had

worn at the meeting of the Council of State, stood at the table with a

beaming countenance. His guests surrounded him. Magnitski,

addressing himself to Speranski, was relating an anecdote, and

Speranski was laughing in advance at what Magnitski was going to

say. When Prince Andrew entered the room Magnitski's words were

again crowned by laughter. Stolypin gave a deep bass guffaw as he

munched a piece of bread and cheese. Gervais laughed softly with a

hissing chuckle, and Speranski in a high-pitched staccato manner.



Still laughing, Speranski held out his soft white hand to Prince

Andrew.



"Very pleased to see you, Prince," he said. "One moment..." he

went on, turning to Magnitski and interrupting his story. "We have

agreed that this is a dinner for recreation, with not a word about

business!" and turning again to the narrator he began to laugh afresh.



Prince Andrew looked at the laughing Speranski with astonishment,

regret, and disillusionment. It seemed to him that this was not

Speranski but someone else. Everything that had formerly appeared

mysterious and fascinating in Speranski suddenly became plain and

unattractive.



At dinner the conversation did not cease for a moment and seemed

to consist of the contents of a book of funny anecdotes. Before

Magnitski had finished his story someone else was anxious to relate

something still funnier. Most of the anecdotes, if not relating to the

state service, related to people in the service. It seemed that in

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this company the insignificance of those people was so definitely

accepted that the only possible attitude toward them was one of good

humored ridicule. Speranski related how at the Council that morning

a deaf dignitary, when asked his opinion, replied that he thought so

too. Gervais gave a long account of an official revision, remarkable

for the stupidity of everybody concerned. Stolypin, stuttering,

broke into the conversation and began excitedly talking of the

abuses that existed under the former order of things--threatening to

give a serious turn to the conversation. Magnitski starting quizzing

Stolypin about his vehemence. Gervais intervened with a joke, and

the talk reverted to its former lively tone.



Evidently Speranski liked to rest after his labors and find

amusement in a circle of friends, and his guests, understanding his

wish, tried to enliven him and amuse themselves. But their gaiety

seemed to Prince Andrew mirthless and tiresome. Speranski's

high-pitched voice struck him unpleasantly, and the incessant laughter

grated on him like a false note. Prince Andrew did not laugh and

feared that he would be a damper on the spirits of the company, but no

one took any notice of his being out of harmony with the general mood.

They all seemed very gay.



He tried several times to join in the conversation, but his

remarks were tossed aside each time like a cork thrown out of the

water, and he could not jest with them.



There was nothing wrong or unseemly in what they said, it was

witty and might have been funny, but it lacked just that something

which is the salt of mirth, and they were not even aware that such a

thing existed.



After dinner Speranski's daughter and her governess rose. He

patted the little girl with his white hand and kissed her. And that

gesture, too, seemed unnatural to Prince Andrew.



The men remained at table over their port--English fashion. In the

midst of a conversation that was started about Napoleon's Spanish

affairs, which they all agreed in approving, Prince Andrew began to

express a contrary opinion. Speranski smiled and, with an evident wish

to prevent the conversation from taking an unpleasant course, told a

story that had no connection with the previous conversation. For a few

moments all were silent.



Having sat some time at table, Speranski corked a bottle of wine

and, remarking, "Nowadays good wine rides in a carriage and pair,"

passed it to the servant and got up. All rose and continuing to talk

loudly went into the drawing room. Two letters brought by a courier

were handed to Speranski and he took them to his study. As soon as

he had left the room the general merriment stopped and the guests

began to converse sensibly and quietly with one another.



"Now for the recitation!" said Speranski on returning from his

study. "A wonderful talent!" he said to Prince Andrew, and Magnitski

immediately assumed a pose and began reciting some humorous verses

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in French which he had composed about various well-known Petersburg

people. He was interrupted several times by applause. When the

verses were finished Prince Andrew went up to Speranski and took his

leave.



"Where are you off to so early?" asked Speranski.



"I promised to go to a reception."



They said no more. Prince Andrew looked closely into those

mirrorlike, impenetrable eyes, and felt that it had been ridiculous of

him to have expected anything from Speranski and from any of his own

activities connected with him, or ever to have attributed importance

to what Speranski was doing. That precise, mirthless laughter rang

in Prince Andrew's ears long after he had left the house.



When he reached home Prince Andrew began thinking of his life in

Petersburg during those last four months as if it were something

new. He recalled his exertions and solicitations, and the history of

his project of army reform, which had been accepted for

consideration and which they were trying to pass over in silence

simply because another, a very poor one, had already been prepared and

submitted to the Emperor. He thought of the meetings of a committee of

which Berg was a member. He remembered how carefully and at what

length everything relating to form and procedure was discussed at

those meetings, and how sedulously and promptly all that related to

the gist of the business was evaded. He recalled his labors on the

Legal Code, and how painstakingly he had translated the articles of

the Roman and French codes into Russian, and he felt ashamed of

himself. Then he vividly pictured to himself Bogucharovo, his

occupations in the country, his journey to Ryazan; he remembered the

peasants and Dron the village elder, and mentally applying to them the

Personal Rights he had divided into paragraphs, he felt astonished

that he could have spent so much time on such useless work.









CHAPTER XIX





Next day Prince Andrew called at a few houses he had not visited

before, and among them at the Rostovs' with whom he had renewed

acquaintance at the ball. Apart from considerations of politeness

which demanded the call, he wanted to see that original, eager girl

who had left such a pleasant impression on his mind, in her own home.



Natasha was one of the first to meet him. She was wearing a

dark-blue house dress in which Prince Andrew thought her even prettier

than in her ball dress. She and all the Rostov family welcomed him

as an old friend, simply and cordially. The whole family, whom he

had formerly judged severely, now seemed to him to consist of

excellent, simple, and kindly people. The old count's hospitality

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and good nature, which struck one especially in Petersburg as a

pleasant surprise, were such that Prince Andrew could not refuse to

stay to dinner. "Yes," he thought, "they are capital people, who of

course have not the slightest idea what a treasure they possess in

Natasha; but they are kindly folk and form the best possible setting

for this strikingly poetic, charming girl, overflowing with life!"



In Natasha Prince Andrew was conscious of a strange world completely

alien to him and brimful of joys unknown to him, a different world,

that in the Otradnoe avenue and at the window that moonlight night had

already begun to disconcert him. Now this world disconcerted him no

longer and was no longer alien to him, but he himself having entered

it found in it a new enjoyment.



After dinner Natasha, at Prince Andrew's request, went to the

clavichord and began singing. Prince Andrew stood by a window

talking to the ladies and listened to her. In the midst of a phrase he

ceased speaking and suddenly felt tears choking him, a thing he had

thought impossible for him. He looked at Natasha as she sang, and

something new and joyful stirred in his soul. He felt happy and at the

same time sad. He had absolutely nothing to weep about yet he was

ready to weep. What about? His former love? The little princess? His

disillusionments?... His hopes for the future?... Yes and no. The

chief reason was a sudden, vivid sense of the terrible contrast

between something infinitely great and illimitable within him and that

limited and material something that he, and even she, was. This

contrast weighed on and yet cheered him while she sang.



As soon as Natasha had finished she went up to him and asked how

he liked her voice. She asked this and then became confused, feeling

that she ought not to have asked it. He smiled, looking at her, and

said he liked her singing as he liked everything she did.



Prince Andrew left the Rostovs' late in the evening. He went to

bed from habit, but soon realized that he could not sleep. Having

lit his candle he sat up in bed, then got up, then lay down again

not at all troubled by his sleeplessness: his soul was as fresh and

joyful as if he had stepped out of a stuffy room into God's own

fresh air. It did not enter his head that he was in love with Natasha;

he was not thinking about her, but only picturing her to himself,

and in consequence all life appeared in a new light. "Why do I strive,

why do I toil in this narrow, confined frame, when life, all life with

all its joys, is open to me?" said he to himself. And for the first

time for a very long while he began making happy plans for the future.

He decided that he must attend to his son's education by finding a

tutor and putting the boy in his charge, then he ought to retire

from the service and go abroad, and see England, Switzerland and

Italy. "I must use my freedom while I feel so much strength and

youth in me," he said to himself. "Pierre was right when he said one

must believe in the possibility of happiness in order to be happy, and

now I do believe in it. Let the dead bury their dead, but while one

has life one must live and be happy!" thought he.





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CHAPTER XX





One morning Colonel Berg, whom Pierre knew as he knew everybody in

Moscow and Petersburg, came to see him. Berg arrived in an

immaculate brand-new uniform, with his hair pomaded and brushed

forward over his temples as the Emperor Alexander wore his hair.



"I have just been to see the countess, your wife. Unfortunately

she could not grant my request, but I hope, Count, I shall be more

fortunate with you," he said with a smile.



"What is it you wish, Colonel? I am at your service."



"I have now quite settled in my new rooms, Count" (Berg said this

with perfect conviction that this information could not but be

agreeable), "and so I wish to arrange just a small party for my own

and my wife's friends." (He smiled still more pleasantly.) "I wished

to ask the countess and you to do me the honor of coming to tea and to

supper."



Only Countess Helene, considering the society of such people as

the Bergs beneath her, could be cruel enough to refuse such an

invitation. Berg explained so clearly why he wanted to collect at

his house a small but select company, and why this would give him

pleasure, and why though he grudged spending money on cards or

anything harmful, he was prepared to run into some expense for the

sake of good society--that Pierre could not refuse, and promised to

come.



"But don't be late, Count, if I may venture to ask; about ten

minutes to eight, please. We shall make up a rubber. Our general is

coming. He is very good to me. We shall have supper, Count. So you

will do me the favor."



Contrary to his habit of being late, Pierre on that day arrived at

the Bergs' house, not at ten but at fifteen minutes to eight.



Having prepared everything necessary for the party, the Bergs were

ready for their guests' arrival.



In their new, clean, and light study with its small busts and

pictures and new furniture sat Berg and his wife. Berg, closely

buttoned up in his new uniform, sat beside his wife explaining to

her that one always could and should be acquainted with people above

one, because only then does one get satisfaction from acquaintances.



"You can get to know something, you can ask for something. See how I

managed from my first promotion." (Berg measured his life not by years

but by promotions.) "My comrades are still nobodies, while I am only

waiting for a vacancy to command a regiment, and have the happiness to

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be your husband." (He rose and kissed Vera's hand, and on the way to

her straightened out a turned-up corner of the carpet.) "And how

have I obtained all this? Chiefly by knowing how to choose my

aquaintances. It goes without saying that one must be conscientious

and methodical."



Berg smiled with a sense of his superiority over a weak woman, and

paused, reflecting that this dear wife of his was after all but a weak

woman who could not understand all that constitutes a man's dignity,

what it was ein Mann zu sein.* Vera at the same time smiling with a

sense of superiority over her good, conscientious husband, who all the

same understood life wrongly, as according to Vera all men did.

Berg, judging by his wife, thought all women weak and foolish. Vera,

judging only by her husband and generalizing from that observation,

supposed that all men, though they understand nothing and are

conceited and selfish, ascribe common sense to themselves alone.





*To be a man.





Berg rose and embraced his wife carefully, so as not to crush her

lace fichu for which he had paid a good price, kissing her straight on

the lips.



"The only thing is, we mustn't have children too soon," he

continued, following an unconscious sequence of ideas.



"Yes," answered Vera, "I don't at all want that. We must live for

society."



"Princess Yusupova wore one exactly like this," said Berg,

pointing to the fichu with a happy and kindly smile.



Just then Count Bezukhov was announced. Husband and wife glanced

at one another, both smiling with self-satisfaction, and each mentally

claiming the honor of this visit.



"This is what what comes of knowing how to make acquaintances,"

thought Berg. "This is what comes of knowing how to conduct oneself."



"But please don't interrupt me when I am entertaining the guests,"

said Vera, "because I know what interests each of them and what to say

to different people."



Berg smiled again.



"It can't be helped: men must sometimes have masculine

conversation," said he.



They received Pierre in their small, new drawing-room, where it

was impossible to sit down anywhere without disturbing its symmetry,

neatness, and order; so it was quite comprehensible and not strange

that Berg, having generously offered to disturb the symmetry of an

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armchair or of the sofa for his dear guest, but being apparently

painfully undecided on the matter himself, eventually left the visitor

to settle the question of selection. Pierre disturbed the symmetry

by moving a chair for himself, and Berg and Vera immediately began

their evening party, interrupting each other in their efforts to

entertain their guest.



Vera, having decided in her own mind that Pierre ought to be

entertained with conversation about the French embassy, at once

began accordingly. Berg, having decided that masculine conversation

was required, interrupted his wife's remarks and touched on the

question of the war with Austria, and unconsciously jumped from the

general subject to personal considerations as to the proposals made

him to take part in the Austrian campaign and the reasons why he had

declined them. Though the conversation was very incoherent and Vera

was angry at the intrusion of the masculine element, both husband

and wife felt with satisfaction that, even if only one guest was

present, their evening had begun very well and was as like as two peas

to every other evening party with its talk, tea, and lighted candles.



Before long Boris, Berg's old comrade, arrived. There was a shade of

condescension and patronage in his treatment of Berg and Vera. After

Boris came a lady with the colonel, then the general himself, then the

Rostovs, and the party became unquestionably exactly like all other

evening parties. Berg and Vera could not repress their smiles of

satisfaction at the sight of all this movement in their drawing

room, at the sound of the disconnected talk, the rustling of

dresses, and the bowing and scraping. Everything was just as everybody

always has it, especially so the general, who admired the apartment,

patted Berg on the shoulder, and with parental authority superintended

the setting out of the table for boston. The general sat down by Count

Ilya Rostov, who was next to himself the most important guest. The old

people sat with the old, the young with the young, and the hostess

at the tea table, on which stood exactly the same kind of cakes in a

silver cake basket as the Panins had at their party. Everything was

just as it was everywhere else.









CHAPTER XXI





Pierre, as one of the principal guests, had to sit down to boston

with Count Rostov, the general, and the colonel. At the card table

he happened to be directly facing Natasha, and was struck by a curious

change that had come over her since the ball. She was silent, and

not only less pretty than at the ball, but only redeemed from

plainness by her look of gentle indifference to everything around.



"What's the matter with her?" thought Pierre, glancing at her. She

was sitting by her sister at the tea table, and reluctantly, without

looking at him, made some reply to Boris who sat down beside her.

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After playing out a whole suit and to his partner's delight taking

five tricks, Pierre, hearing greetings and the steps of someone who

had entered the room while he was picking up his tricks, glanced again

at Natasha.



"What has happened to her?" he asked himself with still greater

surprise.



Prince Andrew was standing before her, saying something to her

with a look of tender solicitude. She, having raised her head, was

looking up at him, flushed and evidently trying to master her rapid

breathing. And the bright glow of some inner fire that had been

suppressed was again alight in her. She was completely transformed and

from a plain girl had again become what she had been at the ball.



Prince Andrew went up to Pierre, and the latter noticed a new and

youthful expression in his friend's face.



Pierre changed places several times during the game, sitting now

with his back to Natasha and now facing her, but during the whole of

the six rubbers he watched her and his friend.



"Something very important is happening between them," thought

Pierre, and a feeling that was both joyful and painful agitated him

and made him neglect the game.



After six rubbers the general got up, saying that it was no use

playing like that, and Pierre was released. Natasha on one side was

talking with Sonya and Boris, and Vera with a subtle smile was

saying something to Prince Andrew. Pierre went up to his friend and,

asking whether they were talking secrets, sat down beside them.

Vera, having noticed Prince Andrew's attentions to Natasha, decided

that at a party, a real evening party, subtle allusions to the

tender passion were absolutely necessary and, seizing a moment when

Prince Andrew was alone, began a conversation with him about

feelings in general and about her sister. With so intellectual a guest

as she considered Prince Andrew to be, she felt that she had to employ

her diplomatic tact.



When Pierre went up to them he noticed that Vera was being carried

away by her self-satisfied talk, but that Prince Andrew seemed

embarrassed, a thing that rarely happened with him.



"What do you think?" Vera was saying with an arch smile. "You are so

discerning, Prince, and understand people's characters so well at a

glance. What do you think of Natalie? Could she be constant in her

attachments? Could she, like other women" (Vera meant herself),

"love a man once for all and remain true to him forever? That is

what I consider true love. What do you think, Prince?"



"I know your sister too little," replied Prince Andrew, with a

sarcastic smile under which he wished to hide his embarrassment, "to

be able to solve so delicate a question, and then I have noticed

that the less attractive a woman is the more constant she is likely to

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be," he added, and looked up Pierre who was just approaching them.



"Yes, that is true, Prince. In our days," continued Vera--mentioning

"our days" as people of limited intelligence are fond of doing,

imagining that they have discovered and appraised the peculiarities of

"our days" and that human characteristics change with the times--"in

our days a girl has so much freedom that the pleasure of being courted

often stifles real feeling in her. And it must be confessed that

Natalie is very susceptible." This return to the subject of Natalie

caused Prince Andrew to knit his brows with discomfort: he was about

to rise, but Vera continued with a still more subtle smile:



"I think no one has been more courted than she," she went on, "but

till quite lately she never cared seriously for anyone. Now you

know, Count," she said to Pierre, "even our dear cousin Boris, who,

between ourselves, was very far gone in the land of tenderness..."

(alluding to a map of love much in vogue at that time).



Prince Andrew frowned and remained silent.



"You are friendly with Boris, aren't you?" asked Vera.



"Yes, I know him..."



"I expect he has told you of his childish love for Natasha?"



"Oh, there was childish love?" suddenly asked Prince Andrew,

blushing unexpectedly.



"Yes, you know between cousins intimacy often leads to love. Le

cousinage est un dangereux voisinage.* Don't you think so?"





*"Cousinhood is a dangerous neighborhood."





"Oh, undoubtedly!" said Prince Andrew, and with sudden and unnatural

liveliness he began chaffing Pierre about the need to be very

careful with his fifty-year-old Moscow cousins, and in the midst of

these jesting remarks he rose, taking Pierre by the arm, and drew

him aside.



"Well?" asked Pierre, seeing his friend's strange animation with

surprise, and noticing the glance he turned on Natasha as he rose.



"I must... I must have a talk with you," said Prince Andrew. "You

know that pair of women's gloves?" (He referred to the Masonic

gloves given to a newly initiated Brother to present to the woman he

loved.) "I... but no, I will talk to you later on," and with a strange

light in his eyes and restlessness in his movements, Prince Andrew

approached Natasha and sat down beside her. Pierre saw how Prince

Andrew asked her something and how she flushed as she replied.



But at that moment Berg came to Pierre and began insisting that he

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should take part in an argument between the general and the colonel on

the affairs in Spain.



Berg was satisfied and happy. The smile of pleasure never left his

face. The party was very successful and quite like other parties he

had seen. Everything was similar: the ladies' subtle talk, the

cards, the general raising his voice at the card table, and the

samovar and the tea cakes; only one thing was lacking that he had

always seen at the evening parties he wished to imitate. They had

not yet had a loud conversation among the men and a dispute about

something important and clever. Now the general had begun such a

discussion and so Berg drew Pierre to it.









CHAPTER XXII





Next day, having been invited by the count, Prince Andrew dined with

the Rostovs and spent the rest of the day there.



Everyone in the house realized for whose sake Prince Andrew came,

and without concealing it he tried to be with Natasha all day. Not

only in the soul of the frightened yet happy and enraptured Natasha,

but in the whole house, there was a feeling of awe at something

important that was bound to happen. The countess looked with sad and

sternly serious eyes at Prince Andrew when he talked to Natasha and

timidly started some artificial conversation about trifles as soon

as he looked her way. Sonya was afraid to leave Natasha and afraid

of being in the way when she was with them. Natasha grew pale, in a

panic of expectation, when she remained alone with him for a moment.

Prince Andrew surprised her by his timidity. She felt that he wanted

to say something to her but could not bring himself to do so.



In the evening, when Prince Andrew had left, the countess went up to

Natasha and whispered: "Well, what?"



"Mamma! For heaven's sake don't ask me anything now! One can't

talk about that," said Natasha.



But all the same that night Natasha, now agitated and now

frightened, lay a long time in her mother's bed gazing straight

before her. She told her how he had complimented her, how he told

her he was going abroad, asked her where they were going to spend

the summer, and then how he had asked her about Boris.



"But such a... such a... never happened to me before!" she said.

"Only I feel afraid in his presence. I am always afraid when I'm

with him. What does that mean? Does it mean that it's the real

thing? Yes? Mamma, are you asleep?"



"No, my love; I am frightened myself," answered her mother. "Now

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go!"



"All the same I shan't sleep. What silliness, to sleep! Mummy!

Mummy! such a thing never happened to me before," she said,

surprised and alarmed at the feeling she was aware of in herself. "And

could we ever have thought!..."



It seemed to Natasha that even at the time she first saw Prince

Andrew at Otradnoe she had fallen in love with him. It was as if she

feared this strange, unexpected happiness of meeting again the very

man she had then chosen (she was firmly convinced she had done so) and

of finding him, as it seemed, not indifferent to her.



"And it had to happen that he should come specially to Petersburg

while we are here. And it had to happen that we should meet at that

ball. It is fate. Clearly it is fate that everything led up to this!

Already then, directly I saw him I felt something peculiar."



"What else did he say to you? What are those verses? Read them..."

said her mother, thoughtfully, referring to some verses Prince

Andrew had written in Natasha's album.



"Mamma, one need not be ashamed of his being a widower?"



"Don't, Natasha! Pray to God. 'Marriages are made in heaven,'"

said her mother.



"Darling Mummy, how I love you! How happy I am!" cried Natasha,

shedding tears of joy and excitement and embracing her mother.



At that very time Prince Andrew was sitting with Pierre and

telling him of his love for Natasha and his firm resolve to make her

his wife.



That day Countess Helene had a reception at her house. The French

ambassador was there, and a foreign prince of the blood who had of

late become a frequent visitor of hers, and many brilliant ladies

and gentlemen. Pierre, who had come downstairs, walked through the

rooms and struck everyone by his preoccupied, absent-minded, and

morose air.



Since the ball he had felt the approach of a fit of nervous

depression and had made desperate efforts to combat it. Since the

intimacy of his wife with the royal prince, Pierre had unexpectedly

been made a gentleman of the bedchamber, and from that time he had

begun to feel oppressed and ashamed in court society, and dark

thoughts of the vanity of all things human came to him oftener than

before. At the same time the feeling he had noticed between his

protegee Natasha and Prince Andrew accentuated his gloom by the

contrast between his own position and his friend's. He tried equally

to avoid thinking about his wife, and about Natasha and Prince Andrew;

and again everything seemed to him insignificant in comparison with

eternity; again the question: for what? presented itself; and he

forced himself to work day and night at Masonic labors, hoping to

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drive away the evil spirit that threatened him. Toward midnight, after

he had left the countess' apartments, he was sitting upstairs in a

shabby dressing gown, copying out the original transaction of the

Scottish lodge of Freemasons at a table in his low room cloudy with

tobacco smoke, when someone came in. It was Prince Andrew.



"Ah, it's you!" said Pierre with a preoccupied, dissatisfied air.

"And I, you see, am hard at it." He pointed to his manuscript book

with that air of escaping from the ills of life with which unhappy

people look at their work.



Prince Andrew, with a beaming, ecstatic expression of renewed life

on his face, paused in front of Pierre and, not noticing his sad look,

smiled at him with the egotism of joy.



"Well, dear heart," said he, "I wanted to tell you about it

yesterday and I have come to do so today. I never experienced anything

like it before. I am in love, my friend!"



Suddenly Pierre heaved a deep sigh and dumped his heavy person

down on the sofa beside Prince Andrew.



"With Natasha Rostova, yes?" said he.



"Yes, yes! Who else should it be? I should never have believed it,

but the feeling is stronger than I. Yesterday I tormented myself and

suffered, but I would not exchange even that torment for anything in

the world, I have not lived till now. At last I live, but I can't live

without her! But can she love me?... I am too old for her.... Why

don't you speak?"



"I? I? What did I tell you?" said Pierre suddenly, rising and

beginning to pace up and down the room. "I always thought it....

That girl is such a treasure... she is a rare girl.... My dear friend,

I entreat you, don't philosophize, don't doubt, marry, marry,

marry.... And I am sure there will not be a happier man than you."



"But what of her?"



"She loves you."



"Don't talk rubbish..." said Prince Andrew, smiling and looking into

Pierre's eyes.



"She does, I know," Pierre cried fiercely.



"But do listen," returned Prince Andrew, holding him by the arm. "Do

you know the condition I am in? I must talk about it to someone."



"Well, go on, go on. I am very glad," said Pierre, and his face

really changed, his brow became smooth, and he listened gladly to

Prince Andrew. Prince Andrew seemed, and really was, quite a

different, quite a new man. Where was his spleen, his contempt for

life, his disillusionment? Pierre was the only person to whom he

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made up his mind to speak openly; and to him he told all that was in

his soul. Now he boldly and lightly made plans for an extended future,

said he could not sacrifice his own happiness to his father's caprice,

and spoke of how he would either make his father consent to this

marriage and love her, or would do without his consent; then he

marveled at the feeling that had mastered him as at something strange,

apart from and independent of himself.



"I should not have believed anyone who told me that I was capable of

such love," said Prince Andrew. "It is not at all the same feeling

that I knew in the past. The whole world is now for me divided into

two halves: one half is she, and there all is joy, hope, light: the

other half is everything where she is not, and there is all gloom

and darkness...."



"Darkness and gloom," reiterated Pierre: "yes, yes, I understand

that."



"I cannot help loving the light, it is not my fault. And I am very

happy! You understand me? I know you are glad for my sake."



"Yes, yes," Pierre assented, looking at his friend with a touched

and sad expression in his eyes. The brighter Prince Andrew's lot

appeared to him, the gloomier seemed his own.









CHAPTER XXIII





Prince Andrew needed his father's consent to his marriage, and to

obtain this he started for the country next day.



His father received his son's communication with external composure,

but inward wrath. He could not comprehend how anyone could wish to

alter his life or introduce anything new into it, when his own life

was already ending. "If only they would let me end my days as I want

to," thought the old man, "then they might do as they please." With

his son, however, he employed the diplomacy he reserved for

important occasions and, adopting a quiet tone, discussed the whole

matter.



In the first place the marriage was not a brilliant one as regards

birth, wealth, or rank. Secondly, Prince Andrew was no longer as young

as he had been and his health was poor (the old man laid special

stress on this), while she was very young. Thirdly, he had a son

whom it would be a pity to entrust to a chit of a girl. "Fourthly

and finally," the father said, looking ironically at his son, "I beg

you to put it off for a year: go abroad, take a cure, look out as

you wanted to for a German tutor for Prince Nicholas. Then if your

love or passion or obstinacy--as you please--is still as great, marry!

And that's my last word on it. Mind, the last..." concluded the

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prince, in a tone which showed that nothing would make him alter his

decision.



Prince Andrew saw clearly that the old man hoped that his

feelings, or his fiancee's, would not stand a year's test, or that

he (the old prince himself) would die before then, and he decided to

conform to his father's wish--to propose, and postpone the wedding for

a year.



Three weeks after the last evening he had spent with the Rostovs,

Prince Andrew returned to Petersburg.





Next day after her talk with her mother Natasha expected Bolkonski

all day, but he did not come. On the second and third day it was the

same. Pierre did not come either and Natasha, not knowing that

Prince Andrew had gone to see his father, could not explain his

absence to herself.



Three weeks passed in this way. Natasha had no desire to go out

anywhere and wandered from room to room like a shadow, idle and

listless; she wept secretly at night and did not go to her mother in

the evenings. She blushed continually and was irritable. It seemed

to her that everybody knew about her disappointment and was laughing

at her and pitying her. Strong as was her inward grief, this wound

to her vanity intensified her misery.



Once she came to her mother, tried to say something, and suddenly

began to cry. Her tears were those of an offended child who does not

know why it is being punished.



The countess began to soothe Natasha, who after first listening to

her mother's words, suddenly interrupted her:



"Leave off, Mamma! I don't think, and don't want to think about

it! He just came and then left off, left off..."



Her voice trembled, and she again nearly cried, but recovered and

went on quietly:



"And I don't at all want to get married. And I am afraid of him; I

have now become quite calm, quite calm."



The day after this conversation Natasha put on the old dress which

she knew had the peculiar property of conducing to cheerfulness in the

mornings, and that day she returned to the old way of life which she

had abandoned since the ball. Having finished her morning tea she went

to the ballroom, which she particularly liked for its loud

resonance, and began singing her solfeggio. When she had finished

her first exercise she stood still in the middle of the room and

sang a musical phrase that particularly pleased her. She listened

joyfully (as though she had not expected it) to the charm of the notes

reverberating, filling the whole empty ballroom, and slowly dying

away; and all at once she felt cheerful. "What's the good of making so

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much of it? Things are nice as it is," she said to herself, and she

began walking up and down the room, not stepping simply on the

resounding parquet but treading with each step from the heel to the

toe (she had on a new and favorite pair of shoes) and listening to the

regular tap of the heel and creak of the toe as gladly as she had to

the sounds of her own voice. Passing a mirror she glanced into it.

"There, that's me!" the expression of her face seemed to say as she

caught sight of herself. "Well, and very nice too! I need nobody."



A footman wanted to come in to clear away something in the room

but she would not let him, and having closed the door behind him

continued her walk. That morning she had returned to her favorite

mood--love of, and delight in, herself. "How charming that Natasha

is!" she said again, speaking as some third, collective, male

person. "Pretty, a good voice, young, and in nobody's way if only they

leave her in peace." But however much they left her in peace she could

not now be at peace, and immediately felt this.



In the hall the porch door opened, and someone asked, "At home?" and

then footsteps were heard. Natasha was looking at the mirror, but

did not see herself. She listened to the sounds in the hall. When

she saw herself, her face was pale. It was he. She knew this for

certain, though she hardly heard his voice through the closed doors.



Pale and agitated, Natasha ran into the drawing room.



"Mamma! Bolkonski has come!" she said. "Mamma, it is awful, it is

unbearable! I don't want... to be tormented? What am I to do?..."



Before the countess could answer, Prince Andrew entered the room

with an agitated and serious face. As soon as he saw Natasha his

face brightened. He kissed the countess' hand and Natasha's, and sat

down beside the sofa.



"It is long since we had the pleasure..." began the countess, but

Prince Andrew interrupted her by answering her intended question,

obviously in haste to say what he had to.



"I have not been to see all this time because I have been at my

father's. I had to talk over a very important matter with him. I

only got back last night," he said glancing at Natasha; "I want to

have a talk with you, Countess," he added after a moment's pause.



The countess lowered her eyes, sighing deeply.



"I am at your disposal," she murmured.



Natasha knew that she ought to go away, but was unable to do so:

something gripped her throat, and regardless of manners she stared

straight at Prince Andrew with wide-open eyes.



"At once? This instant!... No, it can't be!" she thought.



Again he glanced at her, and that glance convinced her that she

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was not mistaken. Yes, at once, that very instant, her fate would be

decided.



"Go, Natasha! I will call you," said the countess in a whisper.



Natasha glanced with frightened imploring eyes at Prince Andrew

and at her mother and went out.



"I have come, Countess, to ask for your daughter's hand," said

Prince Andrew.



The countess' face flushed hotly, but she said nothing.



"Your offer..." she began at last sedately. He remained silent,

looking into her eyes. "Your offer..." (she grew confused) "is

agreeable to us, and I accept your offer. I am glad. And my husband...

I hope... but it will depend on her...."



"I will speak to her when I have your consent.... Do you give it

to me?" said Prince Andrew.



"Yes," replied the countess. She held out her hand to him, and

with a mixed feeling of estrangement and tenderness pressed her lips

to his forehead as he stooped to kiss her hand. She wished to love him

as a son, but felt that to her he was a stranger and a terrifying man.

"I am sure my husband will consent," said the countess, "but your

father..."



"My father, to whom I have told my plans, has made it an express

condition of his consent that the wedding is not to take place for a

year. And I wished to tell you of that," said Prince Andrew.



"It is true that Natasha is still young, but--so long as that?..."



"It is unavoidable," said Prince Andrew with a sigh.



"I will send her to you," said the countess, and left the room.



"Lord have mercy upon us!" she repeated while seeking her daughter.



Sonya said that Natasha was in her bedroom. Natasha was sitting on

the bed, pale and dry eyed, and was gazing at the icons and whispering

something as she rapidly crossed herself. Seeing her mother she jumped

up and flew to her.



"Well, Mamma?... Well?..."



"Go, go to him. He is asking for your hand," said the countess,

coldly it seemed to Natasha. "Go... go," said the mother, sadly and

reproachfully, with a deep sigh, as her daughter ran away.



Natasha never remembered how she entered the drawing room. When

she came in and saw him she paused. "Is it possible that this stranger

has now become everything to me?" she asked herself, and immediately

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answered, "Yes, everything! He alone is now dearer to me than

everything in the world." Prince Andrew came up to her with downcast

eyes.



"I have loved you from the very first moment I saw you. May I hope?"



He looked at her and was struck by the serious impassioned

expression of her face. Her face said: "Why ask? Why doubt what you

cannot but know? Why speak, when words cannot express what one feels?"



She drew near to him and stopped. He took her hand and kissed it.



"Do you love me?"



"Yes, yes!" Natasha murmured as if in vexation. Then she sighed

loudly and, catching her breath more and more quickly, began to sob.



"What is it? What's the matter?"



"Oh, I am so happy!" she replied, smiled through her tears, bent

over closer to him, paused for an instant as if asking herself whether

she might, and then kissed him.



Prince Andrew held her hands, looked into her eyes, and did not find

in his heart his former love for her. Something in him had suddenly

changed; there was no longer the former poetic and mystic charm of

desire, but there was pity for her feminine and childish weakness,

fear at her devotion and trustfulness, and an oppressive yet joyful

sense of the duty that now bound him to her forever. The present

feeling, though not so bright and poetic as the former, was stronger

and more serious.



"Did your mother tell you that it cannot be for a year?" asked

Prince Andrew, still looking into her eyes.



"Is it possible that I--the 'chit of a girl,' as everybody called

me," thought Natasha--"is it possible that I am now to be the wife and

the equal of this strange, dear, clever man whom even my father

looks up to? Can it be true? Can it be true that there can be no

more playing with life, that now I am grown up, that on me now lies

a responsibility for my every word and deed? Yes, but what did he

ask me?"



"No," she replied, but she had not understood his question.



"Forgive me!" he said. "But you are so young, and I have already

been through so much in life. I am afraid for you, you do not yet know

yourself."



Natasha listened with concentrated attention, trying but failing

to take in the meaning of his words.



"Hard as this year which delays my happiness will be," continued

Prince Andrew, "it will give you time to be sure of yourself. I ask

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you to make me happy in a year, but you are free: our engagement shall

remain a secret, and should you find that you do not love me, or

should you come to love..." said Prince Andrew with an unnatural

smile.



"Why do you say that?" Natasha interrupted him. "You know that

from the very day you first came to Otradnoe I have loved you," she

cried, quite convinced that she spoke the truth.



"In a year you will learn to know yourself...."



"A whole year!" Natasha repeated suddenly, only now realizing that

the marriage was to be postponed for a year. "But why a year? Why a

year?..."



Prince Andrew began to explain to her the reasons for this delay.

Natasha did not hear him.



"And can't it be helped?" she asked. Prince Andrew did not reply,

but his face expressed the impossibility of altering that decision.



"It's awful! Oh, it's awful! awful!" Natasha suddenly cried, and

again burst into sobs. "I shall die, waiting a year: it's

impossible, it's awful!" She looked into her lover's face and saw in

it a look of commiseration and perplexity.



"No, no! I'll do anything!" she said, suddenly checking her tears.

"I am so happy."



The father and mother came into the room and gave the betrothed

couple their blessing.



From that day Prince Andrew began to frequent the Rostovs' as

Natasha's affianced lover.









CHAPTER XXIV



No betrothal ceremony took place and Natasha's engagement to

Bolkonski was not announced; Prince Andrew insisted on that. He said

that as he was responsible for the delay he ought to bear the whole

burden of it; that he had given his word and bound himself forever,

but that he did not wish to bind Natasha and gave her perfect freedom.

If after six months she felt that she did not love him she would

have full right to reject him. Naturally neither Natasha nor her

parents wished to hear of this, but Prince Andrew was firm. He came

every day to the Rostovs', but did not behave to Natasha as an

affianced lover: he did not use the familiar thou, but said you to

her, and kissed only her hand. After their engagement, quite

different, intimate, and natural relations sprang up between them.

It was as if they had not known each other till now. Both liked to

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recall how they had regarded each other when as yet they were

nothing to one another; they felt themselves now quite different

beings: then they were artificial, now natural and sincere. At first

the family felt some constraint in intercourse with Prince Andrew;

he seemed a man from another world, and for a long time Natasha

trained the family to get used to him, proudly assuring them all

that he only appeared to be different, but was really just like all of

them, and that she was not afraid of him and no one else ought to

be. After a few days they grew accustomed to him, and without

restraint in his presence pursued their usual way of life, in which he

took his part. He could talk about rural economy with the count,

fashions with the countess and Natasha, and about albums and fancywork

with Sonya. Sometimes the household both among themselves and in his

presence expressed their wonder at how it had all happened, and at the

evident omens there had been of it: Prince Andrew's coming to Otradnoe

and their coming to Petersburg, and the likeness between Natasha and

Prince Andrew which her nurse had noticed on his first visit, and

Andrew's encounter with Nicholas in 1805, and many other incidents

betokening that it had to be.



In the house that poetic dullness and quiet reigned which always

accompanies the presence of a betrothed couple. Often when all sitting

together everyone kept silent. Sometimes the others would get up and

go away and the couple, left alone, still remained silent. They rarely

spoke of their future life. Prince Andrew was afraid and ashamed to

speak of it. Natasha shared this as she did all his feelings, which

she constantly divined. Once she began questioning him about his

son. Prince Andrew blushed, as he often did now--Natasha

particularly liked it in him--and said that his son would not live

with them.



"Why not?" asked Natasha in a frightened tone.



"I cannot take him away from his grandfather, and besides..."



"How I should have loved him!" said Natasha, immediately guessing

his thought; "but I know you wish to avoid any pretext for finding

fault with us."



Sometimes the old count would come up, kiss Prince Andrew, and ask

his advice about Petya's education or Nicholas' service. The old

countess sighed as she looked at them; Sonya was always getting

frightened lest she should be in the way and tried to find excuses for

leaving them alone, even when they did not wish it. When Prince Andrew

spoke (he could tell a story very well), Natasha listened to him

with pride; when she spoke she noticed with fear and joy that he gazed

attentively and scrutinizingly at her. She asked herself in

perplexity: "What does he look for in me? He is trying to discover

something by looking at me! What if what he seeks in me is not there?"

Sometimes she fell into one of the mad, merry moods characteristic

of her, and then she particularly loved to hear and see how Prince

Andrew laughed. He seldom laughed, but when he did he abandoned

himself entirely to his laughter, and after such a laugh she always

felt nearer to him. Natasha would have been completely happy if the

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thought of the separation awaiting her and drawing near had not

terrified her, just as the mere thought of it made him turn pale and

cold.



On the eve of his departure from Petersburg Prince Andrew brought

with him Pierre, who had not been to the Rostovs' once since the ball.

Pierre seemed disconcerted and embarrassed. He was talking to the

countess, and Natasha sat down beside a little chess table with Sonya,

thereby inviting Prince Andrew to come too. He did so.



"You have known Bezukhov a long time?" he asked. "Do you like him?"



"Yes, he's a dear, but very absurd."



And as usual when speaking of Pierre, she began to tell anecdotes of

his absent-mindedness, some of which had even been invented about him.



"Do you know I have entrusted him with our secret? I have known

him from childhood. He has a heart of gold. I beg you, Natalie,"

Prince Andrew said with sudden seriousness--"I am going away and

heaven knows what may happen. You may cease to... all right, I know

I am not to say that. Only this, then: whatever may happen to you when

I am not here..."



"What can happen?"



"Whatever trouble may come," Prince Andrew continued, "I beg you,

Mademoiselle Sophie, whatever may happen, to turn to him alone for

advice and help! He is a most absent-minded and absurd fellow, but

he has a heart of gold."



Neither her father, nor her mother, nor Sonya, nor Prince Andrew

himself could have foreseen how the separation from her lover would

act on Natasha. Flushed and agitated she went about the house all that

day, dry-eyed, occupied with most trivial matters as if not

understanding what awaited her. She did not even cry when, on taking

leave, he kissed her hand for the last time. "Don't go!" she said in a

tone that made him wonder whether he really ought not to stay and

which he remembered long afterwards. Nor did she cry when he was gone;

but for several days she sat in her room dry-eyed, taking no

interest in anything and only saying now and then, "Oh, why did he

go away?"



But a fortnight after his departure, to the surprise of those around

her, she recovered from her mental sickness just as suddenly and

became her old self again, but with a change in her moral physiognomy,

as a child gets up after a long illness with a changed expression of

face.









CHAPTER XXV

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During that year after his son's departure, Prince Nicholas

Bolkonski's health and temper became much worse. He grew still more

irritable, and it was Princess Mary who generally bore the brunt of

his frequent fits of unprovoked anger. He seemed carefully to seek out

her tender spots so as to torture her mentally as harshly as possible.

Princess Mary had two passions and consequently two joys--her

nephew, little Nicholas, and religion--and these were the favorite

subjects of the prince's attacks and ridicule. Whatever was spoken

of he would bring round to the superstitiousness of old maids, or

the petting and spoiling of children. "You want to make him"--little

Nicholas--"into an old maid like yourself! A pity! Prince Andrew wants

a son and not an old maid," he would say. Or, turning to

Mademoiselle Bourienne, he would ask her in Princess Mary's presence

how she liked our village priests and icons and would joke about them.



He continually hurt Princess Mary's feelings and tormented her,

but it cost her no effort to forgive him. Could he be to blame

toward her, or could her father, whom she knew loved her in spite of

it all, be unjust? And what is justice? The princess never thought

of that proud word "justice." All the complex laws of man centered for

her in one clear and simple law--the law of love and self-sacrifice

taught us by Him who lovingly suffered for mankind though He Himself

was God. What had she to do with the justice or injustice of other

people? She had to endure and love, and that she did.



During the winter Prince Andrew had come to Bald Hills and had

been gay, gentle, and more affectionate than Princess Mary had known

him for a long time past. She felt that something had happened to him,

but he said nothing to her about his love. Before he left he had a

long talk with his father about something, and Princess Mary noticed

that before his departure they were dissatisfied with one another.



Soon after Prince Andrew had gone, Princess Mary wrote to her friend

Julie Karagina in Petersburg, whom she had dreamed (as all girls

dream) of marrying to her brother, and who was at that time in

mourning for her own brother, killed in Turkey.





Sorrow, it seems, is our common lot, my dear, tender friend Julie.



Your loss is so terrible that I can only explain it to myself as a

special providence of God who, loving you, wishes to try you and

your excellent mother. Oh, my friend! Religion, and religion alone,

can--I will not say comfort us--but save us from despair. Religion

alone can explain to us what without its help man cannot comprehend:

why, for what cause, kind and noble beings able to find happiness in

life--not merely harming no one but necessary to the happiness of

others--are called away to God, while cruel, useless, harmful persons,

or such as are a burden to themselves and to others, are left

living. The first death I saw, and one I shall never forget--that of

my dear sister-in-law--left that impression on me. Just as you ask

destiny why your splendid brother had to die, so I asked why that

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angel Lise, who not only never wronged anyone, but in whose soul there

were never any unkind thoughts, had to die. And what do you think,

dear friend? Five years have passed since then, and already I, with my

petty understanding, begin to see clearly why she had to die, and in

what way that death was but an expression of the infinite goodness

of the Creator, whose every action, though generally

incomprehensible to us, is but a manifestation of His infinite love

for His creatures. Perhaps, I often think, she was too angelically

innocent to have the strength to perform all a mother's duties. As a

young wife she was irreproachable; perhaps she could not have been

so as a mother. As it is, not only has she left us, and particularly

Prince Andrew, with the purest regrets and memories, but probably

she will there receive a place I dare not hope for myself. But not

to speak of her alone, that early and terrible death has had the

most beneficent influence on me and on my brother in spite of all

our grief. Then, at the moment of our loss, these thoughts could not

occur to me; I should then have dismissed them with horror, but now

they are very clear and certain. I write all this to you, dear friend,

only to convince you of the Gospel truth which has become for me a

principle of life: not a single hair of our heads will fall without

His will. And His will is governed only by infinite love for us, and

so whatever befalls us is for our good.



You ask whether we shall spend next winter in Moscow. In spite of my

wish to see you, I do not think so and do not want to do so. You

will be surprised to hear that the reason for this is Buonaparte!

The case is this: my father's health is growing noticeably worse, he

cannot stand any contradiction and is becoming irritable. This

irritability is, as you know, chiefly directed to political questions.

He cannot endure the notion that Buonaparte is negotiating on equal

terms with all the sovereigns of Europe and particularly with our own,

the grandson of the Great Catherine! As you know, I am quite

indifferent to politics, but from my father's remarks and his talks

with Michael Ivanovich I know all that goes on in the world and

especially about the honors conferred on Buonaparte, who only at

Bald Hills in the whole world, it seems, is not accepted as a great

man, still less as Emperor of France. And my father cannot stand this.

It seems to me that it is chiefly because of his political views

that my father is reluctant to speak of going to Moscow; for he

foresees the encounters that would result from his way of expressing

his views regardless of anybody. All the benefit he might derive

from a course of treatment he would lose as a result of the disputes

about Buonaparte which would be inevitable. In any case it will be

decided very shortly.



Our family life goes on in the old way except for my brother

Andrew's absence. He, as I wrote you before, has changed very much

of late. After his sorrow he only this year quite recovered his

spirits. He has again become as I used to know him when a child: kind,

affectionate, with that heart of gold to which I know no equal. He has

realized, it seems to me, that life is not over for him. But

together with this mental change he has grown physically much

weaker. He has become thinner and more nervous. I am anxious about him

and glad he is taking this trip abroad which the doctors recommended

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long ago. I hope it will cure him. You write that in Petersburg he

is spoken of as one of the most active, cultivated, and capable of the

young men. Forgive my vanity as a relation, but I never doubted it.

The good he has done to everybody here, from his peasants up to the

gentry, is incalculable. On his arrival in Petersburg he received only

his due. I always wonder at the way rumors fly from Petersburg to

Moscow, especially such false ones as that you write about--I mean the

report of my brother's betrothal to the little Rostova. I do not think

my brother will ever marry again, and certainly not her; and this is

why: first, I know that though he rarely speaks about the wife he

has lost, the grief of that loss has gone too deep in his heart for

him ever to decide to give her a successor and our little angel a

stepmother. Secondly because, as far as I know, that girl is not the

kind of girl who could please Prince Andrew. I do not think he would

choose her for a wife, and frankly I do not wish it. But I am

running on too long and am at the end of my second sheet. Good-by,

my dear friend. May God keep you in His holy and mighty care. My

dear friend, Mademoiselle Bourienne, sends you kisses.



MARY









CHAPTER XXVI





In the middle of the summer Princess Mary received an unexpected

letter from Prince Andrew in Switzerland in which he gave her

strange and surprising news. He informed her of his engagement to

Natasha Rostova. The whole letter breathed loving rapture for his

betrothed and tender and confiding affection for his sister. He

wrote that he had never loved as he did now and that only now did he

understand and know what life was. He asked his sister to forgive

him for not having told her of his resolve when he had last visited

Bald Hills, though he had spoken of it to his father. He had not

done so for fear Princess Mary should ask her father to give his

consent, irritating him and having to bear the brunt of his

displeasure without attaining her object. "Besides," he wrote, "the

matter was not then so definitely settled as it is now. My father then

insisted on a delay of a year and now already six months, half of that

period, have passed, and my resolution is firmer than ever. If the

doctors did not keep me here at the spas I should be back in Russia,

but as it is I have to postpone my return for three months. You know

me and my relations with Father. I want nothing from him. I have

been and always shall be independent; but to go against his will and

arouse his anger, now that he may perhaps remain with us such a

short time, would destroy half my happiness. I am now writing to him

about the same question, and beg you to choose a good moment to hand

him the letter and to let me know how he looks at the whole matter and

whether there is hope that he may consent to reduce the term by four

months."



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After long hesitations, doubts, and prayers, Princess Mary gave

the letter to her father. The next day the old prince said to her

quietly:



"Write and tell your brother to wait till I am dead.... It won't

be long--I shall soon set him free."



The princess was about to reply, but her father would not let her

speak and, raising his voice more and more, cried:



"Marry, marry, my boy!... A good family!... Clever people, eh? Rich,

eh? Yes, a nice stepmother little Nicholas will have! Write and tell

him that he may marry tomorrow if he likes. She will be little

Nicholas' stepmother and I'll marry Bourienne!... Ha, ha, ha! He

mustn't be without a stepmother either! Only one thing, no more

women are wanted in my house--let him marry and live by himself.

Perhaps you will go and live with him too?" he added, turning to

Princess Mary. "Go in heavens name! Go out into the frost... the

frost... the frost!



After this outburst the prince did not speak any more about the

matter. But repressed vexation at his son's poor-spirited behavior

found expression in his treatment of his daughter. To his former

pretexts for irony a fresh one was now added--allusions to stepmothers

and amiabilities to Mademoiselle Bourienne.



"Why shouldn't I marry her?" he asked his daughter. "She'll make a

splendid princess!"



And latterly, to her surprise and bewilderment, Princess Mary

noticed that her father was really associating more and more with

the Frenchwoman. She wrote to Prince Andrew about the reception of his

letter, but comforted him with hopes of reconciling their father to

the idea.



Little Nicholas and his education, her brother Andrew, and

religion were Princess Mary's joys and consolations; but besides that,

since everyone must have personal hopes, Princess Mary in the

profoundest depths of her heart had a hidden dream and hope that

supplied the chief consolation of her life. This comforting dream

and hope were given her by God's folk--the half-witted and other

pilgrims who visited her without the prince's knowledge. The longer

she lived, the more experience and observation she had of life, the

greater was her wonder at the short-sightedness of men who seek

enjoyment and happiness here on earth: toiling, suffering, struggling,

and harming one another, to obtain that impossible, visionary,

sinful happiness. Prince Andrew had loved his wife, she died, but that

was not enough: he wanted to bind his happiness to another woman.

Her father objected to this because he wanted a more distinguished and

wealthier match for Andrew. And they all struggled and suffered and

tormented one another and injured their souls, their eternal souls,

for the attainment of benefits which endure but for an instant. Not

only do we know this ourselves, but Christ, the Son of God, came

down to earth and told us that this life is but for a moment and is

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a probation; yet we cling to it and think to find happiness in it.

"How is it that no one realizes this?" thought Princess Mary. "No

one except these despised God's folk who, wallet on back, come to me

by the back door, afraid of being seen by the prince, not for fear

of ill-usage by him but for fear of causing him to sin. To leave

family, home, and all the cares of worldly welfare, in order without

clinging to anything to wander in hempen rags from place to place

under an assumed name, doing no one any harm but praying for all-

for those who drive one away as well as for those who protect one:

higher than that life and truth there is no life or truth!"



There was one pilgrim, a quiet pockmarked little woman of fifty

called Theodosia, who for over thirty years had gone about barefoot

and worn heavy chains. Princess Mary was particularly fond of her.

Once, when in a room with a lamp dimly lit before the icon Theodosia

was talking of her life, the thought that Theodosia alone had found

the true path of life suddenly came to Princess Mary with such force

that she resolved to become a pilgrim herself. When Theodosia had gone

to sleep Princess Mary thought about this for a long time, and at last

made up her mind that, strange as it might seem, she must go on a

pilgrimage. She disclosed this thought to no one but to her confessor,

Father Akinfi, the monk, and he approved of her intention. Under guise

of a present for the pilgrims, Princess Mary prepared a pilgrim's

complete costume for herself: a coarse smock, bast shoes, a rough

coat, and a black kerchief. Often, approaching the chest of drawers

containing this secret treasure, Princess Mary paused, uncertain

whether the time had not already come to put her project into

execution.



Often, listening to the pilgrims' tales, she was so stimulated by

their simple speech, mechanical to them but to her so full of deep

meaning, that several times she was on the point of abandoning

everything and running away from home. In imagination she already

pictured herself by Theodosia's side, dressed in coarse rags,

walking with a staff, a wallet on her back, along the dusty road,

directing her wanderings from one saint's shrine to another, free from

envy, earthly love, or desire, and reaching at last the place where

there is no more sorrow or sighing, but eternal joy and bliss.



"I shall come to a place and pray there, and before having time to

get used to it or getting to love it, I shall go farther. I will go on

till my legs fail, and I'll lie down and die somewhere, and shall at

last reach that eternal, quiet haven, where there is neither sorrow

nor sighing..." thought Princess Mary.



But afterwards, when she saw her father and especially little Koko

(Nicholas), her resolve weakened. She wept quietly, and felt that

she was a sinner who loved her father and little nephew more than God.









BOOK SEVEN: 1810 --11

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CHAPTER I





The Bible legend tells us that the absence of labor--idleness--was a

condition of the first man's blessedness before the Fall. Fallen man

has retained a love of idleness, but the curse weighs on the race

not only because we have to seek our bread in the sweat of our

brows, but because our moral nature is such that we cannot be both

idle and at ease. An inner voice tells us we are in the wrong if we

are idle. If man could find a state in which he felt that though

idle he was fulfilling his duty, he would have found one of the

conditions of man's primitive blessedness. And such a state of

obligatory and irreproachable idleness is the lot of a whole class-

the military. The chief attraction of military service has consisted

and will consist in this compulsory and irreproachable idleness.



Nicholas Rostov experienced this blissful condition to the full

when, after 1807, he continued to serve in the Pavlograd regiment,

in which he already commanded the squadron he had taken over from

Denisov.



Rostov had become a bluff, good-natured fellow, whom his Moscow

acquaintances would have considered rather bad form, but who was liked

and respected by his comrades, subordinates, and superiors, and was

well contented with his life. Of late, in 1809, he found in letters

from home more frequent complaints from his mother that their

affairs were falling into greater and greater disorder, and that it

was time for him to come back to gladden and comfort his old parents.



Reading these letters, Nicholas felt a dread of their wanting to

take him away from surroundings in which, protected from all the

entanglements of life, he was living so calmly and quietly. He felt

that sooner or later he would have to re-enter that whirlpool of life,

with its embarrassments and affairs to be straightened out, its

accounts with stewards, quarrels, and intrigues, its ties, society,

and with Sonya's love and his promise to her. It was all dreadfully

difficult and complicated; and he replied to his mother in cold,

formal letters in French, beginning: "My dear Mamma," and ending:

"Your obedient son," which said nothing of when he would return. In

1810 he received letters from his parents, in which they told him of

Natasha's engagement to Bolkonski, and that the wedding would be in

a year's time because the old prince made difficulties. This letter

grieved and mortified Nicholas. In the first place he was sorry that

Natasha, for whom he cared more than for anyone else in the family,

should be lost to the home; and secondly, from his hussar point of

view, he regretted not to have been there to show that fellow

Bolkonski that connection with him was no such great honor after

all, and that if he loved Natasha he might dispense with permission

from his dotard father. For a moment he hesitated whether he should

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not apply for leave in order to see Natasha before she was married,

but then came the maneuvers, and considerations about Sonya and

about the confusion of their affairs, and Nicholas again put it off.

But in the spring of that year, he received a letter from his

mother, written without his father's knowledge, and that letter

persuaded him to return. She wrote that if he did not come and take

matters in hand, their whole property would be sold by auction and

they would all have to go begging. The count was so weak, and

trusted Mitenka so much, and was so good-natured, that everybody

took advantage of him and things were going from bad to worse. "For

God's sake, I implore you, come at once if you do not wish to make

me and the whole family wretched," wrote the countess.



This letter touched Nicholas. He had that common sense of a

matter-of-fact man which showed him what he ought to do.



The right thing now was, if not to retire from the service, at any

rate to go home on leave. Why he had to go he did not know; but

after his after-dinner nap he gave orders to saddle Mars, an extremely

vicious gray stallion that had not been ridden for a long time, and

when he returned with the horse all in a lather, he informed Lavrushka

(Denisov's servant who had remained with him) and his comrades who

turned up in the evening that he was applying for leave and was

going home. Difficult and strange as it was for him to reflect that he

would go away without having heard from the staff--and this interested

him extremely--whether he was promoted to a captaincy or would receive

the Order of St. Anne for the last maneuvers; strange as it was to

think that he would go away without having sold his three roans to the

Polish Count Golukhovski, who was bargaining for the horses Rostov had

betted he would sell for two thousand rubles; incomprehensible as it

seemed that the ball the hussars were giving in honor of the Polish

Mademoiselle Przazdziecka (out of rivalry to the Uhlans who had

given one in honor of their Polish Mademoiselle Borzozowska) would

take place without him--he knew he must go away from this good, bright

world to somewhere where everything was stupid and confused. A week

later he obtained his leave. His hussar comrades--not only those of

his own regiment, but the whole brigade--gave Rostov a dinner to which

the subscription was fifteen rubles a head, and at which there were

two bands and two choirs of singers. Rostov danced the Trepak with

Major Basov; the tipsy officers tossed, embraced, and dropped

Rostov; the soldiers of the third squadron tossed him too, and shouted

"hurrah!" and then they put him in his sleigh and escorted him as

far as the first post station.



During the first half of the journey--from Kremenchug to Kiev--all

Rostov's thoughts, as is usual in such cases, were behind him, with

the squadron; but when he had gone more than halfway he began to

forget his three roans and Dozhoyveyko, his quartermaster, and to

wonder anxiously how things would be at Otradnoe and what he would

find there. Thoughts of home grew stronger the nearer he approached

it--far stronger, as though this feeling of his was subject to the law

by which the force of attraction is in inverse proportion to the

square of the distance. At the last post station before Otradnoe he

gave the driver a three-ruble tip, and on arriving he ran

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breathlessly, like a boy, up the steps of his home.



After the rapture of meeting, and after that odd feeling of

unsatisfied expectation--the feeling that "everything is just the

same, so why did I hurry?"--Nicholas began to settle down in his old

home world. His father and mother were much the same, only a little

older. What was new in them was a certain uneasiness and occasional

discord, which there used not to be, and which, as Nicholas soon found

out, was due to the bad state of their affairs. Sonya was nearly

twenty; she had stopped growing prettier and promised nothing more

than she was already, but that was enough. She exhaled happiness and

love from the time Nicholas returned, and the faithful, unalterable

love of this girl had a gladdening effect on him. Petya and Natasha

surprised Nicholas most. Petya was a big handsome boy of thirteen,

merry, witty, and mischievous, with a voice that was already breaking.

As for Natasha, for a long while Nicholas wondered and laughed

whenever he looked at her.



"You're not the same at all," he said.



"How? Am I uglier?"



"On the contrary, but what dignity? A princess!" he whispered to

her.



"Yes, yes, yes!" cried Natasha, joyfully.



She told him about her romance with Prince Andrew and of his visit

to Otradnoe and showed him his last letter.



"Well, are you glad?" Natasha asked. "I am so tranquil and happy

now."



"Very glad," answered Nicholas. "He is an excellent fellow.... And

are you very much in love?"



"How shall I put it?" replied Natasha. "I was in love with Boris,

with my teacher, and with Denisov, but this is quite different. I feel

at peace and settled. I know that no better man than he exists, and

I am calm and contented now. Not at all as before."



Nicholas expressed his disapproval of the postponement of the

marriage for a year; but Natasha attacked her brother with

exasperation, proving to him that it could not be otherwise, and

that it would be a bad thing to enter a family against the father's

will, and that she herself wished it so.



"You don't at all understand," she said.



Nicholas was silent and agreed with her.



Her brother often wondered as he looked at her. She did not seem

at all like a girl in love and parted from her affianced husband.

She was even-tempered and calm and quite as cheerful as of old. This

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amazed Nicholas and even made him regard Bolkonski's courtship

skeptically. He could not believe that her fate was sealed, especially

as he had not seen her with Prince Andrew. It always seemed to him

that there was something not quite right about this intended marriage.



"Why this delay? Why no betrothal?" he thought. Once, when he had

touched on this topic with his mother, he discovered, to his

surprise and somewhat to his satisfaction, that in the depth of her

soul she too had doubts about this marriage.



"You see he writes," said she, showing her son a letter of Prince

Andrew's, with that latent grudge a mother always has in regard to a

daughter's future married happiness, "he writes that he won't come

before December. What can be keeping him? Illness, probably! His

health is very delicate. Don't tell Natasha. And don't attach

importance to her being so bright: that's because she's living through

the last days of her girlhood, but I know what she is like every

time we receive a letter from him! However, God grant that

everything turns out well!" (She always ended with these words.) "He

is an excellent man!"









CHAPTER II





After reaching home Nicholas was at first serious and even dull.

He was worried by the impending necessity of interfering in the stupid

business matters for which his mother had called him home. To throw

off this burden as quickly as possible, on the third day after his

arrival he went, angry and scowling and without answering questions as

to where he was going, to Mitenka's lodge and demanded an account of

everything. But what an account of everything might be Nicholas knew

even less than the frightened and bewildered Mitenka. The conversation

and the examination of the accounts with Mitenka did not last long.

The village elder, a peasant delegate, and the village clerk, who were

waiting in the passage, heard with fear and delight first the young

count's voice roaring and snapping and rising louder and louder, and

then words of abuse, dreadful words, ejaculated one after the other.



"Robber!... Ungrateful wretch!... I'll hack the dog to pieces! I'm

not my father!... Robbing us!..." and so on.



Then with no less fear and delight they saw how the young count, red

in the face and with bloodshot eyes, dragged Mitenka out by the scruff

of the neck and applied his foot and knee to his behind with great

agility at convenient moments between the words, shouting, "Be off!

Never let me see your face here again, you villain!"



Mitenka flew headlong down the six steps and ran away into the

shrubbery. (This shrubbery was a well-known haven of refuge for

culprits at Otradnoe. Mitenka himself, returning tipsy from the

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town, used to hide there, and many of the residents at Otradnoe,

hiding from Mitenka, knew of its protective qualities.)



Mitenka's wife and sisters-in-law thrust their heads and

frightened faces out of the door of a room where a bright samovar

was boiling and where the steward's high bedstead stood with its

patchwork quilt.



The young count paid no heed to them, but, breathing hard, passed by

with resolute strides and went into the house.



The countess, who heard at once from the maids what had happened

at the lodge, was calmed by the thought that now their affairs would

certainly improve, but on the other hand felt anxious as to the effect

this excitement might have on her son. She went several times to his

door on tiptoe and listened, as he lighted one pipe after another.



Next day the old count called his son aside and, with an embarrassed

smile, said to him:



"But you know, my dear boy, it's a pity you got excited! Mitenka has

told me all about it."



"I knew," thought Nicholas, "that I should never understand anything

in this crazy world."



"You were angry that he had not entered those 700 rubles. But they

were carried forward--and you did not look at the other page."



"Papa, he is a blackguard and a thief! I know he is! And what I have

done, I have done; but, if you like, I won't speak to him again."



"No, my dear boy" (the count, too, felt embarrassed. He knew he

had mismanaged his wife's property and was to blame toward his

children, but he did not know how to remedy it). "No, I beg you to

attend to the business. I am old. I..."



"No, Papa. Forgive me if I have caused you unpleasantness. I

understand it all less than you do."



"Devil take all these peasants, and money matters, and carryings

forward from page to page," he thought. "I used to understand what a

'corner' and the stakes at cards meant, but carrying forward to

another page I don't understand at all," said he to himself, and after

that he did not meddle in business affairs. But once the countess

called her son and informed him that she had a promissory note from

Anna Mikhaylovna for two thousand rubles, and asked him what he

thought of doing with it.



"This," answered Nicholas. "You say it rests with me. Well, I

don't like Anna Mikhaylovna and I don't like Boris, but they were

our friends and poor. Well then, this!" and he tore up the note, and

by so doing caused the old countess to weep tears of joy. After

that, young Rostov took no further part in any business affairs, but

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devoted himself with passionate enthusiasm to what was to him a new

pursuit--the chase--for which his father kept a large establishment.









CHAPTER III





The weather was already growing wintry and morning frosts

congealed an earth saturated by autumn rains. The verdure had

thickened and its bright green stood out sharply against the

brownish strips of winter rye trodden down by the cattle, and

against the pale-yellow stubble of the spring buckwheat. The wooded

ravines and the copses, which at the end of August had still been

green islands amid black fields and stubble, had become golden and

bright-red islands amid the green winter rye. The hares had already

half changed their summer coats, the fox cubs were beginning to

scatter, and the young wolves were bigger than dogs. It was the best

time of the year for the chase. The hounds of that ardent young

sportsman Rostov had not merely reached hard winter condition, but

were so jaded that at a meeting of the huntsmen it was decided to give

them a three days' rest and then, on the sixteenth of September, to go

on a distant expedition, starting from the oak grove where there was

an undisturbed litter of wolf cubs.



All that day the hounds remained at home. It was frosty and the

air was sharp, but toward evening the sky became overcast and it began

to thaw. On the fifteenth, when young Rostov, in his dressing gown,

looked out of the window, he saw it was an unsurpassable morning for

hunting: it was as if the sky were melting and sinking to the earth

without any wind. The only motion in the air was that of the dripping,

microscopic particles of drizzling mist. The bare twigs in the

garden were hung with transparent drops which fell on the freshly

fallen leaves. The earth in the kitchen garden looked wet and black

and glistened like poppy seed and at a short distance merged into

the dull, moist veil of mist. Nicholas went out into the wet and muddy

porch. There was a smell of decaying leaves and of dog. Milka, a

black-spotted, broad-haunched bitch with prominent black eyes, got

up on seeing her master, stretched her hind legs, lay down like a

hare, and then suddenly jumped up and licked him right on his nose and

mustache. Another borzoi, a dog, catching sight of his master from the

garden path, arched his back and, rushing headlong toward the porch

with lifted tail, began rubbing himself against his legs.



"O-hoy!" came at that moment, that inimitable huntsman's call

which unites the deepest bass with the shrillest tenor, and round

the corner came Daniel the head huntsman and head kennelman, a gray,

wrinkled old man with hair cut straight over his forehead, Ukrainian

fashion, a long bent whip in his hand, and that look of independence

and scorn of everything that is only seen in huntsmen. He doffed his

Circassian cap to his master and looked at him scornfully. This

scorn was not offensive to his master. Nicholas knew that this Daniel,

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disdainful of everybody and who considered himself above them, was all

the same his serf and huntsman.



"Daniel!" Nicholas said timidly, conscious at the sight of the

weather, the hounds, and the huntsman that he was being carried away

by that irresistible passion for sport which makes a man forget all

his previous resolutions, as a lover forgets in the presence of his

mistress.



"What orders, your excellency?" said the huntsman in his deep

bass, deep as a proto-deacon's and hoarse with hallooing--and two

flashing black eyes gazed from under his brows at his master, who

was silent. "Can you resist it?" those eyes seemed to be asking.



"It's a good day, eh? For a hunt and a gallop, eh?" asked

Nicholas, scratching Milka behind the ears.



Daniel did not answer, but winked instead.



"I sent Uvarka at dawn to listen," his bass boomed out after a

minute's pause. "He says she's moved them into the Otradnoe enclosure.

They were howling there." (This meant that the she-wolf, about whom

they both knew, had moved with her cubs to the Otradnoe copse, a small

place a mile and a half from the house.)



"We ought to go, don't you think so?" said Nicholas. "Come to me

with Uvarka."



"As you please."



"Then put off feeding them."



"Yes, sir."



Five minutes later Daniel and Uvarka were standing in Nicholas'

big study. Though Daniel was not a big man, to see him in a room was

like seeing a horse or a bear on the floor among the furniture and

surroundings of human life. Daniel himself felt this, and as usual

stood just inside the door, trying to speak softly and not move, for

fear of breaking something in the master's apartment, and he

hastened to say all that was necessary so as to get from under that

ceiling, out into the open under the sky once more.



Having finished his inquiries and extorted from Daniel an opinion

that the hounds were fit (Daniel himself wished to go hunting),

Nicholas ordered the horses to be saddled. But just as Daniel was

about to go Natasha came in with rapid steps, not having done up her

hair or finished dressing and with her old nurse's big shawl wrapped

round her. Petya ran in at the same time.



"You are going?" asked Natasha. "I knew you would! Sonya said you

wouldn't go, but I knew that today is the sort of day when you

couldn't help going."



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"Yes, we are going," replied Nicholas reluctantly, for today, as

he intended to hunt seriously, he did not want to take Natasha and

Petya. "We are going, but only wolf hunting: it would be dull for

you."



"You know it is my greatest pleasure," said Natasha. "It's not fair;

you are going by yourself, are having the horses saddled and said

nothing to us about it."



"'No barrier bars a Russian's path'--we'll go!" shouted Petya.



"But you can't. Mamma said you mustn't," said Nicholas to Natasha.



"Yes, I'll go. I shall certainly go," said Natasha decisively.

"Daniel, tell them to saddle for us, and Michael must come with my

dogs," she added to the huntsman.



It seemed to Daniel irksome and improper to be in a room at all, but

to have anything to do with a young lady seemed to him impossible.

He cast down his eyes and hurried out as if it were none of his

business, careful as he went not to inflict any accidental injury on

the young lady.









CHAPTER IV





The old count, who had always kept up an enormous hunting

establishment but had now handed it all completely over to his son's

care, being in very good spirits on this fifteenth of September,

prepared to go out with the others.



In an hour's time the whole hunting party was at the porch.

Nicholas, with a stern and serious air which showed that now was no

time for attending to trifles, went past Natasha and Petya who were

trying to tell him something. He had a look at all the details of

the hunt, sent a pack of hounds and huntsmen on ahead to find the

quarry, mounted his chestnut Donets, and whistling to his own leash of

borzois, set off across the threshing ground to a field leading to the

Otradnoe wood. The old count's horse, a sorrel gelding called

Viflyanka, was led by the groom in attendance on him, while the

count himself was to drive in a small trap straight to a spot reserved

for him.



They were taking fifty-four hounds, with six hunt attendants and

whippers-in. Besides the family, there were eight borzoi kennelmen and

more than forty borzois, so that, with the borzois on the leash

belonging to members of the family, there were about a hundred and

thirty dogs and twenty horsemen.



Each dog knew its master and its call. Each man in the hunt knew his

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business, his place, what he had to do. As soon as they had passed the

fence they all spread out evenly and quietly, without noise or talk,

along the road and field leading to the Otradnoe covert.



The horses stepped over the field as over a thick carpet, now and

then splashing into puddles as they crossed a road. The misty sky

still seemed to descend evenly and imperceptibly toward the earth, the

air was still, warm, and silent. Occasionally the whistle of a

huntsman, the snort of a horse, the crack of a whip, or the whine of a

straggling hound could be heard.



When they had gone a little less than a mile, five more riders

with dogs appeared out of the mist, approaching the Rostovs. In

front rode a fresh-looking, handsome old man with a large gray

mustache.



"Good morning, Uncle!" said Nicholas, when the old man drew near.



"That's it. Come on!... I was sure of it," began "Uncle." (He was

a distant relative of the Rostovs', a man of small means, and their

neighbor.) "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist it and it's a good

thing you're going. That's it! Come on! (This was "Uncle's" favorite

expression.) "Take the covert at once, for my Girchik says the Ilagins

are at Korniki with their hounds. That's it. Come on!... They'll

take the cubs from under your very nose."



"That's where I'm going. Shall we join up our packs?" asked

Nicholas.



The hounds were joined into one pack, and "Uncle" and Nicholas

rode on side by side. Natasha, muffled up in shawls which did not hide

her eager face and shining eyes, galloped up to them. She was followed

by Petya who always kept close to her, by Michael, a huntsman, and

by a groom appointed to look after her. Petya, who was laughing,

whipped and pulled at his horse. Natasha sat easily and confidently on

her black Arabchik and reined him in without effort with a firm hand.



"Uncle" looked round disapprovingly at Petya and Natasha. He did not

like to combine frivolity with the serious business of hunting.



"Good morning, Uncle! We are going too!" shouted Petya.



"Good morning, good morning! But don't go overriding the hounds,"

said "Uncle" sternly.



"Nicholas, what a fine dog Trunila is! He knew me," said Natasha,

referring to her favorite hound.



"In the first place, Trunila is not a 'dog,' but a harrier," thought

Nicholas, and looked sternly at his sister, trying to make her feel

the distance that ought to separate them at that moment. Natasha

understood it.



"You mustn't think we'll be in anyone's way, Uncle," she said.

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"We'll go to our places and won't budge."



"A good thing too, little countess," said "Uncle," "only mind you

don't fall off your horse," he added, "because--that's it, come on!-

you've nothing to hold on to."



The oasis of the Otradnoe covert came in sight a few hundred yards

off, the huntsmen were already nearing it. Rostov, having finally

settled with "Uncle" where they should set on the hounds, and having

shown Natasha where she was to stand--a spot where nothing could

possibly run out--went round above the ravine.



"Well, nephew, you're going for a big wolf," said "Uncle." "Mind and

don't let her slip!"



"That's as may happen," answered Rostov. "Karay, here!" he

shouted, answering "Uncle's" remark by this call to his borzoi.

Karay was a shaggy old dog with a hanging jowl, famous for having

tackled a big wolf unaided. They all took up their places.



The old count, knowing his son's ardor in the hunt, hurried so as

not to be late, and the huntsmen had not yet reached their places when

Count Ilya Rostov, cheerful, flushed, and with quivering cheeks, drove

up with his black horses over the winter rye to the place reserved for

him, where a wolf might come out. Having straightened his coat and

fastened on his hunting knives and horn, he mounted his good, sleek,

well-fed, and comfortable horse, Viflyanka, which was turning gray,

like himself. His horses and trap were sent home. Count Ilya Rostov,

though not at heart a keen sportsman, knew the rules of the hunt well,

and rode to the bushy edge of the road where he was to stand, arranged

his reins, settled himself in the saddle, and, feeling that he was

ready, looked about with a smile.



Beside him was Simon Chekmar, his personal attendant, an old

horseman now somewhat stiff in the saddle. Chekmar held in leash three

formidable wolfhounds, who had, however, grown fat like their master

and his horse. Two wise old dogs lay down unleashed. Some hundred

paces farther along the edge of the wood stood Mitka, the count's

other groom, a daring horseman and keen rider to hounds. Before the

hunt, by old custom, the count had drunk a silver cupful of mulled

brandy, taken a snack, and washed it down with half a bottle of his

favorite Bordeaux.



He was somewhat flushed with the wine and the drive. His eyes were

rather moist and glittered more than usual, and as he sat in his

saddle, wrapped up in his fur coat, he looked like a child taken out

for an outing.



The thin, hollow-cheeked Chekmar, having got everything ready,

kept glancing at his master with whom he had lived on the best of

terms for thirty years, and understanding the mood he was in

expected a pleasant chat. A third person rode up circumspectly through

the wood (it was plain that he had had a lesson) and stopped behind

the count. This person was a gray-bearded old man in a woman's

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cloak, with a tall peaked cap on his head. He was the buffoon, who

went by a woman's name, Nastasya Ivanovna.



"Well, Nastasya Ivanovna!" whispered the count, winking at him.

"If you scare away the beast, Daniel'll give it you!"



"I know a thing or two myself!" said Nastasya Ivanovna.



"Hush!" whispered the count and turned to Simon. "Have you seen

the young countess?" he asked. "Where is she?"



"With young Count Peter, by the Zharov rank grass," answered

Simon, smiling. "Though she's a lady, she's very fond of hunting."



"And you're surprised at the way she rides, Simon, eh?" said the

count. "She's as good as many a man!"



"Of course! It's marvelous. So bold, so easy!"



"And Nicholas? Where is he? By the Lyadov upland, isn't he?"



"Yes, sir. He knows where to stand. He understands the matter so

well that Daniel and I are often quite astounded," said Simon, well

knowing what would please his master.



"Rides well, eh? And how well he looks on his horse, eh?"



"A perfect picture! How he chased a fox out of the rank grass by the

Zavarzinsk thicket the other day! Leaped a fearful place; what a sight

when they rushed from the covert... the horse worth a thousand

rubles and the rider beyond all price! Yes, one would have to search

far to find another as smart."



"To search far..." repeated the count, evidently sorry Simon had not

said more. "To search far," he said, turning back the skirt of his

coat to get at his snuffbox.



"The other day when he came out from Mass in full uniform, Michael

Sidorych..." Simon did not finish, for on the still air he had

distinctly caught the music of the hunt with only two or three

hounds giving tongue. He bent down his head and listened, shaking a

warning finger at his master. "They are on the scent of the cubs..."

he whispered, "straight to the Lyadov uplands."



The count, forgetting to smooth out the smile on his face, looked

into the distance straight before him, down the narrow open space,

holding the snuffbox in his hand but not taking any. After the cry

of the hounds came the deep tones of the wolf call from Daniel's

hunting horn; the pack joined the first three hounds and they could be

heard in full cry, with that peculiar lift in the note that

indicates that they are after a wolf. The whippers-in no longer set on

the hounds, but changed to the cry of ulyulyu, and above the others

rose Daniel's voice, now a deep bass, now piercingly shrill. His voice

seemed to fill the whole wood and carried far beyond out into the open

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field.



After listening a few moments in silence, the count and his

attendant convinced themselves that the hounds had separated into

two packs: the sound of the larger pack, eagerly giving tongue,

began to die away in the distance, the other pack rushed by the wood

past the count, and it was with this that Daniel's voice was heard

calling ulyulyu. The sounds of both packs mingled and broke apart

again, but both were becoming more distant.



Simon sighed and stooped to straighten the leash a young borzoi

had entangled; the count too sighed and, noticing the snuffbox in

his hand, opened it and took a pinch. "Back!" cried Simon to a

borzoi that was pushing forward out of the wood. The count started and

dropped the snuffbox. Nastasya Ivanovna dismounted to pick it up.

The count and Simon were looking at him.



Then, unexpectedly, as often happens, the sound of the hunt suddenly

approached, as if the hounds in full cry and Daniel ulyulyuing were

just in front of them.



The count turned and saw on his right Mitka staring at him with eyes

starting out of his head, raising his cap and pointing before him to

the other side.



"Look out!" he shouted, in a voice plainly showing that he had

long fretted to utter that word, and letting the borzois slip he

galloped toward the count.



The count and Simon galloped out of the wood and saw on their left a

wolf which, softly swaying from side to side, was coming at a quiet

lope farther to the left to the very place where they were standing.

The angry borzois whined and getting free of the leash rushed past the

horses' feet at the wolf.



The wolf paused, turned its heavy forehead toward the dogs

awkwardly, like a man suffering from the quinsy, and, still slightly

swaying from side to side, gave a couple of leaps and with a swish

of its tail disappeared into the skirt of the wood. At the same

instant, with a cry like a wail, first one hound, then another, and

then another, sprang helter-skelter from the wood opposite and the

whole pack rushed across the field toward the very spot where the wolf

had disappeared. The hazel bushes parted behind the hounds and

Daniel's chestnut horse appeared, dark with sweat. On its long back

sat Daniel, hunched forward, capless, his disheveled gray hair hanging

over his flushed, perspiring face.



"Ulyulyulyu! ulyulyu!..." he cried. When he caught sight of the

count his eyes flashed lightning.



"Blast you!" he shouted, holding up his whip threateningly at the

count.



"You've let the wolf go!... What sportsmen!" and as if scorning to

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say more to the frightened and shamefaced count, he lashed the heaving

flanks of his sweating chestnut gelding with all the anger the count

had aroused and flew off after the hounds. The count, like a

punished schoolboy, looked round, trying by a smile to win Simon's

sympathy for his plight. But Simon was no longer there. He was

galloping round by the bushes while the field was coming up on both

sides, all trying to head the wolf, but it vanished into the wood

before they could do so.









CHAPTER V





Nicholas Rostov meanwhile remained at his post, waiting for the

wolf. By the way the hunt approached and receded, by the cries of

the dogs whose notes were familiar to him, by the way the voices of

the huntsmen approached, receded, and rose, he realized what was

happening at the copse. He knew that young and old wolves were

there, that the hounds had separated into two packs, that somewhere

a wolf was being chased, and that something had gone wrong. He

expected the wolf to come his way any moment. He made thousands of

different conjectures as to where and from what side the beast would

come and how he would set upon it. Hope alternated with despair.

Several times he addressed a prayer to God that the wolf should come

his way. He prayed with that passionate and shame-faced feeling with

which men pray at moments of great excitement arising from trivial

causes. "What would it be to Thee to do this for me?" he said to

God. "I know Thou art great, and that it is a sin to ask this of Thee,

but for God's sake do let the old wolf come my way and let Karay

spring at it--in sight of 'Uncle' who is watching from over there--and

seize it by the throat in a death grip!" A thousand times during

that half-hour Rostov cast eager and restless glances over the edge of

the wood, with the two scraggy oaks rising above the aspen undergrowth

and the gully with its water-worn side and "Uncle's" cap just

visible above the bush on his right.



"No, I shan't have such luck," thought Rostov, "yet what wouldn't it

be worth! It is not to be! Everywhere, at cards and in war, I am

always unlucky." Memories of Austerlitz and of Dolokhov flashed

rapidly and clearly through his mind. "Only once in my life to get

an old wolf, I want only that!" thought he, straining eyes and ears

and looking to the left and then to the right and listening to the

slightest variation of note in the cries of the dogs.



Again he looked to the right and saw something running toward him

across the deserted field. "No, it can't be!" thought Rostov, taking a

deep breath, as a man does at the coming of something long hoped

for. The height of happiness was reached--and so simply, without

warning, or noise, or display, that Rostov could not believe his

eyes and remained in doubt for over a second. The wolf ran forward and

jumped heavily over a gully that lay in her path. She was an old

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animal with a gray back and big reddish belly. She ran without

hurry, evidently feeling sure that no one saw her. Rostov, holding his

breath, looked round at the borzois. They stood or lay not seeing

the wolf or understanding the situation. Old Karay had turned his head

and was angrily searching for fleas, baring his yellow teeth and

snapping at his hind legs.



"Ulyulyulyu!" whispered Rostov, pouting his lips. The borzois jumped

up, jerking the rings of the leashes and pricking their ears. Karay

finished scratching his hindquarters and, cocking his ears, got up

with quivering tail from which tufts of matted hair hung down.



"Shall I loose them or not?" Nicholas asked himself as the wolf

approached him coming from the copse. Suddenly the wolf's whole

physiognomy changed: she shuddered, seeing what she had probably never

seen before--human eyes fixed upon her--and turning her head a

little toward Rostov, she paused.



"Back or forward? Eh, no matter, forward..." the wolf seemed to

say to herself, and she moved forward without again looking round

and with a quiet, long, easy yet resolute lope.



"Ulyulyu!" cried Nicholas, in a voice not his own, and of its own

accord his good horse darted headlong downhill, leaping over gullies

to head off the wolf, and the borzois passed it, running faster still.

Nicholas did not hear his own cry nor feel that he was galloping,

nor see the borzois, nor the ground over which he went: he saw only

the wolf, who, increasing her speed, bounded on in the same

direction along the hollow. The first to come into view was Milka,

with her black markings and powerful quarters, gaining upon the

wolf. Nearer and nearer... now she was ahead of it; but the wolf

turned its head to face her, and instead of putting on speed as she

usually did Milka suddenly raised her tail and stiffened her forelegs.



"Ulyulyulyulyu!" shouted Nicholas.



The reddish Lyubim rushed forward from behind Milka, sprang

impetuously at the wolf, and seized it by its hindquarters, but

immediately jumped aside in terror. The wolf crouched, gnashed her

teeth, and again rose and bounded forward, followed at the distance of

a couple of feet by all the borzois, who did not get any closer to

her.



"She'll get away! No, it's impossible!" thought Nicholas, still

shouting with a hoarse voice.



"Karay, ulyulyu!..." he shouted, looking round for the old borzoi

who was now his only hope. Karay, with all the strength age had left

him, stretched himself to the utmost and, watching the wolf,

galloped heavily aside to intercept it. But the quickness of the

wolf's lope and the borzoi's slower pace made it plain that Karay

had miscalculated. Nicholas could already see not far in front of

him the wood where the wolf would certainly escape should she reach

it. But, coming toward him, he saw hounds and a huntsman galloping

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almost straight at the wolf. There was still hope. A long, yellowish

young borzoi, one Nicholas did not know, from another leash, rushed

impetuously at the wolf from in front and almost knocked her over. But

the wolf jumped up more quickly than anyone could have expected and,

gnashing her teeth, flew at the yellowish borzoi, which, with a

piercing yelp, fell with its head on the ground, bleeding from a

gash in its side.



"Karay? Old fellow!..." wailed Nicholas.



Thanks to the delay caused by this crossing of the wolf's path,

the old dog with its felted hair hanging from its thigh was within

five paces of it. As if aware of her danger, the wolf turned her

eyes on Karay, tucked her tail yet further between her legs, and

increased her speed. But here Nicholas only saw that something

happened to Karay--the borzoi was suddenly on the wolf, and they

rolled together down into a gully just in front of them.



That instant, when Nicholas saw the wolf struggling in the gully

with the dogs, while from under them could be seen her gray hair and

outstretched hind leg and her frightened choking head, with her ears

laid back (Karay was pinning her by the throat), was the happiest

moment of his life. With his hand on his saddlebow, he was ready to

dismount and stab the wolf, when she suddenly thrust her head up

from among that mass of dogs, and then her forepaws were on the edge

of the gully. She clicked her teeth (Karay no longer had her by the

throat), leaped with a movement of her hind legs out of the gully, and

having disengaged herself from the dogs, with tail tucked in again,

went forward. Karay, his hair bristling, and probably bruised or

wounded, climbed with difficulty out of the gully.



"Oh my God! Why?" Nicholas cried in despair.



"Uncle's" huntsman was galloping from the other side across the

wolf's path and his borzois once more stopped the animal's advance.

She was again hemmed in.



Nicholas and his attendant, with "Uncle" and his huntsman, were

all riding round the wolf, crying "ulyulyu!" shouting and preparing to

dismount each moment that the wolf crouched back, and starting forward

again every time she shook herself and moved toward the wood where she

would be safe.



Already, at the beginning of this chase, Daniel, hearing the

ulyulyuing, had rushed out from the wood. He saw Karay seize the wolf,

and checked his horse, supposing the affair to be over. But when he

saw that the horsemen did not dismount and that the wolf shook herself

and ran for safety, Daniel set his chestnut galloping, not at the wolf

but straight toward the wood, just as Karay had run to cut the

animal off. As a result of this, he galloped up to the wolf just

when she had been stopped a second time by "Uncle's" borzois.



Daniel galloped up silently, holding a naked dagger in his left hand

and thrashing the laboring sides of his chestnut horse with his whip

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as if it were a flail.



Nicholas neither saw nor heard Daniel until the chestnut,

breathing heavily, panted past him, and he heard the fall of a body

and saw Daniel lying on the wolf's back among the dogs, trying to

seize her by the ears. It was evident to the dogs, the hunters, and to

the wolf herself that all was now over. The terrified wolf pressed

back her ears and tried to rise, but the borzois stuck to her.

Daniel rose a little, took a step, and with his whole weight, as if

lying down to rest, fell on the wolf, seizing her by the ears.

Nicholas was about to stab her, but Daniel whispered, "Don't! We'll

gag her!" and, changing his position, set his foot on the wolf's neck.

A stick was thrust between her jaws and she was fastened with a leash,

as if bridled, her legs were bound together, and Daniel rolled her

over once or twice from side to side.



With happy, exhausted faces, they laid the old wolf, alive, on a

shying and snorting horse and, accompanied by the dogs yelping at her,

took her to the place where they were all to meet. The hounds had

killed two of the cubs and the borzois three. The huntsmen assembled

with their booty and their stories, and all came to look at the

wolf, which, with her broad-browed head hanging down and the bitten

stick between her jaws, gazed with great glassy eyes at this crowd

of dogs and men surrounding her. When she was touched, she jerked

her bound legs and looked wildly yet simply at everybody. Old Count

Rostov also rode up and touched the wolf.



"Oh, what a formidable one!" said he. "A formidable one, eh?" he

asked Daniel, who was standing near.



"Yes, your excellency," answered Daniel, quickly doffing his cap.



The count remembered the wolf he had let slip and his encounter with

Daniel.



"Ah, but you are a crusty fellow, friend!" said the count.



For sole reply Daniel gave him a shy, childlike, meek, and amiable

smile.









CHAPTER VI





The old count went home, and Natasha and Petya promised to return

very soon, but as it was still early the hunt went farther. At

midday they put the hounds into a ravine thickly overgrown with

young trees. Nicholas standing in a fallow field could see all his

whips.



Facing him lay a field of winter rye, there his own huntsman stood

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alone in a hollow behind a hazel bush. The hounds had scarcely been

loosed before Nicholas heard one he knew, Voltorn, giving tongue at

intervals; other hounds joined in, now pausing and now again giving

tongue. A moment later he heard a cry from the wooded ravine that a

fox had been found, and the whole pack, joining together, rushed along

the ravine toward the ryefield and away from Nicholas.



He saw the whips in their red caps galloping along the edge of the

ravine, he even saw the hounds, and was expecting a fox to show itself

at any moment on the ryefield opposite.



The huntsman standing in the hollow moved and loosed his borzois,

and Nicholas saw a queer, short-legged red fox with a fine brush going

hard across the field. The borzois bore down on it.... Now they drew

close to the fox which began to dodge between the field in sharper and

sharper curves, trailing its brush, when suddenly a strange white

borzoi dashed in followed by a black one, and everything was in

confusion; the borzois formed a star-shaped figure, scarcely swaying

their bodies and with tails turned away from the center of the

group. Two huntsmen galloped up to the dogs; one in a red cap, the

other, a stranger, in a green coat.



"What's this?" thought Nicholas. "Where's that huntsman from? He

is not 'Uncle's' man."



The huntsmen got the fox, but stayed there a long time without

strapping it to the saddle. Their horses, bridled and with high

saddles, stood near them and there too the dogs were lying. The

huntsmen waved their arms and did something to the fox. Then from that

spot came the sound of a horn, with the signal agreed on in case of

a fight.



"That's Ilagin's huntsman having a row with our Ivan," said

Nicholas' groom.



Nicholas sent the man to call Natasha and Petya to him, and rode

at a footpace to the place where the whips were getting the hounds

together. Several of the field galloped to the spot where the fight

was going on.



Nicholas dismounted, and with Natasha and Petya, who had ridden

up, stopped near the hounds, waiting to see how the matter would

end. Out of the bushes came the huntsman who had been fighting and

rode toward his young master, with the fox tied to his crupper.

While still at a distance he took off his cap and tried to speak

respectfully, but he was pale and breathless and his face was angry.

One of his eyes was black, but he probably was not even aware of it.



"What has happened?" asked Nicholas.



"A likely thing, killing a fox our dogs had hunted! And it was my

gray bitch that caught it! Go to law, indeed!... He snatches at the

fox! I gave him one with the fox. Here it is on my saddle! Do you want

a taste of this?..." said the huntsman, pointing to his dagger and

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probably imagining himself still speaking to his foe.



Nicholas, not stopping to talk to the man, asked his sister and

Petya to wait for him and rode to the spot where the enemy's,

Ilagin's, hunting party was.



The victorious huntsman rode off to join the field, and there,

surrounded by inquiring sympathizers, recounted his exploits.



The facts were that Ilagin, with whom the Rostovs had a quarrel

and were at law, hunted over places that belonged by custom to the

Rostovs, and had now, as if purposely, sent his men to the very

woods the Rostovs were hunting and let his man snatch a fox their dogs

had chased.



Nicholas, though he had never seen Ilagin, with his usual absence of

moderation in judgment, hated him cordially from reports of his

arbitrariness and violence, and regarded him as his bitterest foe.

He rode in angry agitation toward him, firmly grasping his whip and

fully prepared to take the most resolute and desperate steps to punish

his enemy.



Hardly had he passed an angle of the wood before a stout gentleman

in a beaver cap came riding toward him on a handsome raven-black

horse, accompanied by two hunt servants.



Instead of an enemy, Nicholas found in Ilagin a stately and

courteous gentleman who was particularly anxious to make the young

count's acquaintance. Having ridden up to Nicholas, Ilagin raised

his beaver cap and said he much regretted what had occurred and

would have the man punished who had allowed himself to seize a fox

hunted by someone else's borzois. He hoped to become better acquainted

with the count and invited him to draw his covert.



Natasha, afraid that her brother would do something dreadful, had

followed him in some excitement. Seeing the enemies exchanging

friendly greetings, she rode up to them. Ilagin lifted his beaver

cap still higher to Natasha and said, with a pleasant smile, that

the young countess resembled Diana in her passion for the chase as

well as in her beauty, of which he had heard much.



To expiate his huntsman's offense, Ilagin pressed the Rostovs to

come to an upland of his about a mile away which he usually kept for

himself and which, he said, swarmed with hares. Nicholas agreed, and

the hunt, now doubled, moved on.



The way to Iligin's upland was across the fields. The hunt

servants fell into line. The masters rode together. "Uncle," Rostov,

and Ilagin kept stealthily glancing at one another's dogs, trying

not to be observed by their companions and searching uneasily for

rivals to their own borzois.



Rostov was particularly struck by the beauty of a small,

pure-bred, red-spotted bitch on Ilagin's leash, slender but with

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muscles like steel, a delicate muzzle, and prominent black eyes. He

had heard of the swiftness of Ilagin's borzois, and in that

beautiful bitch saw a rival to his own Milka.



In the middle of a sober conversation begun by Ilagin about the

year's harvest, Nicholas pointed to the red-spotted bitch.



"A fine little bitch, that!" said he in a careless tone. "Is she

swift?"



"That one? Yes, she's a good dog, gets what she's after," answered

Ilagin indifferently, of the red-spotted bitch Erza, for which, a year

before, he had given a neighbor three families of house serfs. "So

in your parts, too, the harvest is nothing to boast of, Count?" he

went on, continuing the conversation they had begun. And considering

it polite to return the young count's compliment, Ilagin looked at his

borzois and picked out Milka who attracted his attention by her

breadth. "That black-spotted one of yours is fine--well shaped!"

said he.



"Yes, she's fast enough," replied Nicholas, and thought: "If only

a full-grown hare would cross the field now I'd show you what sort

of borzoi she is," and turning to his groom, he said he would give a

ruble to anyone who found a hare.



"I don't understand," continued Ilagin, "how some sportsmen can be

so jealous about game and dogs. For myself, I can tell you, Count, I

enjoy riding in company such as this... what could be better?" (he

again raised his cap to Natasha) "but as for counting skins and what

one takes, I don't care about that."



"Of course not!"



"Or being upset because someone else's borzoi and not mine catches

something. All I care about is to enjoy seeing the chase, is it not

so, Count? For I consider that..."



"A-tu!" came the long-drawn cry of one of the borzoi whippers-in,

who had halted. He stood on a knoll in the stubble, holding his whip

aloft, and again repeated his long-drawn cry, "A-tu!" (This call and

the uplifted whip meant that he saw a sitting hare.)



"Ah, he has found one, I think," said Ilagin carelessly. "Yes, we

must ride up.... Shall we both course it?" answered Nicholas, seeing

in Erza and "Uncle's" red Rugay two rivals he had never yet had a

chance of pitting against his own borzois. "And suppose they outdo

my Milka at once!" he thought as he rode with "Uncle" and Ilagin

toward the hare.



"A full-grown one?" asked Ilagin as he approached the whip who had

sighted the hare--and not without agitation he looked round and

whistled to Erza.



"And you, Michael Nikanorovich?" he said, addressing "Uncle."

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The latter was riding with a sullen expression on his face.



"How can I join in? Why, you've given a village for each of your

borzois! That's it, come on! Yours are worth thousands. Try yours

against one another, you two, and I'll look on!"



"Rugay, hey, hey!" he shouted. "Rugayushka!" he added, involuntarily

by this diminutive expressing his affection and the hopes he placed on

this red borzoi. Natasha saw and felt the agitation the two elderly

men and her brother were trying to conceal, and was herself excited by

it.



The huntsman stood halfway up the knoll holding up his whip and

the gentlefolk rode up to him at a footpace; the hounds that were

far off on the horizon turned away from the hare, and the whips, but

not the gentlefolk, also moved away. All were moving slowly and

sedately.



"How is it pointing?" asked Nicholas, riding a hundred paces

toward the whip who had sighted the hare.



But before the whip could reply, the hare, scenting the frost coming

next morning, was unable to rest and leaped up. The pack on leash

rushed downhill in full cry after the hare, and from all sides the

borzois that were not on leash darted after the hounds and the hare.

All the hunt, who had been moving slowly, shouted, "Stop!" calling

in the hounds, while the borzoi whips, with a cry of "A-tu!" galloped

across the field setting the borzois on the hare. The tranquil Ilagin,

Nicholas, Natasha, and "Uncle" flew, reckless of where and how they

went, seeing only the borzois and the hare and fearing only to lose

sight even for an instant of the chase. The hare they had started

was a strong and swift one. When he jumped up he did not run at

once, but pricked his ears listening to the shouting and trampling

that resounded from all sides at once. He took a dozen bounds, not

very quickly, letting the borzois gain on him, and, finally having

chosen his direction and realized his danger, laid back his ears and

rushed off headlong. He had been lying in the stubble, but in front of

him was the autumn sowing where the ground was soft. The two borzois

of the huntsman who had sighted him, having been the nearest, were the

first to see and pursue him, but they had not gone far before Ilagin's

red-spotted Erza passed them, got within a length, flew at the hare

with terrible swiftness aiming at his scut, and, thinking she had

seized him, rolled over like a ball. The hare arched his back and

bounded off yet more swiftly. From behind Erza rushed the

broad-haunched, black-spotted Milka and began rapidly gaining on the

hare.



"Milashka, dear!" rose Nicholas' triumphant cry. It looked as if

Milka would immediately pounce on the hare, but she overtook him and

flew past. The hare had squatted. Again the beautiful Erza reached

him, but when close to the hare's scut paused as if measuring the

distance, so as not to make a mistake this time but seize his hind

leg.

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"Erza, darling!" Ilagin wailed in a voice unlike his own. Erza did

not hearken to his appeal. At the very moment when she would have

seized her prey, the hare moved and darted along the balk between

the winter rye and the stubble. Again Erza and Milka were abreast,

running like a pair of carriage horses, and began to overtake the

hare, but it was easier for the hare to run on the balk and the

borzois did not overtake him so quickly.



"Rugay, Rugayushka! That's it, come on!" came a third voice just

then, and "Uncle's" red borzoi, straining and curving its back, caught

up with the two foremost borzois, pushed ahead of them regardless of

the terrible strain, put on speed close to the hare, knocked it off

the balk onto the ryefield, again put on speed still more viciously,

sinking to his knees in the muddy field, and all one could see was

how, muddying his back, he rolled over with the hare. A ring of

borzois surrounded him. A moment later everyone had drawn up round the

crowd of dogs. Only the delighted "Uncle" dismounted, and cut off a

pad, shaking the hare for the blood to drip off, and anxiously

glancing round with restless eyes while his arms and legs twitched. He

spoke without himself knowing whom to or what about. "That's it,

come on! That's a dog!... There, it has beaten them all, the

thousand-ruble as well as the one-ruble borzois. That's it, come

on!" said he, panting and looking wrathfully around as if he were

abusing someone, as if they were all his enemies and had insulted him,

and only now had he at last succeeded in justifying himself. "There

are your thousand-ruble ones.... That's it, come on!..."



"Rugay, here's a pad for you!" he said, throwing down the hare's

muddy pad. "You've deserved it, that's it, come on!"



"She'd tired herself out, she'd run it down three times by herself,"

said Nicholas, also not listening to anyone and regardless of

whether he were heard or not.



"But what is there in running across it like that?" said Ilagin's

groom.



"Once she had missed it and turned it away, any mongrel could take

it," Ilagin was saying at the same time, breathless from his gallop

and his excitement. At the same moment Natasha, without drawing

breath, screamed joyously, ecstatically, and so piercingly that it set

everyone's ear tingling. By that shriek she expressed what the

others expressed by all talking at once, and it was so strange that

she must herself have been ashamed of so wild a cry and everyone

else would have been amazed at it at any other time. "Uncle" himself

twisted up the hare, threw it neatly and smartly across his horse's

back as if by that gesture he meant to rebuke everybody, and, with

an air of not wishing to speak to anyone, mounted his bay and rode

off. The others all followed, dispirited and shamefaced, and only much

later were they able to regain their former affectation of

indifference. For a long time they continued to look at red Rugay who,

his arched back spattered with mud and clanking the ring of his leash,

walked along just behind "Uncle's" horse with the serene air of a

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conqueror.



"Well, I am like any other dog as long as it's not a question of

coursing. But when it is, then look out!" his appearance seemed to

Nicholas to be saying.



When, much later, "Uncle" rode up to Nicholas and began talking to

him, he felt flattered that, after what had happened, "Uncle"

deigned to speak to him.









CHAPTER VII





Toward evening Ilagin took leave of Nicholas, who found that they

were so far from home that he accepted "Uncle's" offer that the

hunting party should spend the night in his little village of

Mikhaylovna.



"And if you put up at my house that will be better still. That's it,

come on!" said "Uncle." "You see it's damp weather, and you could

rest, and the little countess could be driven home in a trap."



"Uncle's" offer was accepted. A huntsman was sent to Otradnoe for

a trap, while Nicholas rode with Natasha and Petya to "Uncle's" house.



Some five male domestic serfs, big and little, rushed out to the

front porch to meet their master. A score of women serfs, old and

young, as well as children, popped out from the back entrance to

have a look at the hunters who were arriving. The presence of Natasha-

a woman, a lady, and on horseback--raised the curiosity of the serfs

to such a degree that many of them came up to her, stared her in the

face, and unabashed by her presence made remarks about her as though

she were some prodigy on show and not a human being able to hear or

understand what was said about her.



"Arinka! Look, she sits sideways! There she sits and her skirt

dangles.... See, she's got a little hunting horn!"



"Goodness gracious! See her knife?..."



"Isn't she a Tartar!"



"How is it you didn't go head over heels?" asked the boldest of all,

addressing Natasha directly.



"Uncle" dismounted at the porch of his little wooden house which

stood in the midst of an overgrown garden and, after a glance at his

retainers, shouted authoritatively that the superfluous ones should

take themselves off and that all necessary preparations should be made

to receive the guests and the visitors.

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The serfs all dispersed. "Uncle" lifted Natasha off her horse and

taking her hand led her up the rickety wooden steps of the porch.

The house, with its bare, unplastered log walls, was not overclean--it

did not seem that those living in it aimed at keeping it spotless--but

neither was it noticeably neglected. In the entry there was a smell of

fresh apples, and wolf and fox skins hung about.



"Uncle" led the visitors through the anteroom into a small hall with

a folding table and red chairs, then into the drawing room with a

round birchwood table and a sofa, and finally into his private room

where there was a tattered sofa, a worn carpet, and portraits of

Suvorov, of the host's father and mother, and of himself in military

uniform. The study smelt strongly of tobacco and dogs. "Uncle" asked

his visitors to sit down and make themselves at home, and then went

out of the room. Rugay, his back still muddy, came into the room and

lay down on the sofa, cleaning himself with his tongue and teeth.

Leading from the study was a passage in which a partition with

ragged curtains could be seen. From behind this came women's

laughter and whispers. Natasha, Nicholas, and Petya took off their

wraps and sat down on the sofa. Petya, leaning on his elbow, fell

asleep at once. Natasha and Nicholas were silent. Their faces

glowed, they were hungry and very cheerful. They looked at one another

(now that the hunt was over and they were in the house, Nicholas no

longer considered it necessary to show his manly superiority over

his sister), Natasha gave him a wink, and neither refrained long

from bursting into a peal of ringing laughter even before they had a

pretext ready to account for it.



After a while "Uncle" came in, in a Cossack coat, blue trousers, and

small top boots. And Natasha felt that this costume, the very one

she had regarded with surprise and amusement at Otradnoe, was just the

right thing and not at all worse than a swallow-tail or frock coat.

"Uncle" too was in high spirits and far from being offended by the

brother's and sister's laughter (it could never enter his head that

they might be laughing at his way of life) he himself joined in the

merriment.



"That's right, young countess, that's it, come on! I never saw

anyone like her!" said he, offering Nicholas a pipe with a long stem

and, with a practiced motion of three fingers, taking down another

that had been cut short. "She's ridden all day like a man, and is as

fresh as ever!"



Soon after "Uncle's" reappearance the door was opened, evidently

from the sound by a barefooted girl, and a stout, rosy, good-looking

woman of about forty, with a double chin and full red lips, entered

carrying a large loaded tray. With hospitable dignity and cordiality

in her glance and in every motion, she looked at the visitors and,

with a pleasant smile, bowed respectfully. In spite of her exceptional

stoutness, which caused her to protrude her chest and stomach and

throw back her head, this woman (who was "Uncle's" housekeeper) trod

very lightly. She went to the table, set down the tray, and with her

plump white hands deftly took from it the bottles and various hors

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d'oeuvres and dishes and arranged them on the table. When she had

finished, she stepped aside and stopped at the door with a smile on

her face. "Here I am. I am she! Now do you understand 'Uncle'?" her

expression said to Rostov. How could one help understanding? Not

only Nicholas, but even Natasha understood the meaning of his puckered

brow and the happy complacent smile that slightly puckered his lips

when Anisya Fedorovna entered. On the tray was a bottle of herb

wine, different kinds of vodka, pickled mushrooms, rye cakes made with

buttermilk, honey in the comb, still mead and sparkling mead,

apples, nuts (raw and roasted), and nut-and-honey sweets. Afterwards

she brought a freshly roasted chicken, ham, preserves made with honey,

and preserves made with sugar.



All this was the fruit of Anisya Fedorovna's housekeeping,

gathered and prepared by her. The smell and taste of it all had a

smack of Anisya Fedorovna herself: a savor of juiciness,

cleanliness, whiteness, and pleasant smiles.



"Take this, little Lady-Countess!" she kept saying, as she offered

Natasha first one thing and then another.



Natasha ate of everything and thought she had never seen or eaten

such buttermilk cakes, such aromatic jam, such honey-and-nut sweets,

or such a chicken anywhere. Anisya Fedorovna left the room.



After supper, over their cherry brandy, Rostov and "Uncle" talked of

past and future hunts, of Rugay and Ilagin's dogs, while Natasha sat

upright on the sofa and listened with sparkling eyes. She tried

several times to wake Petya that he might eat something, but he only

muttered incoherent words without waking up. Natasha felt so

lighthearted and happy in these novel surroundings that she only

feared the trap would come for her too soon. After a casual pause,

such as often occurs when receiving friends for the first time in

one's own house, "Uncle," answering a thought that was in his

visitors' mind, said:



"This, you see, is how I am finishing my days... Death will come.

That's it, come on! Nothing will remain. Then why harm anyone?"



"Uncle's" face was very significant and even handsome as he said

this. Involuntarily Rostov recalled all the good he had heard about

him from his father and the neighbors. Throughout the whole province

"Uncle" had the reputation of being the most honorable and

disinterested of cranks. They called him in to decide family disputes,

chose him as executor, confided secrets to him, elected him to be a

justice and to other posts; but he always persistently refused

public appointments, passing the autumn and spring in the fields on

his bay gelding, sitting at home in winter, and lying in his overgrown

garden in summer.



"Why don't you enter the service, Uncle?"



"I did once, but gave it up. I am not fit for it. That's it, come

on! I can't make head or tail of it. That's for you--I haven't

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brains enough. Now, hunting is another matter--that's it, come on!

Open the door, there!" he shouted. "Why have you shut it?"



The door at the end of the passage led to the huntsmen's room, as

they called the room for the hunt servants.



There was a rapid patter of bare feet, and an unseen hand opened the

door into the huntsmen's room, from which came the clear sounds of a

balalayka on which someone, who was evidently a master of the art, was

playing. Natasha had been listening to those strains for some time and

now went out into the passage to hear better.



"That's Mitka, my coachman.... I have got him a good balalayka.

I'm fond of it," said "Uncle."



It was the custom for Mitka to play the balalayka in the

huntsmen's room when "Uncle" returned from the chase. "Uncle" was fond

of such music.



"How good! Really very good!" said Nicholas with some

unintentional superciliousness, as if ashamed to confess that the

sounds pleased him very much.



"Very good?" said Natasha reproachfully, noticing her brother's

tone. "Not 'very good' it's simply delicious!"



Just as "Uncle's" pickled mushrooms, honey, and cherry brandy had

seemed to her the best in the world, so also that song, at that

moment, seemed to her the acme of musical delight.



"More, please, more!" cried Natasha at the door as soon as the

balalayka ceased. Mitka tuned up afresh, and recommenced thrumming the

balalayka to the air of My Lady, with trills and variations. "Uncle"

sat listening, slightly smiling, with his head on one side. The air

was repeated a hundred times. The balalayka was retuned several

times and the same notes were thrummed again, but the listeners did

not grow weary of it and wished to hear it again and again. Anisya

Fedorovna came in and leaned her portly person against the doorpost.



"You like listening?" she said to Natasha, with a smile extremely

like "Uncle's." "That's a good player of ours," she added.



"He doesn't play that part right!" said "Uncle" suddenly, with an

energetic gesture. "Here he ought to burst out--that's it, come on!-

ought to burst out."



"Do you play then?" asked Natasha.



"Uncle" did not answer, but smiled.



"Anisya, go and see if the strings of my guitar are all right. I

haven't touched it for a long time. That's it--come on! I've given

it up."



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Anisya Fedorovna, with her light step, willingly went to fulfill her

errand and brought back the guitar.



Without looking at anyone, "Uncle" blew the dust off it and, tapping

the case with his bony fingers, tuned the guitar and settled himself

in his armchair. He took the guitar a little above the fingerboard,

arching his left elbow with a somewhat theatrical gesture, and, with a

wink at Anisya Fedorovna, struck a single chord, pure and sonorous,

and then quietly, smoothly, and confidently began playing in very slow

time, not My Lady, but the well-known song: Came a maiden down the

street. The tune, played with precision and in exact time, began to

thrill in the hearts of Nicholas and Natasha, arousing in them the

same kind of sober mirth as radiated from Anisya Fedorovna's whole

being. Anisya Fedorovna flushed, and drawing her kerchief over her

face went laughing out of the room. "Uncle" continued to play

correctly, carefully, with energetic firmness, looking with a

changed and inspired expression at the spot where Anisya Fedorovna had

just stood. Something seemed to be laughing a little on one side of

his face under his gray mustaches, especially as the song grew brisker

and the time quicker and when, here and there, as he ran his fingers

over the strings, something seemed to snap.



"Lovely, lovely! Go on, Uncle, go on!" shouted Natasha as soon as he

had finished. She jumped up and hugged and kissed him. "Nicholas,

Nicholas!" she said, turning to her brother, as if asking him: "What

is it moves me so?"



Nicholas too was greatly pleased by "Uncle's" playing, and "Uncle"

played the piece over again. Anisya Fedorovna's smiling face

reappeared in the doorway and behind hers other faces...



Fetching water clear and sweet,

Stop, dear maiden, I entreat-



played "Uncle" once more, running his fingers skillfully over the

strings, and then he stopped short and jerked his shoulders.



"Go on, Uncle dear," Natasha wailed in an imploring tone as if her

life depended on it.



"Uncle" rose, and it was as if there were two men in him: one of

them smiled seriously at the merry fellow, while the merry fellow

struck a naive and precise attitude preparatory to a folk dance.



"Now then, niece!" he exclaimed, waving to Natasha the hand that had

just struck a chord.



Natasha threw off the shawl from her shoulders, ran forward to

face "Uncle," and setting her arms akimbo also made a motion with

her shoulders and struck an attitude.



Where, how, and when had this young countess, educated by an emigree

French governess, imbibed from the Russian air she breathed that

spirit and obtained that manner which the pas de chale* would, one

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would have supposed, long ago have effaced? But the spirit and the

movements were those inimitable and unteachable Russian ones that

"Uncle" had expected of her. As soon as she had struck her pose, and

smiled triumphantly, proudly, and with sly merriment, the fear that

had at first seized Nicholas and the others that she might not do

the right thing was at an end, and they were already admiring her.





*The French shawl dance.





She did the right thing with such precision, such complete

precision, that Anisya Fedorovna, who had at once handed her the

handkerchief she needed for the dance, had tears in her eyes, though

she laughed as she watched this slim, graceful countess, reared in

silks and velvets and so different from herself, who yet was able to

understand all that was in Anisya and in Anisya's father and mother

and aunt, and in every Russian man and woman.



"Well, little countess; that's it--come on!" cried "Uncle," with a

joyous laugh, having finished the dance. "Well done, niece! Now a fine

young fellow must be found as husband for you. That's it--come on!"



"He's chosen already," said Nicholas smiling.



"Oh?" said "Uncle" in surprise, looking inquiringly at Natasha,

who nodded her head with a happy smile.



"And such a one!" she said. But as soon as she had said it a new

train of thoughts and feelings arose in her. "What did Nicholas' smile

mean when he said 'chosen already'? Is he glad of it or not? It is

as if he thought my Bolkonski would not approve of or understand our

gaiety. But he would understand it all. Where is he now?" she thought,

and her face suddenly became serious. But this lasted only a second.

"Don't dare to think about it," she said to herself, and sat down

again smilingly beside "Uncle," begging him to play something more.



"Uncle" played another song and a valse; then after a pause he

cleared his throat and sang his favorite hunting song:



As 'twas growing dark last night

Fell the snow so soft and light...





"Uncle" sang as peasants sing, with full and naive conviction that

the whole meaning of a song lies in the words and that the tune

comes of itself, and that apart from the words there is no tune, which

exists only to give measure to the words. As a result of this the

unconsidered tune, like the song of a bird, was extraordinarily

good. Natasha was in ecstasies over "Uncle's" singing. She resolved to

give up learning the harp and to play only the guitar. She asked

"Uncle" for his guitar and at once found the chords of the song.



After nine o'clock two traps and three mounted men, who had been

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sent to look for them, arrived to fetch Natasha and Petya. The count

and countess did not know where they were and were very anxious,

said one of the men.



Petya was carried out like a log and laid in the larger of the two

traps. Natasha and Nicholas got into the other. "Uncle" wrapped

Natasha up warmly and took leave of her with quite a new tenderness.

He accompanied them on foot as far as the bridge that could not be

crossed, so that they had to go round by the ford, and he sent

huntsmen to ride in front with lanterns.



"Good-by, dear niece," his voice called out of the darkness--not the

voice Natasha had known previously, but the one that had sung As 'twas

growing dark last night.



In the village through which they passed there were red lights and a

cheerful smell of smoke.



"What a darling Uncle is!" said Natasha, when they had come out onto

the highroad.



"Yes," returned Nicholas. "You're not cold?"



"No. I'm quite, quite all right. I feel so comfortable!" answered

Natasha, almost perplexed by her feelings. They remained silent a long

while. The night was dark and damp. They could not see the horses, but

only heard them splashing through the unseen mud.



What was passing in that receptive childlike soul that so eagerly

caught and assimilated all the diverse impressions of life? How did

they all find place in her? But she was very happy. As they were

nearing home she suddenly struck up the air of As 'twas growing dark

last night--the tune of which she had all the way been trying to get

and had at last caught.



"Got it?" said Nicholas.



"What were you thinking about just now, Nicholas?" inquired Natasha.



They were fond of asking one another that question.



"I?" said Nicholas, trying to remember. "Well, you see, first I

thought that Rugay, the red hound, was like Uncle, and that if he were

a man he would always keep Uncle near him, if not for his riding, then

for his manner. What a good fellow Uncle is! Don't you think so?...

Well, and you?"



"I? Wait a bit, wait.... Yes, first I thought that we are driving

along and imagining that we are going home, but that heaven knows

where we are really going in the darkness, and that we shall arrive

and suddenly find that we are not in Otradnoe, but in Fairyland. And

then I thought... No, nothing else."



"I know, I expect you thought of him," said Nicholas, smiling as

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Natasha knew by the sound of his voice.



"No," said Natasha, though she had in reality been thinking about

Prince Andrew at the same time as of the rest, and of how he would

have liked "Uncle." "And then I was saying to myself all the way, 'How

well Anisya carried herself, how well!'" And Nicholas heard her

spontaneous, happy, ringing laughter. "And do you know," she

suddenly said, "I know that I shall never again be as happy and

tranquil as I am now."



"Rubbish, nonsense, humbug!" exclaimed Nicholas, and he thought:

"How charming this Natasha of mine is! I have no other friend like her

and never shall have. Why should she marry? We might always drive

about together!"



"What a darling this Nicholas of mine is!" thought Natasha.



"Ah, there are still lights in the drawingroom!" she said,

pointing to the windows of the house that gleamed invitingly in the

moist velvety darkness of the night.









CHAPTER VIII





Count Ilya Rostov had resigned the position of Marshal of the

Nobility because it involved him in too much expense, but still his

affairs did not improve. Natasha and Nicholas often noticed their

parents conferring together anxiously and privately and heard

suggestions of selling the fine ancestral Rostov house and estate near

Moscow. It was not necessary to entertain so freely as when the

count had been Marshal, and life at Otradnoe was quieter than in

former years, but still the enormous house and its lodges were full of

people and more than twenty sat down to table every day. These were

all their own people who had settled down in the house almost as

members of the family, or persons who were, it seemed, obliged to live

in the count's house. Such were Dimmler the musician and his wife,

Vogel the dancing master and his family, Belova, an old maiden lady,

an inmate of the house, and many others such as Petya's tutors, the

girls' former governess, and other people who simply found it

preferable and more advantageous to live in the count's house than

at home. They had not as many visitors as before, but the old habits

of life without which the count and countess could not conceive of

existence remained unchanged. There was still the hunting

establishment which Nicholas had even enlarged, the same fifty

horses and fifteen grooms in the stables, the same expensive

presents and dinner parties to the whole district on name days;

there were still the count's games of whist and boston, at which-

spreading out his cards so that everybody could see them--he let

himself be plundered of hundreds of rubles every day by his neighbors,

who looked upon an opportunity to play a rubber with Count Rostov as a

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most profitable source of income.



The count moved in his affairs as in a huge net, trying not to

believe that he was entangled but becoming more and more so at every

step, and feeling too feeble to break the meshes or to set to work

carefully and patiently to disentangle them. The countess, with her

loving heart, felt that her children were being ruined, that it was

not the count's fault for he could not help being what he was--that

(though he tried to hide it) he himself suffered from the

consciousness of his own and his children's ruin, and she tried to

find means of remedying the position. From her feminine point of

view she could see only one solution, namely, for Nicholas to marry

a rich heiress. She felt this to be their last hope and that if

Nicholas refused the match she had found for him, she would have to

abandon the hope of ever getting matters right. This match was with

Julie Karagina, the daughter of excellent and virtuous parents, a girl

the Rostovs had known from childhood, and who had now become a wealthy

heiress through the death of the last of her brothers.



The countess had written direct to Julie's mother in Moscow

suggesting a marriage between their children and had received a

favorable answer from her. Karagina had replied that for her part

she was agreeable, and everything depend on her daughter's

inclination. She invited Nicholas to come to Moscow.



Several times the countess, with tears in her eyes, told her son

that now both her daughters were settled, her only wish was to see him

married. She said she could lie down in her grave peacefully if that

were accomplished. Then she told him that she knew of a splendid

girl and tried to discover what he thought about marriage.



At other times she praised Julie to him and advised him to go to

Moscow during the holidays to amuse himself. Nicholas guessed what his

mother's remarks were leading to and during one of these conversations

induced her to speak quite frankly. She told him that her only hope of

getting their affairs disentangled now lay in his marrying Julie

Karagina.



"But, Mamma, suppose I loved a girl who has no fortune, would you

expect me to sacrifice my feelings and my honor for the sake of

money?" he asked his mother, not realizing the cruelty of his question

and only wishing to show his noble-mindedness.



"No, you have not understood me," said his mother, not knowing how

to justify herself. "You have not understood me, Nikolenka. It is your

happiness I wish for," she added, feeling that she was telling an

untruth and was becoming entangled. She began to cry.



"Mamma, don't cry! Only tell me that you wish it, and you know I

will give my life, anything, to put you at ease," said Nicholas. "I

would sacrifice anything for you--even my feelings."



But the countess did not want the question put like that: she did

not want a sacrifice from her son, she herself wished to make a

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sacrifice for him.



"No, you have not understood me, don't let us talk about it," she

replied, wiping away her tears.



"Maybe I do love a poor girl," said Nicholas to himself. "Am I to

sacrifice my feelings and my honor for money? I wonder how Mamma could

speak so to me. Because Sonya is poor I must not love her," he

thought, "must not respond to her faithful, devoted love? Yet I should

certainly be happier with her than with some doll-like Julie. I can

always sacrifice my feelings for my family's welfare," he said to

himself, "but I can't coerce my feelings. If I love Sonya, that

feeling is for me stronger and higher than all else."



Nicholas did not go to Moscow, and the countess did not renew the

conversation with him about marriage. She saw with sorrow, and

sometimes with exasperation, symptoms of a growing attachment

between her son and the portionless Sonya. Though she blamed herself

for it, she could not refrain from grumbling at and worrying Sonya,

often pulling her up without reason, addressing her stiffly as "my

dear," and using the formal "you" instead of the intimate "thou" in

speaking to her. The kindhearted countess was the more vexed with

Sonya because that poor, dark-eyed niece of hers was so meek, so kind,

so devotedly grateful to her benefactors, and so faithfully,

unchangingly, and unselfishly in love with Nicholas, that there were

no grounds for finding fault with her.



Nicholas was spending the last of his leave at home. A fourth letter

had come from Prince Andrew, from Rome, in which he wrote that he

would have been on his way back to Russia long ago had not his wound

unexpectedly reopened in the warm climate, which obliged him to

defer his return till the beginning of the new year. Natasha was still

as much in love with her betrothed, found the same comfort in that

love, and was still as ready to throw herself into all the pleasures

of life as before; but at the end of the fourth month of their

separation she began to have fits of depression which she could not

master. She felt sorry for herself: sorry that she was being wasted

all this time and of no use to anyone--while she felt herself so

capable of loving and being loved.



Things were not cheerful in the Rostovs' home.









CHAPTER IX





Christmas came and except for the ceremonial Mass, the solemn and

wearisome Christmas congratulations from neighbors and servants, and

the new dresses everyone put on, there were no special festivities,

though the calm frost of twenty degrees Reaumur, the dazzling sunshine

by day, and the starlight of the winter nights seemed to call for some

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special celebration of the season.



On the third day of Christmas week, after the midday dinner, all the

inmates of the house dispersed to various rooms. It was the dullest

time of the day. Nicholas, who had been visiting some neighbors that

morning, was asleep on the sitting-room sofa. The old count was

resting in his study. Sonya sat in the drawing room at the round

table, copying a design for embroidery. The countess was playing

patience. Nastasya Ivanovna the buffoon sat with a sad face at the

window with two old ladies. Natasha came into the room, went up to

Sonya, glanced at what she was doing, and then went up to her mother

and stood without speaking.



"Why are you wandering about like an outcast?" asked her mother.

"What do you want?"



"Him... I want him... now, this minute! I want him!" said Natasha,

with glittering eyes and no sign of a smile.



The countess lifted her head and looked attentively at her daughter.



"Don't look at me, Mamma! Don't look; I shall cry directly."



"Sit down with me a little," said the countess.



"Mamma, I want him. Why should I be wasted like this, Mamma?"



Her voice broke, tears gushed from her eyes, and she turned

quickly to hide them and left the room.



She passed into the sitting room, stood there thinking awhile, and

then went into the maids' room. There an old maidservant was grumbling

at a young girl who stood panting, having just run in through the cold

from the serfs' quarters.



"Stop playing--there's a time for everything," said the old woman.



"Let her alone, Kondratevna," said Natasha. "Go, Mavrushka, go."



Having released Mavrushka, Natasha crossed the dancing hall and went

to the vestibule. There an old footman and two young ones were playing

cards. They broke off and rose as she entered.



"What can I do with them?" thought Natasha.



"Oh, Nikita, please go... where can I send him?... Yes, go to the

yard and fetch a fowl, please, a cock, and you, Misha, bring me some

oats."



"Just a few oats?" said Misha, cheerfully and readily.



"Go, go quickly," the old man urged him.



"And you, Theodore, get me a piece of chalk."

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On her way past the butler's pantry she told them to set a

samovar, though it was not at all the time for tea.



Foka, the butler, was the most ill-tempered person in the house.

Natasha liked to test her power over him. He distrusted the order

and asked whether the samovar was really wanted.



"Oh dear, what a young lady!" said Foka, pretending to frown at

Natasha.



No one in the house sent people about or gave them as much trouble

as Natasha did. She could not see people unconcernedly, but had to

send them on some errand. She seemed to be trying whether any of

them would get angry or sulky with her; but the serfs fulfilled no

one's orders so readily as they did hers. "What can I do, where can

I go?" thought she, as she went slowly along the passage.



"Nastasya Ivanovna, what sort of children shall I have?" she asked

the buffoon, who was coming toward her in a woman's jacket.



"Why, fleas, crickets, grasshoppers," answered the buffoon.



"O Lord, O Lord, it's always the same! Oh, where am I to go? What am

I to do with myself?" And tapping with her heels, she ran quickly

upstairs to see Vogel and his wife who lived on the upper story.



Two governesses were sitting with the Vogels at a table, on which

were plates of raisins, walnuts, and almonds. The governesses were

discussing whether it was cheaper to live in Moscow or Odessa. Natasha

sat down, listened to their talk with a serious and thoughtful air,

and then got up again.



"The island of Madagascar," she said, "Ma-da-gas-car," she repeated,

articulating each syllable distinctly, and, not replying to Madame

Schoss who asked her what she was saying, she went out of the room.



Her brother Petya was upstairs too; with the man in attendance on

him he was preparing fireworks to let off that night.



"Petya! Petya!" she called to him. "Carry me downstairs."



Petya ran up and offered her his back. She jumped on it, putting her

arms round his neck, and he pranced along with her.



"No, don't... the island of Madagascar!" she said, and jumping off

his back she went downstairs.



Having as it were reviewed her kingdom, tested her power, and made

sure that everyone was submissive, but that all the same it was

dull, Natasha betook herself to the ballroom, picked up her guitar,

sat down in a dark corner behind a bookcase, and began to run her

fingers over the strings in the bass, picking out a passage she

recalled from an opera she had heard in Petersburg with Prince Andrew.

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What she drew from the guitar would have had no meaning for other

listeners, but in her imagination a whole series of reminiscences

arose from those sounds. She sat behind the bookcase with her eyes

fixed on a streak of light escaping from the pantry door and

listened to herself and pondered. She was in a mood for brooding on

the past.



Sonya passed to the pantry with a glass in her hand. Natasha glanced

at her and at the crack in the pantry door, and it seemed to her

that she remembered the light failing through that crack once before

and Sonya passing with a glass in her hand. "Yes it was exactly the

same," thought Natasha.



"Sonya, what is this?" she cried, twanging a thick string.



"Oh, you are there!" said Sonya with a start, and came near and

listened. "I don't know. A storm?" she ventured timidly, afraid of

being wrong.



"There! That's just how she started and just how she came up smiling

timidly when all this happened before," thought Natasha, "and in

just the same way I thought there was something lacking in her."



"No, it's the chorus from The Water-Carrier, listen!" and Natasha

sang the air of the chorus so that Sonya should catch it. "Where

were you going?" she asked.



"To change the water in this glass. I am just finishing the design."



"You always find something to do, but I can't," said Natasha. "And

where's Nicholas?"



"Asleep, I think."



"Sonya, go and wake him," said Natasha. "Tell him I want him to come

and sing."



She sat awhile, wondering what the meaning of it all having happened

before could be, and without solving this problem, or at all

regretting not having done so, she again passed in fancy to the time

when she was with him and he was looking at her with a lover's eyes.



"Oh, if only he would come quicker! I am so afraid it will never be!

And, worst of all, I am growing old--that's the thing! There won't

then be in me what there is now. But perhaps he'll come today, will

come immediately. Perhaps he has come and is sitting in the drawing

room. Perhaps he came yesterday and I have forgotten it." She rose,

put down the guitar, and went to the drawing room.



All the domestic circle, tutors, governesses, and guests, were

already at the tea table. The servants stood round the table--but

Prince Andrew was not there and life was going on as before.



"Ah, here she is!" said the old count, when he saw Natasha enter.

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"Well, sit down by me." But Natasha stayed by her mother and glanced

round as if looking for something.



"Mamma!" she muttered, "give him to me, give him, Mamma, quickly,

quickly!" and she again had difficulty in repressing her sobs.



She sat down at the table and listened to the conversation between

the elders and Nicholas, who had also come to the table. "My God, my

God! The same faces, the same talk, Papa holding his cup and blowing

in the same way!" thought Natasha, feeling with horror a sense of

repulsion rising up in her for the whole household, because they

were always the same.



After tea, Nicholas, Sonya, and Natasha went to the sitting room, to

their favorite corner where their most intimate talks always began.









CHAPTER X





"Does it ever happen to you," said Natasha to her brother, when

they settled down in the sitting room, "does it ever happen to you

to feel as if there were nothing more to come--nothing; that

everything good is past? And to feel not exactly dull, but sad?"



"I should think so!" he replied. "I have felt like that when

everything was all right and everyone was cheerful. The thought has

come into my mind that I was already tired of it all, and that we must

all die. Once in the regiment I had not gone to some merrymaking where

there was music... and suddenly I felt so depressed..."



"Oh yes, I know, I know, I know!" Natasha interrupted him. "When I

was quite little that used to be so with me. Do you remember when I

was punished once about some plums? You were all dancing, and I sat

sobbing in the schoolroom? I shall never forget it: I felt sad and

sorry for everyone, for myself, and for everyone. And I was

innocent--that was the chief thing," said Natasha. "Do you remember?"



"I remember," answered Nicholas. "I remember that I came to you

afterwards and wanted to comfort you, but do you know, I felt

ashamed to. We were terribly absurd. I had a funny doll then and

wanted to give it to you. Do you remember?"



"And do you remember," Natasha asked with a pensive smile, "how

once, long, long ago, when we were quite little, Uncle called us

into the study--that was in the old house--and it was dark--we went in

and suddenly there stood..."



"A Negro," chimed in Nicholas with a smile of delight. "Of course

I remember. Even now I don't know whether there really was a Negro, or

if we only dreamed it or were told about him."

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"He was gray, you remember, and had white teeth, and stood and

looked at us..."



"Sonya, do you remember?" asked Nicholas.



"Yes, yes, I do remember something too," Sonya answered timidly.



"You know I have asked Papa and Mamma about that Negro," said

Natasha, "and they say there was no Negro at all. But you see, you

remember!"



"Of course I do, I remember his teeth as if I had just seen them."



"How strange it is! It's as if it were a dream! I like that."



"And do you remember how we rolled hard-boiled eggs in the ballroom,

and suddenly two old women began spinning round on the carpet? Was

that real or not? Do you remember what fun it was?"



"Yes, and you remember how Papa in his blue overcoat fired a gun

in the porch?"



So they went through their memories, smiling with pleasure: not

the sad memories of old age, but poetic, youthful ones--those

impressions of one's most distant past in which dreams and realities

blend--and they laughed with quiet enjoyment.



Sonya, as always, did not quite keep pace with them, though they

shared the same reminiscences.



Much that they remembered had slipped from her mind, and what she

recalled did not arouse the same poetic feeling as they experienced.

She simply enjoyed their pleasure and tried to fit in with it.



She only really took part when they recalled Sonya's first

arrival. She told them how afraid she had been of Nicholas because

he had on a corded jacket and her nurse had told her that she, too,

would be sewn up with cords.



"And I remember their telling me that you had been born under a

cabbage," said Natasha, "and I remember that I dared not disbelieve

it then, but knew that it was not true, and I felt so uncomfortable."



While they were talking a maid thrust her head in at the other

door of the sitting room.



"They have brought the cock, Miss," she said in a whisper.



"It isn't wanted, Petya. Tell them to take it away," replied

Natasha.



In the middle of their talk in the sitting room, Dimmler came in and

went up to the harp that stood there in a corner. He took off its

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cloth covering, and the harp gave out a jarring sound.



"Mr. Dimmler, please play my favorite nocturne by Field," came the

old countess' voice from the drawing room.



Dimmler struck a chord and, turning to Natasha, Nicholas, and Sonya,

remarked: "How quiet you young people are!"



"Yes, we're philosophizing," said Natasha, glancing round for a

moment and then continuing the conversation. They were now

discussing dreams.



Dimmler began to play; Natasha went on tiptoe noiselessly to the

table, took up a candle, carried it out, and returned, seating herself

quietly in her former place. It was dark in the room especially

where they were sitting on the sofa, but through the big windows the

silvery light of the full moon fell on the floor. Dimmler had finished

the piece but still sat softly running his fingers over the strings,

evidently uncertain whether to stop or to play something else.



"Do you know," said Natasha in a whisper, moving closer to

Nicholas and Sonya, "that when one goes on and on recalling

memories, one at last begins to remember what happened before one

was in the world..."



"That is metempsychosis," said Sonya, who had always learned well,

and remembered everything. "The Egyptians believed that our souls have

lived in animals, and will go back into animals again."



"No, I don't believe we ever were in animals," said Natasha, still

in a whisper though the music had ceased. "But I am certain that we

were angels somewhere there, and have been here, and that is why we

remember...."



"May I join you?" said Dimmler who had come up quietly, and he sat

down by them.



"If we have been angels, why have we fallen lower?" said Nicholas.

"No, that can't be!"



"Not lower, who said we were lower?... How do I know what I was

before?" Natasha rejoined with conviction. "The soul is immortal--well

then, if I shall always live I must have lived before, lived for a

whole eternity."



"Yes, but it is hard for us to imagine eternity," remarked

Dimmler, who had joined the young folk with a mildly condescending

smile but now spoke as quietly and seriously as they.



"Why is it hard to imagine eternity?" said Natasha. "It is now

today, and it will be tomorrow, and always; and there was yesterday,

and the day before..."



"Natasha! Now it's your turn. Sing me something," they heard the

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countess say. "Why are you sitting there like conspirators?"



"Mamma, I don't at all want to," replied Natasha, but all the same

she rose.



None of them, not even the middle-aged Dimmler, wanted to break

off their conversation and quit that corner in the sitting room, but

Natasha got up and Nicholas sat down at the clavichord. Standing as

usual in the middle of the hall and choosing the place where the

resonance was best, Natasha began to sing her mother's favorite song.



She had said she did not want to sing, but it was long since she had

sung, and long before she again sang, as she did that evening. The

count, from his study where he was talking to Mitenka, heard her

and, like a schoolboy in a hurry to run out to play, blundered in

his talk while giving orders to the steward, and at last stopped,

while Mitenka stood in front of him also listening and smiling.

Nicholas did not take his eyes off his sister and drew breath in

time with her. Sonya, as she listened, thought of the immense

difference there was between herself and her friend, and how

impossible it was for her to be anything like as bewitching as her

cousin. The old countess sat with a blissful yet sad smile and with

tears in her eyes, occasionally shaking her head. She thought of

Natasha and of her own youth, and of how there was something unnatural

and dreadful in this impending marriage of Natasha and Prince Andrew.



Dimmler, who had seated himself beside the countess, listened with

closed eyes.



"Ah, Countess," he said at last, "that's a European talent, she

has nothing to learn--what softness, tenderness, and strength...."



"Ah, how afraid I am for her, how afraid I am!" said the countess,

not realizing to whom she was speaking. Her maternal instinct told her

that Natasha had too much of something, and that because of this she

would not be happy. Before Natasha had finished singing,

fourteen-year-old Petya rushed in delightedly, to say that some

mummers had arrived.



Natasha stopped abruptly.



"Idiot!" she screamed at her brother and, running to a chair,

threw herself on it, sobbing so violently that she could not stop

for a long time.



"It's nothing, Mamma, really it's nothing; only Petya startled

me," she said, trying to smile, but her tears still flowed and sobs

still choked her.



The mummers (some of the house serfs) dressed up as bears, Turks,

innkeepers, and ladies--frightening and funny--bringing in with them

the cold from outside and a feeling of gaiety, crowded, at first

timidly, into the anteroom, then hiding behind one another they pushed

into the ballroom where, shyly at first and then more and more merrily

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and heartily, they started singing, dancing, and playing Christmas

games. The countess, when she had identified them and laughed at their

costumes, went into the drawing room. The count sat in the ballroom,

smiling radiantly and applauding the players. The young people had

disappeared.



Half an hour later there appeared among the other mummers in the

ballroom an old lady in a hooped skirt--this was Nicholas. A Turkish

girl was Petya. A clown was Dimmler. An hussar was Natasha, and a

Circassian was Sonya with burnt-cork mustache and eyebrows.



After the condescending surprise, nonrecognition, and praise, from

those who were not themselves dressed up, the young people decided

that their costumes were so good that they ought to be shown

elsewhere.



Nicholas, who, as the roads were in splendid condition, wanted to

take them all for a drive in his troyka, proposed to take with them

about a dozen of the serf mummers and drive to "Uncle's."



"No, why disturb the old fellow?" said the countess. "Besides, you

wouldn't have room to turn round there. If you must go, go to the

Melyukovs'."



Melyukova was a widow, who, with her family and their tutors and

governesses, lived three miles from the Rostovs.



"That's right, my dear," chimed in the old count, thoroughly

aroused. "I'll dress up at once and go with them. I'll make Pashette

open her eyes."



But the countess would not agree to his going; he had had a bad

leg all these last days. It was decided that the count must not go,

but that if Louisa Ivanovna (Madame Schoss) would go with them, the

young ladies might go to the Melyukovs', Sonya, generally so timid and

shy, more urgently than anyone begging Louisa Ivanovna not to refuse.



Sonya's costume was the best of all. Her mustache and eyebrows

were extraordinarily becoming. Everyone told her she looked very

handsome, and she was in a spirited and energetic mood unusual with

her. Some inner voice told her that now or never her fate would be

decided, and in her male attire she seemed quite a different person.

Louisa Ivanovna consented to go, and in half an hour four troyka

sleighs with large and small bells, their runners squeaking and

whistling over the frozen snow, drove up to the porch.



Natasha was foremost in setting a merry holiday tone, which, passing

from one to another, grew stronger and reached its climax

when they all came out into the frost and got into the sleighs,

talking, calling to one another, laughing, and shouting.



Two of the troykas were the usual household sleighs, the third was

the old count's with a trotter from the Orlov stud as shaft horse, the

fourth was Nicholas' own with a short shaggy black shaft horse.

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Nicholas, in his old lady's dress over which he had belted his

hussar overcoat, stood in the middle of the sleigh, reins in hand.



It was so light that he could see the moonlight reflected from the

metal harness disks and from the eyes of the horses, who looked

round in alarm at the noisy party under the shadow of the porch roof.



Natasha, Sonya, Madame Schoss, and two maids got into Nicholas'

sleigh; Dimmler, his wife, and Petya, into the old count's, and the

rest of the mummers seated themselves in the other two sleighs.



"You go ahead, Zakhar!" shouted Nicholas to his father's coachman,

wishing for a chance to race past him.



The old count's troyka, with Dimmler and his party, started forward,

squeaking on its runners as though freezing to the snow, its

deep-toned bell clanging. The side horses, pressing against the shafts

of the middle horse, sank in the snow, which was dry and glittered

like sugar, and threw it up.



Nicholas set off, following the first sleigh; behind him the

others moved noisily, their runners squeaking. At first they drove

at a steady trot along the narrow road. While they drove past the

garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and

hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the

fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out

before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish

shadows. Bang, bang! went the first sleigh over a cradle hole in the

snow of the road, and each of the other sleighs jolted in the same

way, and rudely breaking the frost-bound stillness, the troykas

began to speed along the road, one after the other.



"A hare's track, a lot of tracks!" rang out Natasha's voice

through the frost-bound air.



"How light it is, Nicholas!" came Sonya's voice.



Nicholas glanced round at Sonya, and bent down to see her face

closer. Quite a new, sweet face with black eyebrows and mustaches

peeped up at him from her sable furs--so close and yet so distant-

in the moonlight.



"That used to be Sonya," thought he, and looked at her closer and

smiled.



"What is it, Nicholas?"



"Nothing," said he and turned again to the horses.



When they came out onto the beaten highroad--polished by sleigh

runners and cut up by rough-shod hoofs, the marks of which were

visible in the moonlight--the horses began to tug at the reins of

their own accord and increased their pace. The near side horse,

arching his head and breaking into a short canter, tugged at his

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traces. The shaft horse swayed from side to side, moving his ears as

if asking: "Isn't it time to begin now?" In front, already far ahead

the deep bell of the sleigh ringing farther and farther off, the black

horses driven by Zakhar could be clearly seen against the white

snow. From that sleigh one could hear the shouts, laughter, and voices

of the mummers.



"Gee up, my darlings!" shouted Nicholas, pulling the reins to one

side and flourishing the whip.



It was only by the keener wind that met them and the jerks given

by the side horses who pulled harder--ever increasing their gallop-

that one noticed how fast the troyka was flying. Nicholas looked back.

With screams squeals, and waving of whips that caused even the shaft

horses to gallop--the other sleighs followed. The shaft horse swung

steadily beneath the bow over its head, with no thought of

slackening pace and ready to put on speed when required.



Nicholas overtook the first sleigh. They were driving downhill and

coming out upon a broad trodden track across a meadow, near a river.



"Where are we?" thought he. "It's the Kosoy meadow, I suppose. But

no--this is something new I've never seen before. This isn't the Kosoy

meadow nor the Demkin hill, and heaven only knows what it is! It is

something new and enchanted. Well, whatever it may be..." And shouting

to his horses, he began to pass the first sleigh.



Zakhar held back his horses and turned his face, which was already

covered with hoarfrost to his eyebrows.



Nicholas gave the horses the rein, and Zakhar, stretching out his

arms, clucked his tongue and let his horses go.



"Now, look out, master!" he cried.



Faster still the two troykas flew side by side, and faster moved the

feet of the galloping side horses. Nicholas began to draw ahead.

Zakhar, while still keeping his arms extended, raised one hand with

the reins.



"No you won't, master!" he shouted.



Nicholas put all his horses to a gallop and passed Zakhar. The

horses showered the fine dry snow on the faces of those in the sleigh-

beside them sounded quick ringing bells and they caught confused

glimpses of swiftly moving legs and the shadows of the troyka they

were passing. The whistling sound of the runners on the snow and the

voices of girls shrieking were heard from different sides.



Again checking his horses, Nicholas looked around him. They were

still surrounded by the magic plain bathed in moonlight and spangled

with stars.



"Zakhar is shouting that I should turn to the left, but why to the

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left?" thought Nicholas. "Are we getting to the Melyukovs'? Is this

Melyukovka? Heaven only knows where we are going, and heaven knows

what is happening to us--but it is very strange and pleasant

whatever it is." And he looked round in the sleigh.



"Look, his mustache and eyelashes are all white!" said one of the

strange, pretty, unfamiliar people--the one with fine eyebrows and

mustache.



"I think this used to be Natasha," thought Nicholas, "and that was

Madame Schoss, but perhaps it's not, and this Circassian with the

mustache I don't know, but I love her."



"Aren't you cold?" he asked.



They did not answer but began to laugh. Dimmler from the sleigh

behind shouted something--probably something funny--but they could not

make out what he said.



"Yes, yes!" some voices answered, laughing.



"But here was a fairy forest with black moving shadows, and a

glitter of diamonds and a flight of marble steps and the silver

roofs of fairy buildings and the shrill yells of some animals. And

if this is really Melyukovka, it is still stranger that we drove

heaven knows where and have come to Melyukovka," thought Nicholas.



It really was Melyukovka, and maids and footmen with merry faces

came running, out to the porch carrying candles.



"Who is it?" asked someone in the porch.



"The mummers from the count's. I know by the horses," replied some

voices.









CHAPTER XI





Pelageya Danilovna Melyukova, a broadly built, energetic woman

wearing spectacles, sat in the drawing room in a loose dress,

surrounded by her daughters whom she was trying to keep from feeling

dull. They were quietly dropping melted wax into snow and looking at

the shadows the wax figures would throw on the wall, when they heard

the steps and voices of new arrivals in the vestibule.



Hussars, ladies, witches, clowns, and bears, after clearing their

throats and wiping the hoarfrost from their faces in the vestibule,

came into the ballroom where candles were hurriedly lighted. The

clown--Dimmler--and the lady--Nicholas--started a dance. Surrounded by

the screaming children the mummers, covering their faces and

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disguising their voices, bowed to their hostess and arranged

themselves about the room.



"Dear me! there's no recognizing them! And Natasha! See whom she

looks like! She really reminds me of somebody. But Herr Dimmler--isn't

he good! I didn't know him! And how he dances. Dear me, there's a

Circassian. Really, how becoming it is to dear Sonya. And who is that?

Well, you have cheered us up! Nikita and Vanya--clear away the tables!

And we were sitting so quietly. Ha, ha, ha!... The hussar, the hussar!

Just like a boy! And the legs!... I can't look at him..." different

voices were saying.



Natasha, the young Melyukovs' favorite, disappeared with them into

the back rooms where a cork and various dressing gowns and male

garments were called for and received from the footman by bare girlish

arms from behind the door. Ten minutes later, all the young

Melyukovs joined the mummers.



Pelageya Danilovna, having given orders to clear the rooms for the

visitors and arranged about refreshments for the gentry and the serfs,

went about among the mummers without removing her spectacles,

peering into their faces with a suppressed smile and failing to

recognize any of them. It was not merely Dimmler and the Rostovs she

failed to recognize, she did not even recognize her own daughters,

or her late husband's, dressing gowns and uniforms, which they had put

on.



"And who is is this?" she asked her governess, peering into the face

of her own daughter dressed up as a Kazan-Tartar. "I suppose it is one

of the Rostovs! Well, Mr. Hussar, and what regiment do you serve

in?" she asked Natasha. "Here, hand some fruit jelly to the Turk!" she

ordered the butler who was handing things round. "That's not forbidden

by his law."



Sometimes, as she looked at the strange but amusing capers cut by

the dancers, who--having decided once for all that being disguised, no

one would recognize them--were not at all shy, Pelageya Danilovna

hid her face in her handkerchief, and her whole stout body shook

with irrepressible, kindly, elderly laughter.



"My little Sasha! Look at Sasha!" she said.



After Russian country dances and chorus dances, Pelageya Danilovna

made the serfs and gentry join in one large circle: a ring, a

string, and a silver ruble were fetched and they all played games

together.



In an hour, all the costumes were crumpled and disordered. The

corked eyebrows and mustaches were smeared over the perspiring,

flushed, and merry faces. Pelageya Danilovna began to recognize the

mummers, admired their cleverly contrived costumes, and particularly

how they suited the young ladies, and she thanked them all for

having entertained her so well. The visitors were invited to supper in

the drawing room, and the serfs had something served to them in the

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ballroom.



"Now to tell one's fortune in the empty bathhouse is frightening!"

said an old maid who lived with the Melyukovs, during supper.



"Why?" said the eldest Melyukov girl.



"You wouldn't go, it takes courage..."



"I'll go," said Sonya.



"Tell what happened to the young lady!" said the second Melyukov

girl.



"Well," began the old maid, "a young lady once went out, took a

cock, laid the table for two, all properly, and sat down. After

sitting a while, she suddenly hears someone coming... a sleigh

drives up with harness bells; she hears him coming! He comes in,

just in the shape of a man, like an officer--comes in and sits down to

table with her."



"Ah! ah!" screamed Natasha, rolling her eyes with horror.



"Yes? And how... did he speak?"



"Yes, like a man. Everything quite all right, and he began

persuading her; and she should have kept him talking till cockcrow,

but she got frightened, just got frightened and hid her face in her

hands. Then he caught her up. It was lucky the maids ran in just

then..."



"Now, why frighten them?" said Pelageya Danilovna.



"Mamma, you used to try your fate yourself..." said her daughter.



"And how does one do it in a barn?" inquired Sonya.



"Well, say you went to the barn now, and listened. It depends on

what you hear; hammering and knocking--that's bad; but a sound of

shifting grain is good and one sometimes hears that, too."



"Mamma, tell us what happened to you in the barn."



Pelageya Danilovna smiled.



"Oh, I've forgotten..." she replied. "But none of you would go?"



"Yes, I will; Pelageya Danilovna, let me! I'll go," said Sonya.



"Well, why not, if you're not afraid?"



"Louisa Ivanovna, may I?" asked Sonya.



Whether they were playing the ring and string game or the ruble game

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or talking as now, Nicholas did not leave Sonya's side, and gazed at

her with quite new eyes. It seemed to him that it was only today,

thanks to that burnt-cork mustache, that he had fully learned to

know her. And really, that evening, Sonya was brighter, more animated,

and prettier than Nicholas had ever seen her before.



"So that's what she is like; what a fool I have been!" he thought

gazing at her sparkling eyes, and under the mustache a happy rapturous

smile dimpled her cheeks, a smile he had never seen before.



"I'm not afraid of anything," said Sonya. "May I go at once?" She

got up.



They told her where the barn was and how she should stand and

listen, and they handed her a fur cloak. She threw this over her

head and shoulders and glanced at Nicholas.



"What a darling that girl is!" thought he. "And what have I been

thinking of till now?"



Sonya went out into the passage to go to the barn. Nicholas went

hastily to the front porch, saying he felt too hot. The crowd of

people really had made the house stuffy.



Outside, there was the same cold stillness and the same moon, but

even brighter than before. The light was so strong and the snow

sparkled with so many stars that one did not wish to look up at the

sky and the real stars were unnoticed. The sky was black and dreary,

while the earth was gay.



"I am a fool, a fool! what have I been waiting for?" thought

Nicholas, and running out from the porch he went round the corner of

the house and along the path that led to the back porch. He knew Sonya

would pass that way. Halfway lay some snow-covered piles of firewood

and across and along them a network of shadows from the bare old

lime trees fell on the snow and on the path. This path led to the

barn. The log walls of the barn and its snow-covered roof, that looked

as if hewn out of some precious stone, sparkled in the moonlight. A

tree in the garden snapped with the frost, and then all was again

perfectly silent. His bosom seemed to inhale not air but the

strength of eternal youth and gladness.



From the back porch came the sound of feet descending the steps, the

bottom step upon which snow had fallen gave a ringing creak and he

heard the voice of an old maidservant saying, "Straight, straight,

along the path, Miss. Only, don't look back."



"I am not afraid," answered Sonya's voice, and along the path toward

Nicholas came the crunching, whistling sound of Sonya's feet in her

thin shoes.



Sonya came along, wrapped in her cloak. She was only a couple of

paces away when she saw him, and to her too he was not the Nicholas

she had known and always slightly feared. He was in a woman's dress,

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with tousled hair and a happy smile new to Sonya. She ran rapidly

toward him.



"Quite different and yet the same," thought Nicholas, looking at her

face all lit up by the moonlight. He slipped his arms under the

cloak that covered her head, embraced her, pressed her to him, and

kissed her on the lips that wore a mustache and had a smell of burnt

cork. Sonya kissed him full on the lips, and disengaging her little

hands pressed them to his cheeks.



"Sonya!... Nicholas!"... was all they said. They ran to the barn and

then back again, re-entering, he by the front and she by the back

porch.









CHAPTER XII





When they all drove back from Pelageya Danilovna's, Natasha, who

always saw and noticed everything, arranged that she and Madame Schoss

should go back in the sleigh with Dimmler, and Sonya with Nicholas and

the maids.



On the way back Nicholas drove at a steady pace instead of racing

and kept peering by that fantastic all-transforming light into Sonya's

face and searching beneath the eyebrows and mustache for his former

and his present Sonya from whom he had resolved never to be parted

again. He looked and recognizing in her both the old and the new

Sonya, and being reminded by the smell of burnt cork of the

sensation of her kiss, inhaled the frosty air with a full breast

and, looking at the ground flying beneath him and at the sparkling

sky, felt himself again in fairyland.



"Sonya, is it well with thee?" he asked from time to time.



"Yes!" she replied. "And with thee?"



When halfway home Nicholas handed the reins to the coachman and

ran for a moment to Natasha's sleigh and stood on its wing.



"Natasha!" he whispered in French, "do you know I have made up my

mind about Sonya?"



"Have you told her?" asked Natasha, suddenly beaming all over with

joy.



"Oh, how strange you are with that mustache and those eyebrows!...

Natasha--are you glad?"



"I am so glad, so glad! I was beginning to be vexed with you. I

did not tell you, but you have been treating her badly. What a heart

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she has, Nicholas! I am horrid sometimes, but I was ashamed to be

happy while Sonya was not," continued Natasha. "Now I am so glad!

Well, run back to her."



"No, wait a bit.... Oh, how funny you look!" cried Nicholas, peering

into her face and finding in his sister too something new, unusual,

and bewitchingly tender that he had not seen in her before.

"Natasha, it's magical, isn't it?"



"Yes," she replied. "You have done splendidly."



"Had I seen her before as she is now," thought Nicholas, "I should

long ago have asked her what to do and have done whatever she told me,

and all would have been well."



"So you are glad and I have done right?"



"Oh, quite right! I had a quarrel with Mamma some time ago about it.

Mamma said she was angling for you. How could she say such a thing!

I nearly stormed at Mamma. I will never let anyone say anything bad of

Sonya, for there is nothing but good in her."



"Then it's all right?" said Nicholas, again scrutinizing the

expression of his sister's face to see if she was in earnest. Then

he jumped down and, his boots scrunching the snow, ran back to his

sleigh. The same happy, smiling Circassian, with mustache and

beaming eyes looking up from under a sable hood, was still sitting

there, and that Circassian was Sonya, and that Sonya was certainly his

future happy and loving wife.



When they reached home and had told their mother how they had

spent the evening at the Melyukovs', the girls went to their

bedroom. When they had undressed, but without washing off the cork

mustaches, they sat a long time talking of their happiness. They

talked of how they would live when they were married, how their

husbands would be friends, and how happy they would be. On Natasha's

table stood two looking glasses which Dunyasha had prepared

beforehand.



"Only when will all that be? I am afraid never.... It would be too

good!" said Natasha, rising and going to the looking glasses.



"Sit down, Natasha; perhaps you'll see him," said Sonya.



Natasha lit the candles, one on each side of one of the looking

glasses, and sat down.



"I see someone with a mustache," said Natasha, seeing her own face.



"You mustn't laugh, Miss," said Dunyasha.



With Sonya's help and the maid's, Natasha got the glass she held

into the right position opposite the other; her face assumed a serious

expression and she sat silent. She sat a long time looking at the

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receding line of candles reflected in the glasses and expecting

(from tales she had heard) to see a coffin, or him, Prince Andrew,

in that last dim, indistinctly outlined square. But ready as she was

to take the smallest speck for the image of a man or of a coffin,

she saw nothing. She began blinking rapidly and moved away from the

looking glasses.



"Why is it others see things and I don't?" she said. "You sit down

now, Sonya. You absolutely must, tonight! Do it for me.... Today I

feel so frightened!"



Sonya sat down before the glasses, got the right position, and began

looking.



"Now, Miss Sonya is sure to see something," whispered Dunyasha;

"while you do nothing but laugh."



Sonya heard this and Natasha's whisper:



"I know she will. She saw something last year."



For about three minutes all were silent.



"Of course she will!" whispered Natasha, but did not finish...

suddenly Sonya pushed away the glass she was holding and covered her

eyes with her hand.



"Oh, Natasha!" she cried.



"Did you see? Did you? What was it?" exclaimed Natasha, holding up

the looking glass.



Sonya had not seen anything, she was just wanting to blink and to

get up when she heard Natasha say, "Of course she will!" She did not

wish to disappoint either Dunyasha or Natasha, but it was hard to

sit still. She did not herself know how or why the exclamation escaped

her when she covered her eyes.



"You saw him?" urged Natasha, seizing her hand.



"Yes. Wait a bit... I... saw him," Sonya could not help saying,

not yet knowing whom Natasha meant by him, Nicholas or Prince Andrew.



"But why shouldn't I say I saw something? Others do see! Besides who

can tell whether I saw anything or not?" flashed through Sonya's mind.



"Yes, I saw him," she said.



"How? Standing or lying?"



"No, I saw... At first there was nothing, then I saw him lying

down."



"Andrew lying? Is he ill?" asked Natasha, her frightened eyes

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fixed on her friend.



"No, on the contrary, on the contrary! His face was cheerful, and he

turned to me." And when saying this she herself fancied she had really

seen what she described.



"Well, and then, Sonya?..."



"After that, I could not make out what there was; something blue and

red..."



"Sonya! When will he come back? When shall I see him! O, God, how

afraid I am for him and for myself and about everything!..." Natasha

began, and without replying to Sonya's words of comfort she got into

bed, and long after her candle was out lay open-eyed and motionless,

gazing at the moonlight through the frosty windowpanes.









CHAPTER XIII





Soon after the Christmas holidays Nicholas told his mother of his

love for Sonya and of his firm resolve to marry her. The countess, who

had long noticed what was going on between them and was expecting this

declaration, listened to him in silence and then told her son that

he might marry whom he pleased, but that neither she nor his father

would give their blessing to such a marriage. Nicholas, for the

first time, felt that his mother was displeased with him and that,

despite her love for him, she would not give way. Coldly, without

looking at her son, she sent for her husband and, when he came,

tried briefly and coldly to inform him of the facts, in her son's

presence, but unable to restrain herself she burst into tears of

vexation and left the room. The old count began irresolutely to

admonish Nicholas and beg him to abandon his purpose. Nicholas replied

that he could not go back on his word, and his father, sighing and

evidently disconcerted, very soon became silent and went in to the

countess. In all his encounters with his son, the count was always

conscious of his own guilt toward him for having wasted the family

fortune, and so he could not be angry with him for refusing to marry

an heiress and choosing the dowerless Sonya. On this occasion, he

was only more vividly conscious of the fact that if his affairs had

not been in disorder, no better wife for Nicholas than Sonya could

have been wished for, and that no one but himself with his Mitenka and

his uncomfortable habits was to blame for the condition of the

family finances.



The father and mother did not speak of the matter to their son

again, but a few days later the countess sent for Sonya and, with a

cruelty neither of them expected, reproached her niece for trying to

catch Nicholas and for ingratitude. Sonya listened silently with

downcast eyes to the countess' cruel words, without understanding what

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was required of her. She was ready to sacrifice everything for her

benefactors. Self-sacrifice was her most cherished idea but in this

case she could not see what she ought to sacrifice, or for whom. She

could not help loving the countess and the whole Rostov family, but

neither could she help loving Nicholas and knowing that his

happiness depended on that love. She was silent and sad and did not

reply. Nicholas felt the situation to be intolerable and went to

have an explanation with his mother. He first implored her to

forgive him and Sonya and consent to their marriage, then he

threatened that if she molested Sonya he would at once marry her

secretly.



The countess, with a coldness her son had never seen in her

before, replied that he was of age, that Prince Andrew was marrying

without his father's consent, and he could do the same, but that she

would never receive that intriguer as her daughter.



Exploding at the word intriguer, Nicholas, raising his voice, told

his mother he had never expected her to try to force him to sell his

feelings, but if that were so, he would say for the last time....

But he had no time to utter the decisive word which the expression

of his face caused his mother to await with terror, and which would

perhaps have forever remained a cruel memory to them both. He had

not time to say it, for Natasha, with a pale and set face, entered the

room from the door at which she had been listening.



"Nicholas, you are talking nonsense! Be quiet, be quiet, be quiet, I

tell you!..." she almost screamed, so as to drown his voice.



"Mamma darling, it's not at all so... my poor, sweet darling," she

said to her mother, who conscious that they had been on the brink of a

rupture gazed at her son with terror, but in the obstinacy and

excitement of the conflict could not and would not give way.



"Nicholas, I'll explain to you. Go away! Listen, Mamma darling,"

said Natasha.



Her words were incoherent, but they attained the purpose at which

she was aiming.



The countess, sobbing heavily, hid her face on her daughter's

breast, while Nicholas rose, clutching his head, and left the room.



Natasha set to work to effect a reconciliation, and so far succeeded

that Nicholas received a promise from his mother that Sonya should not

be troubled, while he on his side promised not to undertake anything

without his parents' knowledge.



Firmly resolved, after putting his affairs in order in the regiment,

to retire from the army and return and marry Sonya, Nicholas, serious,

sorrowful, and at variance with his parents, but, as it seemed to him,

passionately in love, left at the beginning of January to rejoin his

regiment.



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After Nicholas had gone things in the Rostov household were more

depressing than ever, and the countess fell ill from mental agitation.



Sonya was unhappy at the separation from Nicholas and still more

so on account of the hostile tone the countess could not help adopting

toward her. The count was more perturbed than ever by the condition of

his affairs, which called for some decisive action. Their town house

and estate near Moscow had inevitably to be sold, and for this they

had to go to Moscow. But the countess' health obliged them to delay

their departure from day to day.



Natasha, who had borne the first period of separation from her

betrothed lightly and even cheerfully, now grew more agitated and

impatient every day. The thought that her best days, which she would

have employed in loving him, were being vainly wasted, with no

advantage to anyone, tormented her incessantly. His letters for the

most part irritated her. It hurt her to think that while she lived

only in the thought of him, he was living a real life, seeing new

places and new people that interested him. The more interesting his

letters were the more vexed she felt. Her letters to him, far from

giving her any comfort, seemed to her a wearisome and artificial

obligation. She could not write, because she could not conceive the

possibility of expressing sincerely in a letter even a thousandth part

of what she expressed by voice, smile, and glance. She wrote to him

formal, monotonous, and dry letters, to which she attached no

importance herself, and in the rough copies of which the countess

corrected her mistakes in spelling.



There was still no improvement in the countess' health, but it was

impossible to defer the journey to Moscow any longer. Natasha's

trousseau had to be ordered and the house sold. Moreover, Prince

Andrew was expected in Moscow, where old Prince Bolkonski was spending

the winter, and Natasha felt sure he had already arrived.



So the countess remained in the country, and the count, taking Sonya

and Natasha with him, went to Moscow at the end of January.









BOOK EIGHT: 1811 --12









CHAPTER I





After Prince Andrews engagement to Natasha, Pierre without any

apparent cause suddenly felt it impossible to go on living as

before. Firmly convinced as he was of the truths revealed to him by

his benefactor, and happy as he had been in perfecting his inner

man, to which he had devoted himself with such ardor--all the zest

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of such a life vanished after the engagement of Andrew and Natasha and

the death of Joseph Alexeevich, the news of which reached him almost

at the same time. Only the skeleton of life remained: his house, a

brilliant wife who now enjoyed the favors of a very important

personage, acquaintance with all Petersburg, and his court service

with its dull formalities. And this life suddenly seemed to Pierre

unexpectedly loathsome. He ceased keeping a diary, avoided the company

of the Brothers, began going to the Club again, drank a great deal,

and came once more in touch with the bachelor sets, leading such a

life that the Countess Helene thought it necessary to speak severely

to him about it. Pierre felt that she right, and to avoid compromising

her went away to Moscow.



In Moscow as soon as he entered his huge house in which the faded

and fading princesses still lived, with its enormous retinue; as

soon as, driving through the town, he saw the Iberian shrine with

innumerable tapers burning before the golden covers of the icons,

the Kremlin Square with its snow undisturbed by vehicles, the sleigh

drivers and hovels of the Sivtsev Vrazhok, those old Moscovites who

desired nothing, hurried nowhere, and were ending their days

leisurely; when he saw those old Moscow ladies, the Moscow balls,

and the English Club, he felt himself at home in a quiet haven. In

Moscow he felt at peace, at home, warm and dirty as in an old dressing

gown.



Moscow society, from the old women down to the children, received

Pierre like a long-expected guest whose place was always ready

awaiting him. For Moscow society Pierre was the nicest, kindest,

most intellectual, merriest, and most magnanimous of cranks, a

heedless, genial nobleman of the old Russian type. His purse was

always empty because it was open to everyone.



Benefit performances, poor pictures, statues, benevolent

societies, gypsy choirs, schools, subscription dinners, sprees,

Freemasons, churches, and books--no one and nothing met with a refusal

from him, and had it not been for two friends who had borrowed large

sums from him and taken him under their protection, he would have

given everything away. There was never a dinner or soiree at the

Club without him. As soon as he sank into his place on the sofa

after two bottles of Margaux he was surrounded, and talking,

disputing, and joking began. When there were quarrels, his kindly

smile and well-timed jests reconciled the antagonists. The Masonic

dinners were dull and dreary when he was not there.



When after a bachelor supper he rose with his amiable and kindly

smile, yielding to the entreaties of the festive company to drive

off somewhere with them, shouts of delight and triumph arose among the

young men. At balls he danced if a partner was needed. Young ladies,

married and unmarried, liked him because without making love to any of

them, he was equally amiable to all, especially after supper. "Il

est charmant; il n'a pas de sexe,"* they said of him.





*"He is charming; he has no sex."

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Pierre was one of those retired gentlemen-in-waiting of whom there

were hundreds good-humoredly ending their days in Moscow.



How horrified he would have been seven years before, when he first

arrived from abroad, had he been told that there was no need for him

to seek or plan anything, that his rut had long been shaped, eternally

predetermined, and that wriggle as he might, he would be what all in

his position were. He could not have believed it! Had he not at one

time longed with all his heart to establish a republic in Russia; then

himself to be a Napoleon; then to be a philosopher; and then a

strategist and the conqueror of Napoleon? Had he not seen the

possibility of, and passionately desired, the regeneration of the

sinful human race, and his own progress to the highest degree of

perfection? Had he not established schools and hospitals and liberated

his serfs?



But instead of all that--here he was, the wealthy husband of an

unfaithful wife, a retired gentleman-in-waiting, fond of eating and

drinking and, as he unbuttoned his waistcoat, of abusing the

government a bit, a member of the Moscow English Club, and a universal

favorite in Moscow society. For a long time he could not reconcile

himself to the idea that he was one of those same retired Moscow

gentlemen-in-waiting he had so despised seven years before.



Sometimes he consoled himself with the thought that he was only

living this life temporarily; but then he was shocked by the thought

of how many, like himself, had entered that life and that Club

temporarily, with all their teeth and hair, and had only left it

when not a single tooth or hair remained.



In moments of pride, when he thought of his position it seemed to

him that he was quite different and distinct from those other

retired gentlemen-in-waiting he had formerly despised: they were

empty, stupid, contented fellows, satisfied with their position,

"while I am still discontented and want to do something for mankind.

But perhaps all these comrades of mine struggled just like me and

sought something new, a path in life of their own, and like me were

brought by force of circumstances, society, and race--by that

elemental force against which man is powerless--to the condition I

am in," said he to himself in moments of humility; and after living

some time in Moscow he no longer despised, but began to grow fond

of, to respect, and to pity his comrades in destiny, as he pitied

himself.



Pierre longer suffered moments of despair, hypochondria, and disgust

with life, but the malady that had formerly found expression in such

acute attacks was driven inwards and never left him for a moment.

"What for? Why? What is going on in the world?" he would ask himself

in perplexity several times a day, involuntarily beginning to

reflect anew on the meaning of the phenomena of life; but knowing by

experience that there were no answers to these questions he made haste

to turn away from them, and took up a book, or hurried of to the

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Club or to Apollon Nikolaevich's, to exchange the gossip of the town.



"Helene, who has never cared for anything but her own body and is

one of the stupidest women in the world," thought Pierre, "is regarded

by people as the acme of intelligence and refinement, and they pay

homage to her. Napoleon Bonaparte was despised by all as long as he

was great, but now that he has become a wretched comedian the

Emperor Francis wants to offer him his daughter in an illegal

marriage. The Spaniards, through the Catholic clergy, offer praise

to God for their victory over the French on the fourteenth of June,

and the French, also through the Catholic clergy, offer praise because

on that same fourteenth of June they defeated the Spaniards. My

brother Masons swear by the blood that they are ready to sacrifice

everything for their neighbor, but they do not give a ruble each to

the collections for the poor, and they intrigue, the Astraea Lodge

against the Manna Seekers, and fuss about an authentic Scotch carpet

and a charter that nobody needs, and the meaning of which the very man

who wrote it does not understand. We all profess the Christian law

of forgiveness of injuries and love of our neighbors, the law in honor

of which we have built in Moscow forty times forty churches--but

yesterday a deserter was knouted to death and a minister of that

same law of love and forgiveness, a priest, gave the soldier a cross

to kiss before his execution." So thought Pierre, and the whole of

this general deception which everyone accepts, accustomed as he was to

it, astonished him each time as if it were something new. "I

understand the deception and confusion," he thought, "but how am I

to tell them all that I see? I have tried, and have always found

that they too in the depths of their souls understand it as I do,

and only try not to see it. So it appears that it must be so! But I-

what is to become of me?" thought he. He had the unfortunate

capacity many men, especially Russians, have of seeing and believing

in the possibility of goodness and truth, but of seeing the evil and

falsehood of life too clearly to be able to take a serious part in it.

Every sphere of work was connected, in his eyes, with evil and

deception. Whatever he tried to be, whatever he engaged in, the evil

and falsehood of it repulsed him and blocked every path of activity.

Yet he had to live and to find occupation. It was too dreadful to be

under the burden of these insoluble problems, so he abandoned

himself to any distraction in order to forget them. He frequented

every kind of society, drank much, bought pictures, engaged in

building, and above all--read.



He read, and read everything that came to hand. On coming home,

while his valets were still taking off his things, he picked up a book

and began to read. From reading he passed to sleeping, from sleeping

to gossip in drawing rooms of the Club, from gossip to carousals and

women; from carousals back to gossip, reading, and wine. Drinking

became more and more a physical and also a moral necessity. Though the

doctors warned him that with his corpulence wine was dangerous for

him, he drank a great deal. He was only quite at ease when having

poured several glasses of wine mechanically into his large mouth he

felt a pleasant warmth in his body, an amiability toward all his

fellows, and a readiness to respond superficially to every idea

without probing it deeply. Only after emptying a bottle or two did

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he feel dimly that the terribly tangled skein of life which previously

had terrified him was not as dreadful as he had thought. He was always

conscious of some aspect of that skein, as with a buzzing in his

head after dinner or supper he chatted or listened to conversation

or read. But under the influence of wine he said to himself: "It

doesn't matter. I'll get it unraveled. I have a solution ready, but

have no time now--I'll think it all out later on!" But the later on

never came.



In the morning, on an empty stomach, all the old questions

appeared as insoluble and terrible as ever, and Pierre hastily

picked up a book, and if anyone came to see him he was glad.



Sometimes he remembered how he had heard that soldiers in war when

entrenched under the enemy's fire, if they have nothing to do, try

hard to find some occupation the more easily to bear the danger. To

Pierre all men seemed like those soldiers, seeking refuge from life:

some in ambition, some in cards, some in framing laws, some in

women, some in toys, some in horses, some in politics, some in

sport, some in wine, and some in governmental affairs. "Nothing is

trivial, and nothing is important, it's all the same--only to save

oneself from it as best one can," thought Pierre. "Only not to see it,

that dreadful it!"









CHAPTER II





At the beginning of winter Prince Nicholas Bolkonski and his

daughter moved to Moscow. At that time enthusiasm for the Emperor

Alexander's regime had weakened and a patriotic and anti-French

tendency prevailed there, and this, together with his past and his

intellect and his originality, at once made Prince Nicholas

Bolkonski an object of particular respect to the Moscovites and the

center of the Moscow opposition to the government.



The prince had aged very much that year. He showed marked signs of

senility by a tendency to fall asleep, forgetfulness of quite recent

events, remembrance of remote ones, and the childish vanity with which

he accepted the role of head of the Moscow opposition. In spite of

this the old man inspired in all his visitors alike a feeling of

respectful veneration--especially of an evening when he came in to tea

in his old-fashioned coat and powdered wig and, aroused by anyone,

told his abrupt stories of the past, or uttered yet more abrupt and

scathing criticisms of the present. For them all, that old-fashioned

house with its gigantic mirrors, pre-Revolution furniture, powdered

footmen, and the stern shrewd old man (himself a relic of the past

century) with his gentle daughter and the pretty Frenchwoman who

were reverently devoted to him presented a majestic and agreeable

spectacle. But the visitors did not reflect that besides the couple of

hours during which they saw their host, there were also twenty-two

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hours in the day during which the private and intimate life of the

house continued.



Latterly that private life had become very trying for Princess Mary.

There in Moscow she was deprived of her greatest pleasures--talks with

the pilgrims and the solitude which refreshed her at Bald Hills--and

she had none of the advantages and pleasures of city life. She did not

go out into society; everyone knew that her father would not let her

go anywhere without him, and his failing health prevented his going

out himself, so that she was not invited to dinners and evening

parties. She had quite abandoned the hope of getting married. She

saw the coldness and malevolence with which the old prince received

and dismissed the young men, possible suitors, who sometimes

appeared at their house. She had no friends: during this visit to

Moscow she had been disappointed in the two who had been nearest to

her. Mademoiselle Bourienne, with whom she had never been able to be

quite frank, had now become unpleasant to her, and for various reasons

Princess Mary avoided her. Julie, with whom she had corresponded for

the last five years, was in Moscow, but proved to be quite alien to

her when they met. Just then Julie, who by the death of her brothers

had become one of the richest heiresses in Moscow, was in the full

whirl of society pleasures. She was surrounded by young men who, she

fancied, had suddenly learned to appreciate her worth. Julie was at

that stage in the life of a society woman when she feels that her last

chance of marrying has come and that her fate must be decided now or

never. On Thursdays Princess Mary remembered with a mournful smile

that she now had no one to write to, since Julie--whose presence

gave her no pleasure was here and they met every week. Like the old

emigre who declined to marry the lady with whom he had spent his

evenings for years, she regretted Julie's presence and having no one

to write to. In Moscow Princess Mary had no one to talk to, no one

to whom to confide her sorrow, and much sorrow fell to her lot just

then. The time for Prince Andrew's return and marriage was

approaching, but his request to her to prepare his father for it had

not been carried out; in fact, it seemed as if matters were quite

hopeless, for at every mention of the young Countess Rostova the old

prince (who apart from that was usually in a bad temper) lost

control of himself. Another lately added sorrow arose from the lessons

she gave her six year-old nephew. To her consternation she detected in

herself in relation to little Nicholas some symptoms of her father's

irritability. However often she told herself that she must not get

irritable when teaching her nephew, almost every time that, pointer in

hand, she sat down to show him the French alphabet, she so longed to

pour her own knowledge quickly and easily into the child--who was

already afraid that Auntie might at any moment get angry--that at

his slightest inattention she trembled, became flustered and heated,

raised her voice, and sometimes pulled him by the arm and put him in

the corner. Having put him in the corner she would herself begin to

cry over her cruel, evil nature, and little Nicholas, following her

example, would sob, and without permission would leave his corner,

come to her, pull her wet hands from her face, and comfort her. But

what distressed the princess most of all was her father's

irritability, which was always directed against her and had of late

amounted to cruelty. Had he forced her to prostrate herself to the

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ground all night, had he beaten her or made her fetch wood or water,

it would never have entered her mind to think her position hard; but

this loving despot--the more cruel because he loved her and for that

reason tormented himself and her--knew how not merely to hurt and

humiliate her deliberately, but to show her that she was always to

blame for everything. Of late he had exhibited a new trait that

tormented Princess Mary more than anything else; this was his

ever-increasing intimacy with Mademoiselle Bourienne. The idea that at

the first moment of receiving the news of his son's intentions had

occurred to him in jest--that if Andrew got married he himself would

marry Bourienne--had evidently pleased him, and latterly he had

persistently, and as it seemed to Princess Mary merely to offend

her, shown special endearments to the companion and expressed his

dissatisfaction with his daughter by demonstrations of love of

Bourienne.



One day in Moscow in Princess Mary's presence (she thought her

father did it purposely when she was there) the old prince kissed

Mademoiselle Bourienne's hand and, drawing her to him, embraced her

affectionately. Princess Mary flushed and ran out of the room. A few

minutes later Mademoiselle Bourienne came into Princess Mary's room

smiling and making cheerful remarks in her agreeable voice. Princess

Mary hastily wiped away her tears, went resolutely up to

Mademoiselle Bourienne, and evidently unconscious of what she was

doing began shouting in angry haste at the Frenchwoman, her voice

breaking: "It's horrible, vile, inhuman, to take advantage of the

weakness..." She did not finish. "Leave my room," she exclaimed, and

burst into sobs.



Next day the prince did not say a word to his daughter, but she

noticed that at dinner he gave orders that Mademoiselle Bourienne

should be served first. After dinner, when the footman handed coffee

and from habit began with the princess, the prince suddenly grew

furious, threw his stick at Philip, and instantly gave instructions to

have him conscripted for the army.



"He doesn't obey... I said it twice... and he doesn't obey! She is

the first person in this house; she's my best friend," cried the

prince. "And if you allow yourself," he screamed in a fury, addressing

Princess Mary for the first time, "to forget yourself again before her

as you dared to do yesterday, I will show you who is master in this

house. Go! Don't let me set eyes on you; beg her pardon!"



Princess Mary asked Mademoiselle Bourienne's pardon, and also her

father's pardon for herself and for Philip the footman, who had begged

for her intervention.



At such moments something like a pride of sacrifice gathered in

her soul. And suddenly that father whom she had judged would look

for his spectacles in her presence, fumbling near them and not

seeing them, or would forget something that had just occurred, or take

a false step with his failing legs and turn to see if anyone had

noticed his feebleness, or, worst of all, at dinner when there were no

visitors to excite him would suddenly fall asleep, letting his

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napkin drop and his shaking head sink over his plate. "He is old and

feeble, and I dare to condemn him!" she thought at such moments,

with a feeling of revulsion against herself.









CHAPTER III





In 1811 there was living in Moscow a French doctor--Metivier--who

had rapidly become the fashion. He was enormously tall, handsome,

amiable as Frenchmen are, and was, as all Moscow said, an

extraordinarily clever doctor. He was received in the best houses

not merely as a doctor, but as an equal.



Prince Nicholas had always ridiculed medicine, but latterly on

Mademoiselle Bourienne's advice had allowed this doctor to visit him

and had grown accustomed to him. Metivier came to see the prince about

twice a week.



On December 6--St. Nicholas' Day and the prince's name day--all

Moscow came to the prince's front door but he gave orders to admit

no one and to invite to dinner only a small number, a list of whom

he gave to Princess Mary.



Metivier, who came in the morning with his felicitations, considered

it proper in his quality of doctor de forcer la consigne,* as he

told Princess Mary, and went in to see the prince. It happened that on

that morning of his name day the prince was in one of his worst moods.

He had been going about the house all the morning finding fault with

everyone and pretending not to understand what was said to him and not

to be understood himself. Princess Mary well knew this mood of quiet

absorbed querulousness, which generally culminated in a burst of rage,

and she went about all that morning as though facing a cocked and

loaded gun and awaited the inevitable explosion. Until the doctor's

arrival the morning had passed off safely. After admitting the doctor,

Princess Mary sat down with a book in the drawing room near the door

through which she could hear all that passed in the study.





*To force the guard.





At first she heard only Metivier's voice, then her father's, then

both voices began speaking at the same time, the door was flung

open, and on the threshold appeared the handsome figure of the

terrified Metivier with his shock of black hair, and the prince in his

dressing gown and fez, his face distorted with fury and the pupils

of his eyes rolled downwards.



"You don't understand?" shouted the prince, "but I do! French spy,

slave of Buonaparte, spy, get out of my house! Be off, I tell you..."

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Metivier, shrugging his shoulders, went up to Mademoiselle Bourienne

who at the sound of shouting had run in from an adjoining room.



"The prince is not very well: bile and rush of blood to the head.

Keep calm, I will call again tomorrow," said Metivier; and putting his

fingers to his lips he hastened away.



Through the study door came the sound of slippered feet and the cry:

"Spies, traitors, traitors everywhere! Not a moment's peace in my

own house!"



After Metivier's departure the old prince called his daughter in,

and the whole weight of his wrath fell on her. She was to blame that a

spy had been admitted. Had he not told her, yes, told her to make a

list, and not to admit anyone who was not on that list? Then why was

that scoundrel admitted? She was the cause of it all. With her, he

said, he could not have a moment's peace and could not die quietly.



"No, ma'am! We must part, we must part! Understand that,

understand it! I cannot endure any more," he said, and left the

room. Then, as if afraid she might find some means of consolation,

he returned and trying to appear calm added: "And don't imagine I have

said this in a moment of anger. I am calm. I have thought it over, and

it will be carried out--we must part; so find some place for

yourself...." But he could not restrain himself and with the virulence

of which only one who loves is capable, evidently suffering himself,

he shook his fists at her and screamed:



"If only some fool would marry her!" Then he slammed the door,

sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne, and subsided into his study.



At two o'clock the six chosen guests assembled for dinner.



These guests--the famous Count Rostopchin, Prince Lopukhin with

his nephew, General Chatrov an old war comrade of the prince's, and of

the younger generation Pierre and Boris Drubetskoy--awaited the prince

in the drawing room.



Boris, who had come to Moscow on leave a few days before, had been

anxious to be presented to Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, and had

contrived to ingratiate himself so well that the old prince in his

case made an exception to the rule of not receiving bachelors in his

house.



The prince's house did not belong to what is known as fashionable

society, but his little circle--though not much talked about in

town--was one it was more flattering to be received in than any other.

Boris had realized this the week before when the commander in chief in

his presence invited Rostopchin to dinner on St. Nicholas' Day, and

Rostopchin had replied that he could not come:



"On that day I always go to pay my devotions to the relics of Prince

Nicholas Bolkonski."

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"Oh, yes, yes!" replied the commander in chief. "How is he?..."



The small group that assembled before dinner in the lofty

old-fashioned drawing room with its old furniture resembled the solemn

gathering of a court of justice. All were silent or talked in low

tones. Prince Nicholas came in serious and taciturn. Princess Mary

seemed even quieter and more diffident than usual. The guests were

reluctant to address her, feeling that she was in no mood for their

conversation. Count Rostopchin alone kept the conversation going,

now relating the latest town news, and now the latest political

gossip.



Lopukhin and the old general occasionally took part in the

conversation. Prince Bolkonski listened as a presiding judge

receives a report, only now and then, silently or by a brief word,

showing that he took heed of what was being reported to him. The

tone of the conversation was such as indicated that no one approved of

what was being done in the political world. Incidents were related

evidently confirming the opinion that everything was going from bad to

worse, but whether telling a story or giving an opinion the speaker

always stopped, or was stopped, at the point beyond which his

criticism might touch the sovereign himself.



At dinner the talk turned on the latest political news: Napoleon's

seizure of the Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and the Russian Note,

hostile to Napoleon, which had been sent to all the European courts.



"Bonaparte treats Europe as a pirate does a captured vessel," said

Count Rostopchin, repeating a phrase he had uttered several times

before. "One only wonders at the long-suffering or blindness of the

crowned heads. Now the Pope's turn has come and Bonaparte doesn't

scruple to depose the head of the Catholic Church--yet all keep

silent! Our sovereign alone has protested against the seizure of the

Duke of Oldenburg's territory, and even..." Count Rostopchin paused,

feeling that he had reached the limit beyond which censure was

impossible.



"Other territories have been offered in exchange for the Duchy of

Oldenburg," said Prince Bolkonski. "He shifts the Dukes about as I

might move my serfs from Bald Hills to Bogucharovo or my Ryazan

estates."



"The Duke of Oldenburg bears his misfortunes with admirable strength

of character and resignation," remarked Boris, joining in

respectfully.



He said this because on his journey from Petersburg he had had the

honor of being presented to the Duke. Prince Bolkonski glanced at

the young man as if about to say something in reply, but changed his

mind, evidently considering him too young.



"I have read our protests about the Oldenburg affair and was

surprised how badly the Note was worded," remarked Count Rostopchin in

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the casual tone of a man dealing with a subject quite familiar to him.



Pierre looked at Rostopchin with naive astonishment, not

understanding why he should be disturbed by the bad composition of the

Note.



"Does it matter, Count, how the Note is worded," he asked, "so

long as its substance is forcible?"



"My dear fellow, with our five hundred thousand troops it should

be easy to have a good style," returned Count Rostopchin.



Pierre now understood the count's dissatisfaction with the wording

of the Note.



"One would have thought quill drivers enough had sprung up,"

remarked the old prince. "There in Petersburg they are always writing-

not notes only but even new laws. My Andrew there has written a

whole volume of laws for Russia. Nowadays they are always writing!"

and he laughed unnaturally.



There was a momentary pause in the conversation; the old general

cleared his throat to draw attention.



"Did you hear of the last event at the review in Petersburg? The

figure cut by the new French ambassador."



"Eh? Yes, I heard something: he said something awkward in His

Majesty's presence."



"His Majesty drew attention to the Grenadier division and to the

march past," continued the general, "and it seems the ambassador

took no notice and allowed himself to reply that: 'We in France pay no

attention to such trifles!' The Emperor did not condescend to reply.

At the next review, they say, the Emperor did not once deign to

address him."



All were silent. On this fact relating to the Emperor personally, it

was impossible to pass any judgment.



"Impudent fellows!" said the prince. "You know Metivier? I turned

him out of my house this morning. He was here; they admitted him spite

of my request that they should let no one in," he went on, glancing

angrily at his daughter.



And he narrated his whole conversation with the French doctor and

the reasons that convinced him that Metivier was a spy. Though these

reasons were very insufficient and obscure, no one made any rejoinder.



After the roast, champagne was served. The guests rose to

congratulate the old prince. Princess Mary, too, went round to him.



He gave her a cold, angry look and offered her his wrinkled,

clean-shaven cheek to kiss. The whole expression of his face told

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her that he had not forgotten the morning's talk, that his decision

remained in force, and only the presence of visitors hindered his

speaking of it to her now.



When they went into the drawing room where coffee was served, the

old men sat together.



Prince Nicholas grew more animated and expressed his views on the

impending war.



He said that our wars with Bonaparte would be disastrous so long

as we sought alliances with the Germans and thrust ourselves into

European affairs, into which we had been drawn by the Peace of Tilsit.

"We ought not to fight either for or against Austria. Our political

interests are all in the East, and in regard to Bonaparte the only

thing is to have an armed frontier and a firm policy, and he will

never dare to cross the Russian frontier, as was the case in 1807!"



"How can we fight the French, Prince?" said Count Rostopchin. "Can

we arm ourselves against our teachers and divinities? Look at our

youths, look at our ladies! The French are our Gods: Paris is our

Kingdom of Heaven."



He began speaking louder, evidently to be heard by everyone.



"French dresses, French ideas, French feelings! There now, you

turned Metivier out by the scruff of his neck because he is a

Frenchman and a scoundrel, but our ladies crawl after him on their

knees. I went to a party last night, and there out of five ladies

three were Roman Catholics and had the Pope's indulgence for doing

woolwork on Sundays. And they themselves sit there nearly naked,

like the signboards at our Public Baths if I may say so. Ah, when

one looks at our young people, Prince, one would like to take Peter

the Great's old cudgel out of the museum and belabor them in the

Russian way till all the nonsense jumps out of them."



All were silent. The old prince looked at Rostopchin with a smile

and wagged his head approvingly.



"Well, good-by, your excellency, keep well!" said Rostopchin,

getting up with characteristic briskness and holding out his hand to

the prince.



"Good-by, my dear fellow.... His words are music, I never tire of

hearing him!" said the old prince, keeping hold of the hand and

offering his cheek to be kissed.



Following Rostopchin's example the others also rose.









CHAPTER IV

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Princess Mary as she sat listening to the old men's talk and

faultfinding, understood nothing of what she heard; she only

wondered whether the guests had all observed her father's hostile

attitude toward her. She did not even notice the special attentions

and amiabilities shown her during dinner by Boris Drubetskoy, who

was visiting them for the third time already.



Princess Mary turned with absent-minded questioning look to

Pierre, who hat in hand and with a smile on his face was the last of

the guests to approach her after the old prince had gone out and

they were left alone in the drawing room.



"May I stay a little longer?" he said, letting his stout body sink

into an armchair beside her.



"Oh yes," she answered. "You noticed nothing?" her look asked.



Pierre was in an agreeable after-dinner mood. He looked straight

before him and smiled quietly.



"Have you known that young man long, Princess?" he asked.



"Who?"



"Drubetskoy."



"No, not long..."



"Do you like him?"



"Yes, he is an agreeable young man.... Why do you ask me that?" said

Princess Mary, still thinking of that morning's conversation with

her father.



"Because I have noticed that when a young man comes on leave from

Petersburg to Moscow it is usually with the object of marrying an

heiress."



"You have observed that?" said Princess Mary.



"Yes," returned Pierre with a smile, "and this young man now manages

matters so that where there is a wealthy heiress there he is too. I

can read him like a book. At present he is hesitating whom to lay

siege to--you or Mademoiselle Julie Karagina. He is very attentive

to her."



"He visits them?"



"Yes, very often. And do you know the new way of courting?" said

Pierre with an amused smile, evidently in that cheerful mood of good

humored raillery for which he so often reproached himself in his

diary.

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"No," replied Princess Mary.



"To please Moscow girls nowadays one has to be melancholy. He is

very melancholy with Mademoiselle Karagina," said Pierre.



"Really?" asked Princess Mary, looking into Pierre's kindly face and

still thinking of her own sorrow. "It would be a relief," thought she,

"if I ventured to confide what I am feeling to someone. I should

like to tell everything to Pierre. He is kind and generous. It would

be a relief. He would give me advice."



"Would you marry him?"



"Oh, my God, Count, there are moments when I would marry anybody!"

she cried suddenly to her own surprise and with tears in her voice.

"Ah, how bitter it is to love someone near to you and to feel that..."

she went on in a trembling voice, "that you can do nothing for him but

grieve him, and to know that you cannot alter this. Then there is only

one thing left--to go away, but where could I go?"



"What is wrong? What is it, Princess?"



But without finishing what she was saying, Princess Mary burst

into tears.



"I don't know what is the matter with me today. Don't take any

notice--forget what I have said!"



Pierre's gaiety vanished completely. He anxiously questioned the

princess, asked her to speak out fully and confide her grief to him;

but she only repeated that she begged him to forget what she had said,

that she did not remember what she had said, and that she had no

trouble except the one he knew of--that Prince Andrew's marriage

threatened to cause a rupture between father and son.



"Have you any news of the Rostovs?" she asked, to change the

subject. "I was told they are coming soon. I am also expecting

Andrew any day. I should like them to meet here."



"And how does he now regard the matter?" asked Pierre, referring

to the old prince.



Princess Mary shook her head.



"What is to be done? In a few months the year will be up. The

thing is impossible. I only wish I could spare my brother the first

moments. I wish they would come sooner. I hope to be friends with her.

You have known them a long time," said Princess Mary. "Tell me

honestly the whole truth: what sort of girl is she, and what do you

think of her?--The real truth, because you know Andrew is risking so

much doing this against his father's will that I should like to

know..."



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An undefined instinct told Pierre that these explanations, and

repeated requests to be told the whole truth, expressed ill-will on

the princess' part toward her future sister-in-law and a wish that

he should disapprove of Andrew's choice; but in reply he said what

he felt rather than what he thought.



"I don't know how to answer your question," he said, blushing

without knowing why. "I really don't know what sort of girl she is;

I can't analyze her at all. She is enchanting, but what makes her so I

don't know. That is all one can say about her."



Princess Mary sighed, and the expression on her face said: "Yes,

that's what I expected and feared."



"Is she clever?" she asked.



Pierre considered.



"I think not," he said, "and yet--yes. She does not deign to be

clever.... Oh no, she is simply enchanting, and that is all."



Princess Mary again shook her head disapprovingly.



"Ah, I so long to like her! Tell her so if you see her before I do."



"I hear they are expected very soon," said Pierre.



Princess Mary told Pierre of her plan to become intimate with her

future sister-in-law as soon as the Rostovs arrived and to try to

accustom the old prince to her.









CHAPTER V





Boris had not succeeded in making a wealthy match in Petersburg,

so with the same object in view he came to Moscow. There he wavered

between the two richest heiresses, Julie and Princess Mary. Though

Princess Mary despite her plainness seemed to him more attractive than

Julie, he, without knowing why, felt awkward about paying court to

her. When they had last met on the old prince's name day, she had

answered at random all his attempts to talk sentimentally, evidently

not listening to what he was saying.



Julie on the contrary accepted his attentions readily, though in a

manner peculiar to herself.



She was twenty-seven. After the death of her brothers she had become

very wealthy. She was by now decidedly plain, but thought herself

not merely as good-looking as before but even far more attractive. She

was confirmed in this delusion by the fact that she had become a

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very wealthy heiress and also by the fact that the older she grew

the less dangerous she became to men, and the more freely they could

associate with her and avail themselves of her suppers, soirees, and

the animated company that assembled at her house, without incurring

any obligation. A man who would have been afraid ten years before of

going every day to the house when there was a girl of seventeen there,

for fear of compromising her and committing himself, would now go

boldly every day and treat her not as a marriageable girl but as a

sexless acquaintance.



That winter the Karagins' house was the most agreeable and

hospitable in Moscow. In addition to the formal evening and dinner

parties, a large company, chiefly of men, gathered there every day,

supping at midnight and staying till three in the morning. Julie never

missed a ball, a promenade, or a play. Her dresses were always of

the latest fashion. But in spite of that she seemed to be

disillusioned about everything and told everyone that she did not

believe either in friendship or in love, or any of the joys of life,

and expected peace only "yonder." She adopted the tone of one who

has suffered a great disappointment, like a girl who has either lost

the man she loved or been cruelly deceived by him. Though nothing of

the kind had happened to her she was regarded in that light, and had

even herself come to believe that she had suffered much in life.

This melancholy, which did not prevent her amusing herself, did not

hinder the young people who came to her house from passing the time

pleasantly. Every visitor who came to the house paid his tribute to

the melancholy mood of the hostess, and then amused himself with

society gossip, dancing, intellectual games, and bouts rimes, which

were in vogue at the Karagins'. Only a few of these young men, among

them Boris, entered more deeply into Julie's melancholy, and with

these she had prolonged conversations in private on the vanity of

all worldly things, and to them she showed her albums filled with

mournful sketches, maxims, and verses.



To Boris, Julie was particularly gracious: she regretted his early

disillusionment with life, offered him such consolation of

friendship as she who had herself suffered so much could render, and

showed him her album. Boris sketched two trees in the album and wrote:

"Rustic trees, your dark branches shed gloom and melancholy upon me."



On another page he drew a tomb, and wrote:



La mort est secourable et la mort est tranquille.

Ah! contre les douleurs il n'y a pas d'autre asile.*





*Death gives relief and death is peaceful.



Ah! from suffering there is no other refuge.



Julia said this was charming



"There is something so enchanting in the smile of melancholy," she

said to Boris, repeating word for word a passage she had copied from a

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book. "It is a ray of light in the darkness, a shade between sadness

and despair, showing the possibility of consolation."



In reply Boris wrote these lines:



Aliment de poison d'une ame trop sensible,

Toi, sans qui le bonheur me serait impossible,

Tendre melancholie, ah, viens me consoler,

Viens calmer les tourments de ma sombre retraite,

Et mele une douceur secrete

A ces pleurs que je sens couler.*





*Poisonous nourishment of a too sensitive soul,



Thou, without whom happiness would for me be impossible,



Tender melancholy, ah, come to console me,



Come to calm the torments of my gloomy retreat,



And mingle a secret sweetness



With these tears that I feel to be flowing.





For Boris, Julie played most doleful nocturnes on her harp. Boris

read Poor Liza aloud to her, and more than once interrupted the

reading because of the emotions that choked him. Meeting at large

gatherings Julie and Boris looked on one another as the only souls who

understood one another in a world of indifferent people.



Anna Mikhaylovna, who often visited the Karagins, while playing

cards with the mother made careful inquiries as to Julie's dowry

(she was to have two estates in Penza and the Nizhegorod forests).

Anna Mikhaylovna regarded the refined sadness that united her son to

the wealthy Julie with emotion, and resignation to the Divine will.



"You are always charming and melancholy, my dear Julie," she said to

the daughter. "Boris says his soul finds repose at your house. He

has suffered so many disappointments and is so sensitive," said she to

the mother. "Ah, my dear, I can't tell you how fond I have grown of

Julie latterly," she said to her son. "But who could help loving

her? She is an angelic being! Ah, Boris, Boris!"--she paused. "And how

I pity her mother," she went on; "today she showed me her accounts and

letters from Penza (they have enormous estates there), and she, poor

thing, has no one to help her, and they do cheat her so!"



Boris smiled almost imperceptibly while listening to his mother.

He laughed blandly at her naive diplomacy but listened to what she had

to say, and sometimes questioned her carefully about the Penza and

Nizhegorod estates.



Julie had long been expecting a proposal from her melancholy

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adorer and was ready to accept it; but some secret feeling of

repulsion for her, for her passionate desire to get married, for her

artificiality, and a feeling of horror at renouncing the possibility

of real love still restrained Boris. His leave was expiring. He

spent every day and whole days at the Karagins', and every day on

thinking the matter over told himself that he would propose

tomorrow. But in Julie's presence, looking at her red face and chin

(nearly always powdered), her moist eyes, and her expression of

continual readiness to pass at once from melancholy to an unnatural

rapture of married bliss, Boris could not utter the decisive words,

though in imagination he had long regarded himself as the possessor of

those Penza and Nizhegorod estates and had apportioned the use of

the income from them. Julie saw Boris' indecision, and sometimes the

thought occurred to her that she was repulsive to him, but her

feminine self-deception immediately supplied her with consolation, and

she told herself that he was only shy from love. Her melancholy,

however, began to turn to irritability, and not long before Boris'

departure she formed a definite plan of action. Just as Boris' leave

of absence was expiring, Anatole Kuragin made his appearance in

Moscow, and of course in the Karagins' drawing room, and Julie,

suddenly abandoning her melancholy, became cheerful and very attentive

to Kuragin.



"My dear," said Anna Mikhaylovna to her son, "I know from a reliable

source that Prince Vasili has sent his son to Moscow to get him

married to Julie. I am so fond of Julie that I should be sorry for

her. What do you think of it, my dear?"



The idea of being made a fool of and of having thrown away that

whole month of arduous melancholy service to Julie, and of seeing

all the revenue from the Penza estates which he had already mentally

apportioned and put to proper use fall into the hands of another,

and especially into the hands of that idiot Anatole, pained Boris.

He drove to the Karagins' with the firm intention of proposing.

Julie met him in a gay, careless manner, spoke casually of how she had

enjoyed yesterday's ball, and asked when he was leaving. Though

Boris had come intentionally to speak of his love and therefore

meant to be tender, he began speaking irritably of feminine

inconstancy, of how easily women can turn from sadness to joy, and how

their moods depend solely on who happens to be paying court to them.

Julie was offended and replied that it was true that a woman needs

variety, and the same thing over and over again would weary anyone.



"Then I should advise you..." Boris began, wishing to sting her; but

at that instant the galling thought occurred to him that he might have

to leave Moscow without having accomplished his aim, and have vainly

wasted his efforts--which was a thing he never allowed to happen.



He checked himself in the middle of the sentence, lowered his eyes

to avoid seeing her unpleasantly irritated and irresolute face, and

said:



"I did not come here at all to quarrel with you. On the contrary..."



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He glanced at her to make sure that he might go on. Her irritability

had suddenly quite vanished, and her anxious, imploring eyes were

fixed on him with greedy expectation. "I can always arrange so as

not to see her often," thought Boris. "The affair has been begun and

must be finished!" He blushed hotly, raised his eyes to hers, and

said:



"You know my feelings for you!"



There was no need to say more: Julie's face shone with triumph and

self-satisfaction; but she forced Boris to say all that is said on

such occasions--that he loved her and had never loved any other

woman more than her. She knew that for the Penza estates and

Nizhegorod forests she could demand this, and she received what she

demanded.



The affianced couple, no longer alluding to trees that shed gloom

and melancholy upon them, planned the arrangements of a splendid house

in Petersburg, paid calls, and prepared everything for a brilliant

wedding.









CHAPTER VI





At the end of January old Count Rostov went to Moscow with Natasha

and Sonya. The countess was still unwell and unable to travel but it

was impossible to wait for her recovery. Prince Andrew was expected in

Moscow any day, the trousseau had to be ordered and the estate near

Moscow had to be sold, besides which the opportunity of presenting his

future daughter-in-law to old Prince Bolkonski while he was in

Moscow could not be missed. The Rostovs' Moscow house had not been

heated that winter and, as they had come only for a short time and the

countess was not with them, the count decided to stay with Marya

Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, who had long been pressing her hospitality

on them.



Late one evening the Rostovs' four sleighs drove into Marya

Dmitrievna's courtyard in the old Konyusheny street. Marya

Dmitrievna lived alone. She had already married off her daughter,

and her sons were all in the service.



She held herself as erect, told everyone her opinion as candidly,

loudly, and bluntly as ever, and her whole bearing seemed a reproach

to others for any weakness, passion, or temptation--the possibility of

which she did not admit. From early in the morning, wearing a dressing

jacket, she attended to her household affairs, and then she drove out:

on holy days to church and after the service to jails and prisons on

affairs of which she never spoke to anyone. On ordinary days, after

dressing, she received petitioners of various classes, of whom there

were always some. Then she had dinner, a substantial and appetizing

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meal at which there were always three or four guests; after dinner she

played a game of boston, and at night she had the newspapers or a

new book read to her while she knitted. She rarely made an exception

and went out to pay visits, and then only to the most important

persons in the town.



She had not yet gone to bed when the Rostovs arrived and the

pulley of the hall door squeaked from the cold as it let in the

Rostovs and their servants. Marya Dmitrievna, with her spectacles

hanging down on her nose and her head flung back, stood in the hall

doorway looking with a stern, grim face at the new arrivals. One might

have thought she was angry with the travelers and would immediately

turn them out, had she not at the same time been giving careful

instructions to the servants for the accommodation of the visitors and

their belongings.



"The count's things? Bring them here," she said, pointing to the

portmanteaus and not greeting anyone. "The young ladies'? There to the

left. Now what are you dawdling for?" she cried to the maids. "Get the

samovar ready!... You've grown plumper and prettier," she remarked,

drawing Natasha (whose cheeks were glowing from the cold) to her by

the hood. "Foo! You are cold! Now take off your things, quick!" she

shouted to the count who was going to kiss her hand. "You're half

frozen, I'm sure! Bring some rum for tea!... Bonjour, Sonya dear!" she

added, turning to Sonya and indicating by this French greeting her

slightly contemptuous though affectionate attitude toward her.



When they came in to tea, having taken off their outdoor things

and tidied themselves up after their journey, Marya Dmitrievna

kissed them all in due order.



"I'm heartily glad you have come and are staying with me. It was

high time," she said, giving Natasha a significant look. "The old

man is here and his son's expected any day. You'll have to make his

acquaintance. But we'll speak of that later on," she added, glancing at

Sonya with a look that showed she did not want to speak of it in her

presence. "Now listen," she said to the count. "What do you want

tomorrow? Whom will you send for? Shinshin?" she crooked one of her

fingers. "The sniveling Anna Mikhaylovna? That's two. She's here

with her son. The son is getting married! Then Bezukhov, eh? He is

here too, with his wife. He ran away from her and she came galloping

after him. He dined with me on Wednesday. As for them"--and she

pointed to the girls--"tomorrow I'll take them first to the Iberian

shrine of the Mother of God, and then we'll drive to the

Super-Rogue's. I suppose you'll have everything new. Don't judge by

me: sleeves nowadays are this size! The other day young Princess Irina

Vasilevna came to see me; she was an awful sight--looked as if she had

put two barrels on her arms. You know not a day passes now without

some new fashion.... And what have you to do yourself?" she asked

the count sternly.



"One thing has come on top of another: her rags to buy, and now a

purchaser has turned up for the Moscow estate and for the house. If

you will be so kind, I'll fix a time and go down to the estate just

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for a day, and leave my lassies with you."



"All right. All right. They'll be safe with me, as safe as in

Chancery! I'll take them where they must go, scold them a bit, and pet

them a bit," said Marya Dmitrievna, touching her goddaughter and

favorite, Natasha, on the cheek with her large hand.



Next morning Marya Dmitrievna took the young ladies to the Iberian

shrine of the Mother of God and to Madame Suppert-Roguet, who was so

afraid of Marya Dmitrievna that she always let her have costumes at

a loss merely to get rid of her. Marya Dmitrievna ordered almost the

whole trousseau. When they got home she turned everybody out of the

room except Nataisha, and then called her pet to her armchair.



"Well, now we'll talk. I congratulate you on your betrothed.

You've hooked a fine fellow! I am glad for your sake and I've known

him since he was so high." She held her hand a couple of feet from the

ground. Natasha blushed happily. "I like him and all his family. Now

listen! You know that old Prince Nicholas much dislikes his son's

marrying. The old fellow's crotchety! Of course Prince Andrew is not a

child and can shift without him, but it's not nice to enter a family

against a father's will. One wants to do it peacefully and lovingly.

You're a clever girl and you'll know how to manage. Be kind, and use

your wits. Then all will be well."



Natasha remained silent, from shyness Marya Dmitrievna supposed, but

really because she disliked anyone interfering in what touched her

love of Prince Andrew, which seemed to her so apart from all human

affairs that no one could understand it. She loved and knew Prince

Andrew, he loved her only, and was to come one of these days and

take her. She wanted nothing more.



"You see I have known him a long time and am also fond of Mary, your

future sister-in-law. 'Husbands' sisters bring up blisters,' but

this one wouldn't hurt a fly. She has asked me to bring you two

together. Tomorrow you'll go with your father to see her. Be very nice

and affectionate to her: you're younger than she. When he comes, he'll

find you already know his sister and father and are liked by them.

Am I right or not? Won't that be best?"



"Yes, it will," Natasha answered reluctantly.









CHAPTER VII





Next day, by Marya Dmitrievna's advice, Count Rostov took Natasha to

call on Prince Nicholas Bolkonski. The count did not set out

cheerfully on this visit, at heart he felt afraid. He well

remembered the last interview he had had with the old prince at the

time of the enrollment, when in reply to an invitation to dinner he

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had had to listen to an angry reprimand for not having provided his

full quota of men. Natasha, on the other hand, having put on her

best gown, was in the highest spirits. "They can't help liking me,"

she thought. "Everybody always has liked me, and I am so willing to do

anything they wish, so ready to be fond of him--for being his

father--and of her--for being his sister--that there is no reason

for them not to like me..."



They drove up to the gloomy old house on the Vozdvizhenka and

entered the vestibule.



"Well, the Lord have mercy on us!" said the count, half in jest,

half in earnest; but Natasha noticed that her father was flurried on

entering the anteroom and inquired timidly and softly whether the

prince and princess were at home.



When they had been announced a perturbation was noticeable among the

servants. The footman who had gone to announce them was stopped by

another in the large hall and they whispered to one another. Then a

maidservant ran into the hall and hurriedly said something, mentioning

the princess. At last an old, cross looking footman came and announced

to the Rostovs that the prince was not receiving, but that the

princess begged them to walk up. The first person who came to meet the

visitors was Mademoiselle Bourienne. She greeted the father and

daughter with special politeness and showed them to the princess'

room. The princess, looking excited and nervous, her face flushed in

patches, ran in to meet the visitors, treading heavily, and vainly

trying to appear cordial and at ease. From the first glance Princess

Mary did not like Natasha. She thought her too fashionably dressed,

frivolously gay and vain. She did not at all realize that before

having seen her future sister-in-law she was prejudiced against her by

involuntary envy of her beauty, youth, and happiness, as well as by

jealousy of her brother's love for her. Apart from this insuperable

antipathy to her, Princess Mary was agitated just then because on

the Rostovs' being announced, the old prince had shouted that he did

not wish to see them, that Princess Mary might do so if she chose, but

they were not to be admitted to him. She had decided to receive

them, but feared lest the prince might at any moment indulge in some

freak, as he seemed much upset by the Rostovs' visit.



"There, my dear princess, I've brought you my songstress," said

the count, bowing and looking round uneasily as if afraid the old

prince might appear. "I am so glad you should get to know one

another... very sorry the prince is still ailing," and after a few

more commonplace remarks he rose. "If you'll allow me to leave my

Natasha in your hands for a quarter of an hour, Princess, I'll drive

round to see Anna Semenovna, it's quite near in the Dogs' Square,

and then I'll come back for her."



The count had devised this diplomatic ruse (as he afterwards told

his daughter) to give the future sisters-in-law an opportunity to talk

to one another freely, but another motive was to avoid the danger of

encountering the old prince, of whom he was afraid. He did not mention

this to his daughter, but Natasha noticed her father's nervousness and

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anxiety and felt mortified by it. She blushed for him, grew still

angrier at having blushed, and looked at the princess with a bold

and defiant expression which said that she was not afraid of

anybody. The princess told the count that she would be delighted,

and only begged him to stay longer at Anna Semenovna's, and he

departed.



Despite the uneasy glances thrown at her by Princess Mary--who

wished to have a tete-a-tete with Natasha--Mademoiselle Bourienne

remained in the room and persistently talked about Moscow amusements

and theaters. Natasha felt offended by the hesitation she had

noticed in the anteroom, by her father's nervousness, and by the

unnatural manner of the princess who--she thought--was making a

favor of receiving her, and so everything displeased her. She did

not like Princess Mary, whom she thought very plain, affected, and

dry. Natasha suddenly shrank into herself and involuntarily assumed an

offhand air which alienated Princess Mary still more. After five

minutes of irksome, constrained conversation, they heard the sound

of slippered feet rapidly approaching. Princess Mary looked

frightened.



The door opened and the old prince, in a dress, ing gown and a white

nightcap, came in.



"Ah, madam!" he began. "Madam, Countess... Countess Rostova, if I am

not mistaken... I beg you to excuse me, to excuse me... I did not

know, madam. God is my witness, I did not know you had honored us with

a visit, and I came in such a costume only to see my daughter. I beg

you to excuse me... God is my witness, I didn't know-" he repeated,

stressing the word "God" so unnaturally and so unpleasantly that

Princess Mary stood with downcast eyes not daring to look either at

her father or at Natasha.



Nor did the latter, having risen and curtsied, know what to do.

Mademoiselle Bourienne alone smiled agreeably.



"I beg you to excuse me, excuse me! God is my witness, I did not

know," muttered the old man, and after looking Natasha over from

head to foot he went out.



Mademoiselle Bourienne was the first to recover herself after this

apparition and began speaking about the prince's indisposition.

Natasha and Princess Mary looked at one another in silence, and the

longer they did so without saying what they wanted to say, the greater

grew their antipathy to one another.



When the count returned, Natasha was impolitely pleased and hastened

to get away: at that moment she hated the stiff, elderly princess, who

could place her in such an embarrassing position and had spent half an

hour with her without once mentioning Prince Andrew. "I couldn't begin

talking about him in the presence of that Frenchwoman," thought

Natasha. The same thought was meanwhile tormenting Princess Mary.

She knew what she ought to have said to Natasha, but she had been

unable to say it because Mademoiselle Bourienne was in the way, and

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because, without knowing why, she felt it very difficult to speak of

the marriage. When the count was already leaving the room, Princess

Mary went up hurriedly to Natasha, took her by the hand, and said with

a deep sigh:



"Wait, I must..."



Natasha glanced at her ironically without knowing why.



"Dear Natalie," said Princess Mary, "I want you to know that I am

glad my brother has found happiness...."



She paused, feeling that she was not telling the truth. Natasha

noticed this and guessed its reason.



"I think, Princess, it is not convenient to speak of that now,"

she said with external dignity and coldness, though she felt the tears

choking her.



"What have I said and what have I done?" thought she, as soon as she

was out of the room.



They waited a long time for Natasha to come to dinner that day.

She sat in her room crying like a child, blowing her nose and sobbing.

Sonya stood beside her, kissing her hair.



"Natasha, what is it about?" she asked. "What do they matter to you?

It will all pass, Natasha."



"But if you only knew how offensive it was... as if I..."



"Don't talk about it, Natasha. It wasn't your fault so why should

you mind? Kiss me," said Sonya.



Natasha raised her head and, kissing her friend on the lips, pressed

her wet face against her.



"I can't tell you, I don't know. No one's to blame," said Natasha-

"It's my fault. But it all hurts terribly. Oh, why doesn't he

come?..."



She came in to dinner with red eyes. Marya Dmitrievna, who knew

how the prince had received the Rostovs, pretended not to notice how

upset Natasha was and jested resolutely and loudly at table with the

count and the other guests.









CHAPTER VIII





That evening the Rostovs went to the Opera, for which Marya

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Dmitrievna had taken a box.



Natasha did not want to go, but could not refuse Marya

Dmitrievna's kind offer which was intended expressly for her. When she

came ready dressed into the ballroom to await her father, and

looking in the large mirror there saw that she was pretty, very

pretty, she felt even more sad, but it was a sweet, tender sadness.



"O God, if he were here now I would not behave as I did then, but

differently. I would not be silly and afraid of things, I would simply

embrace him, cling to him, and make him look at me with those

searching inquiring eyes with which he has so often looked at me,

and then I would make him laugh as he used to laugh. And his eyes--how

I see those eyes!" thought Natasha. "And what do his father and sister

matter to me? I love him alone, him, him, with that face and those

eyes, with his smile, manly and yet childlike.... No, I had better not

think of him; not think of him but forget him, quite forget him for

the present. I can't bear this waiting and I shall cry in a minute!"

and she turned away from the glass, making an effort not to cry.

"And how can Sonya love Nicholas so calmly and quietly and wait so

long and so patiently?" thought she, looking at Sonya, who also came

in quite ready, with a fan in her hand. "No, she's altogether

different. I can't!"



Natasha at that moment felt so softened and tender that it was not

enough for her to love and know she was beloved, she wanted now, at

once, to embrace the man she loved, to speak and hear from him words

of love such as filled her heart. While she sat in the carriage beside

her father, pensively watching the lights of the street lamps

flickering on the frozen window, she felt still sadder and more in

love, and forgot where she was going and with whom. Having fallen into

the line of carriages, the Rostovs' carriage drove up to the

theater, its wheels squeaking over the snow. Natasha and Sonya,

holding up their dresses, jumped out quickly. The count got out helped

by the footmen, and, passing among men and women who were entering and

the program sellers, they all three went along the corridor to the

first row of boxes. Through the closed doors the music was already

audible.



"Natasha, your hair!..." whispered Sonya.



An attendant deferentially and quickly slipped before the ladies and

opened the door of their box. The music sounded louder and through the

door rows of brightly lit boxes in which ladies sat with bare arms and

shoulders, and noisy stalls brilliant with uniforms, glittered

before their eyes. A lady entering the next box shot a glance of

feminine envy at Natasha. The curtain had not yet risen and the

overture was being played. Natasha, smoothing her gown, went in with

Sonya and sat down, scanning the brilliant tiers of boxes opposite.

A sensation she had not experienced for a long time--that of

hundreds of eyes looking at her bare arms and neck--suddenly

affected her both agreeably and disagreeably and called up a whole

crowd of memories, desires and emotions associated with that feeling.



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The two remarkably pretty girls, Natasha and Sonya, with Count

Rostov who had not been seen in Moscow for a long time, attracted

general attention. Moreover, everybody knew vaguely of Natasha's

engagement to Prince Andrew, and knew that the Rostovs had lived in

the country ever since, and all looked with curiosity at a fiancee who

was making one of the best matches in Russia.



Natasha's looks, as everyone told her, had improved in the

country, and that evening thanks to her agitation she was particularly

pretty. She struck those who saw her by her fullness of life and

beauty, combined with her indifference to everything about her. Her

black eyes looked at the crowd without seeking anyone, and her

delicate arm, bare to above the elbow, lay on the velvet edge of the

box, while, evidently unconsciously, she opened and closed her hand in

time to the music, crumpling her program. "Look, there's Alenina,"

said Sonya, "with her mother, isn't it?"



"Dear me, Michael Kirilovich has grown still stouter!" remarked

the count.



"Look at our Anna Mikhaylovna--what a headdress she has on!"



"The Karagins, Julie--and Boris with them. One can see at once

that they're engaged...."



"Drubetskoy has proposed?"



"Oh yes, I heard it today," said Shinshin, coming into the

Rostovs' box.



Natasha looked in the direction in which her father's eyes were

turned and saw Julie sitting beside her mother with a happy look on

her face and a string of pearls round her thick red neck--which

Natasha knew was covered with powder. Behind them, wearing a smile and

leaning over with an ear to Julie's mouth, was Boris' handsome

smoothly brushed head. He looked the Rostovs from under his brows

and said something, smiling, to his betrothed.



"They are talking about us, about me and him!" thought Natasha. "And

he no doubt is calming her jealousy of me. They needn't trouble

themselves! If only they knew how little I am concerned about any of

them."



Behind them sat Anna Mikhaylovna wearing a green headdress and

with a happy look of resignation to the will of God on her face. Their

box was pervaded by that atmosphere of an affianced couple which

Natasha knew so well and liked so much. She turned away and suddenly

remembered all that had been so humiliating in her morning's visit.



"What right has he not to wish to receive me into his family? Oh,

better not think of it--not till he comes back!" she told herself, and

began looking at the faces, some strange and some familiar, in the

stalls. In the front, in the very center, leaning back against the

orchestra rail, stood Dolokhov in a Persian dress, his curly hair

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brushed up into a huge shock. He stood in full view of the audience,

well aware that he was attracting everyone's attention, yet as much at

ease as though he were in his own room. Around him thronged Moscow's

most brilliant young men, whom he evidently dominated.



The count, laughing, nudged the blushing Sonya and pointed to her

former adorer.



"Do you recognize him?" said he. "And where has he sprung from?"

he asked, turning to Shinshin. "Didn't he vanish somewhere?"



"He did," replied Shinshin. "He was in the Caucasus and ran away

from there. They say he has been acting as minister to some ruling

prince in Persia, where he killed the Shah's brother. Now all the

Moscow ladies are mad about him! It's 'Dolokhov the Persian' that does

it! We never hear a word but Dolokhov is mentioned. They swear by him,

they offer him to you as they would a dish of choice sterlet. Dolokhov

and Anatole Kuragin have turned all our ladies' heads."



A tall, beautiful woman with a mass of plaited hair and much exposed

plump white shoulders and neck, round which she wore a double string

of large pearls, entered the adjoining box rustling her heavy silk

dress and took a long time settling into her place.



Natasha involuntarily gazed at that neck, those shoulders, and

pearls and coiffure, and admired the beauty of the shoulders and the

pearls. While Natasha was fixing her gaze on her for the second time

the lady looked round and, meeting the count's eyes, nodded to him and

smiled. She was the Countess Bezukhova, Pierre's wife, and the

count, who knew everyone in society, leaned over and spoke to her.



"Have you been here long, Countess?" he inquired. "I'll call, I'll

call to kiss your hand. I'm here on business and have brought my girls

with me. They say Semenova acts marvelously. Count Pierre never used

to forget us. Is he here?"



"Yes, he meant to look in," answered Helene, and glanced attentively

at Natasha.



Count Rostov resumed his seat.



"Handsome, isn't she?" he whispered to Natasha.



"Wonderful!" answered Natasha. "She's a woman one could easily

fall in love with."



Just then the last chords of the overture were heard and the

conductor tapped with his stick. Some latecomers took their seats in

the stalls, and the curtain rose.



As soon as it rose everyone in the boxes and stalls became silent,

and all the men, old and young, in uniform and evening dress, and

all the women with gems on their bare flesh, turned their whole

attention with eager curiosity to the stage. Natasha too began to look

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at it.









CHAPTER IX





The floor of the stage consisted of smooth boards, at the sides

was some painted cardboard representing trees, and at the back was a

cloth stretched over boards. In the center of the stage sat some girls

in red bodices and white skirts. One very fat girl in a white silk

dress sat apart on a low bench, to the back of which a piece of

green cardboard was glued. They all sang something. When they had

finished their song the girl in white went up to the prompter's box

and a man with tight silk trousers over his stout legs, and holding

a plume and a dagger, went up to her and began singing, waving his

arms about.



First the man in the tight trousers sang alone, then she sang,

then they both paused while the orchestra played and the man

fingered the hand of the girl in white, obviously awaiting the beat to

start singing with her. They sang together and everyone in the theater

began clapping and shouting, while the man and woman on the stage--who

represented lovers--began smiling, spreading out their arms, and

bowing.



After her life in the country, and in her present serious mood,

all this seemed grotesque and amazing to Natasha. She could not follow

the opera nor even listen to the music; she saw only the painted

cardboard and the queerly dressed men and women who moved, spoke,

and sang so strangely in that brilliant light. She knew what it was

all meant to represent, but it was so pretentiously false and

unnatural that she first felt ashamed for the actors and then amused

at them. She looked at the faces of the audience, seeking in them

the same sense of ridicule and perplexity she herself experienced, but

they all seemed attentive to what was happening on the stage, and

expressed delight which to Natasha seemed feigned. "I suppose it has

to be like this!" she thought. She kept looking round in turn at the

rows of pomaded heads in the stalls and then at the seminude women

in the boxes, especially at Helene in the next box, who--apparently

quite unclothed--sat with a quiet tranquil smile, not taking her

eyes off the stage. And feeling the bright light that flooded the

whole place and the warm air heated by the crowd, Natasha little by

little began to pass into a state of intoxication she had not

experienced for a long while. She did not realize who and where she

was, nor what was going on before her. As she looked and thought,

the strangest fancies unexpectedly and disconnectedly passed through

her mind: the idea occurred to her of jumping onto the edge of the box

and singing the air the actress was singing, then she wished to

touch with her fan an old gentleman sitting not far from her, then

to lean over to Helene and tickle her.



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At a moment when all was quiet before the commencement of a song,

a door leading to the stalls on the side nearest the Rostovs' box

creaked, and the steps of a belated arrival were heard. "There's

Kuragin!" whispered Shinshin. Countess Bezukhova turned smiling to the

newcomer, and Natasha, following the direction of that look, saw an

exceptionally handsome adjutant approaching their box with a

self-assured yet courteous bearing. This was Anatole Kuragin whom

she had seen and noticed long ago at the ball in Petersburg. He was

now in an adjutant's uniform with one epaulet and a shoulder knot.

He moved with a restrained swagger which would have been ridiculous

had he not been so good-looking and had his handsome face not worn

such an expression of good-humored complacency and gaiety. Though

the performance was proceeding, he walked deliberately down the

carpeted gangway, his sword and spurs slightly jingling and his

handsome perfumed head held high. Having looked at Natasha he

approached his sister, laid his well gloved hand on the edge of her

box, nodded to her, and leaning forward asked a question, with a

motion toward Natasha.



"Mais charmante!" said he, evidently referring to Natasha, who did

not exactly hear his words but understood them from the movement of

his lips. Then he took his place in the first row of the stalls and

sat down beside Dolokhov, nudging with his elbow in a friendly and

offhand way that Dolokhov whom others treated so fawningly. He

winked at him gaily, smiled, and rested his foot against the orchestra

screen.



"How like the brother is to the sister," remarked the count. "And

how handsome they both are!"



Shinshin, lowering his voice, began to tell the count of some

intrigue of Kuragin's in Moscow, and Natasha tried to overhear it just

because he had said she was "charmante."



The first act was over. In the stalls everyone began moving about,

going out and coming in.



Boris came to the Rostovs' box, received their congratulations

very simply, and raising his eyebrows with an absent-minded smile

conveyed to Natasha and Sonya his fiancee's invitation to her wedding,

and went away. Natasha with a gay, coquettish smile talked to him, and

congratulated on his approaching wedding that same Boris with whom she

had formerly been in love. In the state of intoxication she was in,

everything seemed simple and natural.



The scantily clad Helene smiled at everyone in the same way, and

Natasha gave Boris a similar smile.



Helene's box was filled and surrounded from the stalls by the most

distinguished and intellectual men, who seemed to vie with one another

in their wish to let everyone see that they knew her.



During the whole of that entr'acte Kuragin stood with Dolokhov in

front of the orchestra partition, looking at the Rostovs' box. Natasha

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knew he was talking about her and this afforded her pleasure. She even

turned so that he should see her profile in what she thought was its

most becoming aspect. Before the beginning of the second act Pierre

appeared in the stalls. The Rostovs had not seen him since their

arrival. His face looked sad, and he had grown still stouter since

Natasha last saw him. He passed up to the front rows, not noticing

anyone. Anatole went up to him and began speaking to him, looking at

and indicating the Rostovs' box. On seeing Natasha Pierre grew

animated and, hastily passing between the rows, came toward their box.

When he got there he leaned on his elbows and, smiling, talked to

her for a long time. While conversing with Pierre, Natasha heard a

man's voice in Countess Bezukhova's box and something told her it

was Kuragin. She turned and their eyes met. Almost smiling, he gazed

straight into her eyes with such an enraptured caressing look that

it seemed strange to be so near him, to look at him like that, to be

so sure he admired her, and not to be acquainted with him.



In the second act there was scenery representing tombstones, there

was a round hole in the canvas to represent the moon, shades were

raised over the footlights, and from horns and contrabass came deep

notes while many people appeared from right and left wearing black

cloaks and holding things like daggers in their hands. They began

waving their arms. Then some other people ran in and began dragging

away the maiden who had been in white and was now in light blue.

They did not drag her away at once, but sang with her for a long

time and then at last dragged her off, and behind the scenes something

metallic was struck three times and everyone knelt down and sang a

prayer. All these things were repeatedly interrupted by the

enthusiastic shouts of the audience.



During this act every time Natasha looked toward the stalls she

saw Anatole Kuragin with an arm thrown across the back of his chair,

staring at her. She was pleased to see that he was captivated by her

and it did not occur to her that there was anything wrong in it.



When the second act was over Countess Bezukhova rose, turned to

the Rostovs' box--her whole bosom completely exposed--beckoned the old

count with a gloved finger, and paying no attention to those who had

entered her box began talking to him with an amiable smile.



"Do make me acquainted with your charming daughters," said she. "The

whole town is singing their praises and I don't even know then!"



Natasha rose and curtsied to the splendid countess. She was so

pleased by praise from this brilliant beauty that she blushed with

pleasure.



"I want to become a Moscovite too, now," said Helene. "How is it

you're not ashamed to bury such pearls in the country?"



Countess Bezukhova quite deserved her reputation of being a

fascinating woman. She could say what she did not think--especially

what was flattering--quite simply and naturally.



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"Dear count, you must let me look after your daughters! Though I

am not staying here long this time--nor are you--I will try to amuse

them. I have already heard much of you in Petersburg and wanted to get

to know you," said she to Natasha with her stereotyped and lovely

smile. "I had heard about you from my page, Drubetskoy. Have you heard

he is getting married? And also from my husband's friend Bolkonski,

Prince Andrew Bolkonski," she went on with special emphasis,

implying that she knew of his relation to Natasha. To get better

acquainted she asked that one of the young ladies should come into her

box for the rest of the performance, and Natasha moved over to it.



The scene of the third act represented a palace in which many

candles were burning and pictures of knights with short beards hung on

the walls. In the middle stood what were probably a king and a

queen. The king waved his right arm and, evidently nervous, sang

something badly and sat down on a crimson throne. The maiden who had

been first in white and then in light blue, now wore only a smock, and

stood beside the throne with her hair down. She sang something

mournfully, addressing the queen, but the king waved his arm severely,

and men and women with bare legs came in from both sides and began

dancing all together. Then the violins played very shrilly and merrily

and one of the women with thick bare legs and thin arms, separating

from the others, went behind the wings, adjusted her bodice,

returned to the middle of the stage, and began jumping and striking

one foot rapidly against the other. In the stalls everyone clapped and

shouted "bravo!" Then one of the men went into a corner of the

stage. The cymbals and horns in the orchestra struck up more loudly,

and this man with bare legs jumped very high and waved his feet

about very rapidly. (He was Duport, who received sixty thousand rubles

a year for this art.) Everybody in the stalls, boxes, and galleries

began clapping and shouting with all their might, and the man

stopped and began smiling and bowing to all sides. Then other men

and women danced with bare legs. Then the king again shouted to the

sound of music, and they all began singing. But suddenly a storm

came on, chromatic scales and diminished sevenths were heard in the

orchestra, everyone ran off, again dragging one of their number

away, and the curtain dropped. Once more there was a terrible noise

and clatter among the audience, and with rapturous faces everyone

began shouting: "Duport! Duport! Duport!" Natasha no longer thought

this strange. She look about with pleasure, smiling joyfully.



"Isn't Duport delightful?" Helene asked her.



"Oh, yes," replied Natasha.









CHAPTER X





During the entr'acte a whiff of cold air came into Helene's box, the

door opened, and Anatole entered, stooping and trying not to brush

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against anyone.



"Let me introduce my brother to you," said Helene, her eyes shifting

uneasily from Natasha to Anatole.



Natasha turned her pretty little head toward the elegant young

officer and smiled at him over her bare shoulder. Anatole, who was

as handsome at close quarters as at a distance, sat down beside her

and told her he had long wished to have this happiness--ever since the

Naryshkins' ball in fact, at which he had had the well-remembered

pleasure of seeing her. Kuragin was much more sensible and simple with

women than among men. He talked boldly and naturally, and Natasha

was strangely and agreeably struck by the fact that there was

nothing formidable in this man about whom there was so much talk,

but that on the contrary his smile was most naive, cheerful, and

good-natured.



Kuragin asked her opinion of the performance and told her how at a

previous performance Semenova had fallen down on the stage.



"And do you know, Countess," he said, suddenly addressing her as

an old, familiar acquaintance, "we are getting up a costume

tournament; you ought to take part in it! It will be great fun. We

shall all meet at the Karagins'! Please come! No! Really, eh?" said

he.



While saying this he never removed his smiling eyes from her face,

her neck, and her bare arms. Natasha knew for certain that he was

enraptured by her. This pleased her, yet his presence made her feel

constrained and oppressed. When she was not looking at him she felt

that he was looking at her shoulders, and she involuntarily caught his

eye so that he should look into hers rather than this. But looking

into his eyes she was frightened, realizing that there was not that

barrier of modesty she had always felt between herself and other

men. She did not know how it was that within five minutes she had come

to feel herself terribly near to this man. When she turned away she

feared he might seize her from behind by her bare arm and kiss her

on the neck. They spoke of most ordinary things, yet she felt that

they were closer to one another than she had ever been to any man.

Natasha kept turning to Helene and to her father, as if asking what it

all meant, but Helene was engaged in conversation with a general and

did not answer her look, and her father's eyes said nothing but what

they always said: "Having a good time? Well, I'm glad of it!"



During one of these moments of awkward silence when Anatole's

prominent eyes were gazing calmly and fixedly at her, Natasha, to

break the silence, asked him how he liked Moscow. She asked the

question and blushed. She felt all the time that by talking to him she

was doing something improper. Anatole smiled as though to encourage

her.



"At first I did not like it much, because what makes a town pleasant

ce sont les jolies femmes,* isn't that so? But now I like it very much

indeed," he said, looking at her significantly. "You'll come to the

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costume tournament, Countess? Do come!" and putting out his hand to

her bouquet and dropping his voice, he added, "You will be the

prettiest there. Do come, dear countess, and give me this flower as

a pledge!"





*Are the pretty women.





Natasha did not understand what he was saying any more than he did

himself, but she felt that his incomprehensible words had an

improper intention. She did not know what to say and turned away as if

she had not heard his remark. But as soon as she had turned away she

felt that he was there, behind, so close behind her.



"How is he now? Confused? Angry? Ought I to put it right?" she asked

herself, and she could not refrain from turning round. She looked

straight into his eyes, and his nearness, self-assurance, and the

good-natured tenderness of his smile vanquished her. She smiled just

as he was doing, gazing straight into his eyes. And again she felt

with horror that no barrier lay between him and her.



The curtain rose again. Anatole left the box, serene and gay.

Natasha went back to her father in the other box, now quite submissive

to the world she found herself in. All that was going on before her

now seemed quite natural, but on the other hand all her previous

thoughts of her betrothed, of Princess Mary, or of life in the country

did not once recur to her mind and were as if belonging to a remote

past.



In the fourth act there was some sort of devil who sang waving his

arm about, till the boards were withdrawn from under him and he

disappeared down below. That was the only part of the fourth act

that Natasha saw. She felt agitated and tormented, and the cause of

this was Kuragin whom she could not help watching. As they were

leaving the theater Anatole came up to them, called their carriage,

and helped them in. As he was putting Natasha in he pressed her arm

above the elbow. Agitated and flushed she turned round. He was looking

at her with glittering eyes, smiling tenderly.





Only after she had reached home was Natasha able clearly to think

over what had happened to her, and suddenly remembering Prince

Andrew she was horrified, and at tea to which all had sat down after

the opera, she gave a loud exclamation, flushed, and ran out of the

room.



"O God! I am lost!" she said to herself. "How could I let him?"

She sat for a long time hiding her flushed face in her hands trying to

realize what had happened to her, but was unable either to

understand what had happened or what she felt. Everything seemed dark,

obscure, and terrible. There in that enormous, illuminated theater

where the bare-legged Duport, in a tinsel-decorated jacket, jumped

about to the music on wet boards, and young girls and old men, and the

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nearly naked Helene with her proud, calm smile, rapturously cried

"bravo!"--there in the presence of that Helene it had all seemed clear

and simple; but now, alone by herself, it was incomprehensible.

"What is it? What was that terror I felt of him? What is this

gnawing of conscience I am feeling now?" she thought.



Only to the old countess at night in bed could Natasha have told all

she was feeling. She knew that Sonya with her severe and simple

views would either not understand it at all or would be horrified at

such a confession. So Natasha tried to solve what was torturing her by

herself.



"Am I spoiled for Andrew's love or not?" she asked herself, and with

soothing irony replied: "What a fool I am to ask that! What did happen

to me? Nothing! I have done nothing, I didn't lead him on at all.

Nobody will know and I shall never see him again," she told herself.

"So it is plain that nothing has happened and there is nothing to

repent of, and Andrew can love me still. But why 'still?' O God, why

isn't he here?" Natasha quieted herself for a moment, but again some

instinct told her that though all this was true, and though nothing

had happened, yet the former purity of her love for Prince Andrew

had perished. And again in imagination she went over her whole

conversation with Kuragin, and again saw the face, gestures, and

tender smile of that bold handsome man when he pressed her arm.









CHAPTER XI



Anatole Kuragin was staying in Moscow because his father had sent

him away from Petersburg, where he had been spending twenty thousand

rubles a year in cash, besides running up debts for as much more,

which his creditors demanded from his father.



His father announced to him that he would now pay half his debts for

the last time, but only on condition that he went to Moscow as

adjutant to the commander in chief--a post his father had procured for

him--and would at last try to make a good match there. He indicated to

him Princess Mary and Julie Karagina.



Anatole consented and went to Moscow, where he put up at Pierre's

house. Pierre received him unwillingly at first, but got used to him

after a while, sometimes even accompanied him on his carousals, and

gave him money under the guise of loans.



As Shinshin had remarked, from the time of his arrival Anatole had

turned the heads of the Moscow ladies, especially by the fact that

he slighted them and plainly preferred the gypsy girls and French

actresses--with the chief of whom, Mademoiselle George, he was said to

be on intimate relations. He had never missed a carousal at

Danilov's or other Moscow revelers', drank whole nights through,

outvying everyone else, and was at all the balls and parties of the

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best society. There was talk of his intrigues with some of the ladies,

and he flirted with a few of them at the balls. But he did not run

after the unmarried girls, especially the rich heiresses who were most

of them plain. There was a special reason for this, as he had got

married two years before--a fact known only to his most intimate

friends. At that time while with his regiment in Poland, a Polish

landowner of small means had forced him to marry his daughter. Anatole

had very soon abandoned his wife and, for a payment which he agreed to

send to his father-in-law, had arranged to be free to pass himself off

as a bachelor.



Anatole was always content with his position, with himself, and with

others. He was instinctively and thoroughly convinced that was

impossible for him to live otherwise than as he did and that he had

never in his life done anything base. He was incapable of

considering how his actions might affect others or what the

consequences of this or that action of his might be. He was

convinced that, as a duck is so made that it must live in water, so

God had made him such that he must spend thirty thousand rubles a year

and always occupy a prominent position in society. He believed this so

firmly that others, looking at him, were persuaded of it too and did

not refuse him either a leading place in society or money, which he

borrowed from anyone and everyone and evidently would not repay.



He was not a gambler, at any rate he did not care about winning.

He was not vain. He did not mind what people thought of him. Still

less could he be accused of ambition. More than once he had vexed

his father by spoiling his own career, and he laughed at

distinctions of all kinds. He was not mean, and did not refuse

anyone who asked of him. All he cared about was gaiety and women,

and as according to his ideas there was nothing dishonorable in

these tastes, and he was incapable of considering what the

gratification of his tastes entailed for others, he honestly

considered himself irreproachable, sincerely despised rogues and bad

people, and with a tranquil conscience carried his head high.



Rakes, those male Magdalenes, have a secret feeling of innocence

similar to that which female Magdalenes have, based on the same hope

of forgiveness. "All will be forgiven her, for she loved much; and all

will be forgiven him, for he enjoyed much."



Dolokhov, who had reappeared that year in Moscow after his exile and

his Persian adventures, and was leading a life of luxury, gambling,

and dissipation, associated with his old Petersburg comrade Kuragin

and made use of him for his own ends.



Anatole was sincerely fond of Dolokhov for his cleverness and

audacity. Dolokhov, who needed Anatole Kuragin's name, position, and

connections as a bait to draw rich young men into his gambling set,

made use of him and amused himself at his expense without letting

the other feel it. Apart from the advantage he derived from Anatole,

the very process of dominating another's will was in itself a

pleasure, a habit, and a necessity to Dolokhov.



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Natasha had made a strong impression on Kuragin. At supper after the

opera he described to Dolokhov with the air of a connoisseur the

attractions of her arms, shoulders, feet, and hair and expressed his

intention of making love to her. Anatole had no notion and was

incapable of considering what might come of such love-making, as he

never had any notion of the outcome of any of his actions.



"She's first-rate, my dear fellow, but not for us," replied

Dolokhov.



"I will tell my sister to ask her to dinner," said Anatole. "Eh?"



"You'd better wait till she's married...."



"You know, I adore little girls, they lose their heads at once,"

pursued Anatole.



"You have been caught once already by a 'little girl,'" said

Dolokhov who knew of Kuragin's marriage. "Take care!"



"Well, that can't happen twice! Eh?" said Anatole, with a

good-humored laugh.









CHAPTER XII





The day after the opera the Rostovs went nowhere and nobody came

to see them. Marya Dmitrievna talked to the count about something

which they concealed from Natasha. Natasha guessed they were talking

about the old prince and planning something, and this disquieted and

offended her. She was expecting Prince Andrew any moment and twice

that day sent a manservant to the Vozdvizhenka to ascertain whether he

had come. He had not arrived. She suffered more now than during her

first days in Moscow. To her impatience and pining for him were now

added the unpleasant recollection of her interview with Princess

Mary and the old prince, and a fear and anxiety of which she did not

understand the cause. She continually fancied that either he would

never come or that something would happen to her before he came. She

could no longer think of him by herself calmly and continuously as she

had done before. As soon as she began to think of him, the

recollection of the old prince, of Princess Mary, of the theater,

and of Kuragin mingled with her thoughts. The question again presented

itself whether she was not guilty, whether she had not already

broken faith with Prince Andrew, and again she found herself recalling

to the minutest detail every word, every gesture, and every shade in

the play of expression on the face of the man who had been able to

arouse in her such an incomprehensible and terrifying feeling. To

the family Natasha seemed livelier than usual, but she was far less

tranquil and happy than before.



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On Sunday morning Marya Dmitrievna invited her visitors to Mass at

her parish church--the Church of the Assumption built over the

graves of victims of the plague.



"I don't like those fashionable churches," she said, evidently

priding herself on her independence of thought. "God is the same every

where. We have an excellent priest, he conducts the service decently

and with dignity, and the deacon is the same. What holiness is there

in giving concerts in the choir? I don't like it, it's just

self-indulgence!"



Marya Dmitrievna liked Sundays and knew how to keep them. Her

whole house was scrubbed and cleaned on Saturdays; neither she nor the

servants worked, and they all wore holiday dress and went to church.

At her table there were extra dishes at dinner, and the servants had

vodka and roast goose or suckling pig. But in nothing in the house was

the holiday so noticeable as in Marya Dmitrievna's broad, stern

face, which on that day wore an invariable look of solemn festivity.



After Mass, when they had finished their coffee in the dining room

where the loose covers had been removed from the furniture, a

servant announced that the carriage was ready, and Marya Dmitrievna

rose with a stern air. She wore her holiday shawl, in which she paid

calls, and announced that she was going to see Prince Nicholas

Bolkonski to have an explanation with him about Natasha.



After she had gone, a dressmaker from Madame Suppert-Roguet waited

on the Rostovs, and Natasha, very glad of this diversion, having

shut herself into a room adjoining the drawing room, occupied

herself trying on the new dresses. Just as she had put on a bodice

without sleeves and only tacked together, and was turning her head

to see in the glass how the back fitted, she heard in the drawing room

the animated sounds of her father's voice and another's--a woman's-

that made her flush. It was Helene. Natasha had not time to take off

the bodice before the door opened and Countess Bezukhova, dressed in a

purple velvet gown with a high collar, came into the room beaming with

good-humored amiable smiles.



"Oh, my enchantress!" she cried to the blushing Natasha.

"Charming! No, this is really beyond anything, my dear count," said

she to Count Rostov who had followed her in. "How can you live in

Moscow and go nowhere? No, I won't let you off! Mademoiselle George

will recite at my house tonight and there'll be some people, and if

you don't bring your lovely girls--who are prettier than

Mademoiselle George--I won't know you! My husband is away in Tver or I

would send him to fetch you. You must come. You positively must!

Between eight and nine."



She nodded to the dressmaker, whom she knew and who had curtsied

respectfully to her, and seated herself in an armchair beside the

looking glass, draping the folds of her velvet dress picturesquely.

She did not cease chattering good-naturedly and gaily, continually

praising Natasha's beauty. She looked at Natasha's dresses and praised

them, as well as a new dress of her own made of "metallic gauze,"

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which she had received from Paris, and advised Natasha to have one

like it.



"But anything suits you, my charmer!" she remarked.



A smile of pleasure never left Natasha's face. She felt happy and as

if she were blossoming under the praise of this dear Countess

Bezukhova who had formerly seemed to her so unapproachable and

important and was now so kind to her. Natasha brightened up and felt

almost in love with this woman, who was so beautiful and so kind.

Helene for her part was sincerely delighted with Natasha and wished to

give her a good time. Anatole had asked her to bring him and Natasha

together, and she was calling on the Rostovs for that purpose. The

idea of throwing her brother and Natasha together amused her.



Though at one time, in Petersburg, she had been annoyed with Natasha

for drawing Boris away, she did not think of that now, and in her

own way heartily wished Natasha well. As she was leaving the Rostovs

she called her protegee aside.



"My brother dined with me yesterday--we nearly died of laughter-

he ate nothing and kept sighing for you, my charmer! He is madly,

quite madly, in love with you, my dear."



Natasha blushed scarlet when she heard this.



"How she blushes, how she blushes, my pretty!" said Helene. "You

must certainly come. If you love somebody, my charmer, that is not a

reason to shut yourself up. Even if you are engaged, I am sure your

fiance would wish you to go into society rather than be bored to

death."



"So she knows I am engaged, and she and her husband Pierre--that

good Pierre--have talked and laughed about this. So it's all right."

And again, under Helene's influence, what had seemed terrible now

seemed simple and natural. "And she is such a grande dame, so kind,

and evidently likes me so much. And why not enjoy myself?" thought

Natasha, gazing at Helene with wide-open, wondering eyes.



Marya Dmitrievna came back to dinner taciturn and serious, having

evidently suffered a defeat at the old prince's. She was still too

agitated by the encounter to be able to talk of the affair calmly.

In answer to the count's inquiries she replied that things were all

right and that she would tell about it next day. On hearing of

Countess Bezukhova's visit and the invitation for that evening,

Marya Dmitrievna remarked:



"I don't care to have anything to do with Bezukhova and don't advise

you to; however, if you've promised--go. It will divert your

thoughts," she added, addressing Natasha.









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CHAPTER XIII





Count Rostov took the girls to Countess Bezukhova's. There were a

good many people there, but nearly all strangers to Natasha. Count

Rostov was displeased to see that the company consisted almost

entirely of men and women known for the freedom of their conduct.

Mademoiselle George was standing in a corner of the drawing room

surrounded by young men. There were several Frenchmen present, among

them Metivier who from the time Helene reached Moscow had been an

intimate in her house. The count decided not to sit down to cards or

let his girls out of his sight and to get away as soon as Mademoiselle

George's performance was over.



Anatole was at the door, evidently on the lookout for the Rostovs.

Immediately after greeting the count he went up to Natasha and

followed her. As soon as she saw him she was seized by the same

feeling she had had at the opera--gratified vanity at his admiration

of her and fear at the absence of a moral barrier between them.



Helene welcomed Natasha delightedly and was loud in admiration of

her beauty and her dress. Soon after their arrival Mademoiselle George

went out of the room to change her costume. In the drawing room people

began arranging the chairs and taking their seats. Anatole moved a

chair for Natasha and was about to sit down beside her, but the count,

who never lost sight of her, took the seat himself. Anatole sat down

behind her.



Mademoiselle George, with her bare, fat, dimpled arms, and a red

shawl draped over one shoulder, came into the space left vacant for

her, and assumed an unnatural pose. Enthusiastic whispering was

audible.



Mademoiselle George looked sternly and gloomily at the audience

and began reciting some French verses describing her guilty love for

her son. In some places she raised her voice, in others she whispered,

lifting her head triumphantly; sometimes she paused and uttered hoarse

sounds, rolling her eyes.



"Adorable! divine! delicious!" was heard from every side.



Natasha looked at the fat actress, but neither saw nor heard nor

understood anything of what went on before her. She only felt

herself again completely borne away into this strange senseless world-

so remote from her old world--a world in which it was impossible to

know what was good or bad, reasonable or senseless. Behind her sat

Anatole, and conscious of his proximity she experienced a frightened

sense of expectancy.



After the first monologue the whole company rose and surrounded

Mademoiselle George, expressing their enthusiasm.



"How beautiful she is!" Natasha remarked to her father who had

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also risen and was moving through the crowd toward the actress.



"I don't think so when I look at you!" said Anatole, following

Natasha. He said this at a moment when she alone could hear him.

"You are enchanting... from the moment I saw you I have never

ceased..."



"Come, come, Natasha!" said the count, as he turned back for his

daughter. "How beautiful she is!" Natasha without saying anything

stepped up to her father and looked at him with surprised inquiring

eyes.



After giving several recitations, Mademoiselle George left, and

Countess Bezukhova asked her visitors into the ballroom.



The count wished to go home, but Helene entreated him not to spoil

her improvised ball, and the Rostovs stayed on. Anatole asked

Natasha for a valse and as they danced he pressed her waist and hand

and told her she was bewitching and that he loved her. During the

ecossaise, which she also danced with him, Anatole said nothing when

they happened to be by themselves, but merely gazed at her. Natasha

lifted her frightened eyes to him, but there was such confident

tenderness in his affectionate look and smile that she could not,

whilst looking at him, say what she had to say. She lowered her eyes.



"Don't say such things to me. I am betrothed and love another,"

she said rapidly.... She glanced at him.



Anatole was not upset or pained by what she had said.



"Don't speak to me of that! What can I do?" said he. "I tell you I

am madly, madly, in love with you! Is it my fault that you are

enchanting?... It's our turn to begin."



Natasha, animated and excited, looked about her with wide-open

frightened eyes and seemed merrier than usual. She understood hardly

anything that went on that evening. They danced the ecossaise and

the Grossvater. Her father asked her to come home, but she begged to

remain. Wherever she went and whomever she was speaking to, she felt

his eyes upon her. Later on she recalled how she had asked her

father to let her go to the dressing room to rearrange her dress, that

Helene had followed her and spoken laughingly of her brother's love,

and that she again met Anatole in the little sitting room. Helene

had disappeared leaving them alone, and Anatole had taken her hand and

said in a tender voice:



"I cannot come to visit you but is it possible that I shall never

see you? I love you madly. Can I never...?" and, blocking her path, he

brought his face close to hers.



His large, glittering, masculine eyes were so close to hers that she

saw nothing but them.



"Natalie?" he whispered inquiringly while she felt her hands being

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painfully pressed. "Natalie?"



"I don't understand. I have nothing to say," her eyes replied.



Burning lips were pressed to hers, and at the same instant she

felt herself released, and Helene's footsteps and the rustle of her

dress were heard in the room. Natasha looked round at her, and then,

red and trembling, threw a frightened look of inquiry at Anatole and

moved toward the door.



"One word, just one, for God's sake!" cried Anatole.



She paused. She so wanted a word from him that would explain to

her what had happened and to which she could find no answer.



"Natalie, just a word, only one!" he kept repeating, evidently not

knowing what to say and he repeated it till Helene came up to them.



Helene returned with Natasha to the drawing room. The Rostovs went

away without staying for supper.



After reaching home Natasha did not sleep all night. She was

tormented by the insoluble question whether she loved Anatole or

Prince Andrew. She loved Prince Andrew--she remembered distinctly

how deeply she loved him. But she also loved Anatole, of that there

was no doubt. "Else how could all this have happened?" thought she.

"If, after that, I could return his smile when saying good-by, if I

was able to let it come to that, it means that I loved him from the

first. It means that he is kind, noble, and splendid, and I could

not help loving him. What am I to do if I love him and the other one

too?" she asked herself, unable to find an answer to these terrible

questions.









CHAPTER XIV





Morning came with its cares and bustle. Everyone got up and began to

move about and talk, dressmakers came again. Marya Dmitrievna

appeared, and they were called to breakfast. Natasha kept looking

uneasily at everybody with wide-open eyes, as if wishing to

intercept every glance directed toward her, and tried to appear the

same as usual.



After breakfast, which was her best time, Marya Dmitrievna sat

down in her armchair and called Natasha and the count to her.



"Well, friends, I have now thought the whole matter over and this is

my advice," she began. "Yesterday, as you know, I went to see Prince

Bolkonski. Well, I had a talk with him.... He took it into his head to

begin shouting, but I am not one to be shouted down. I said what I had

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to say!"



"Well, and he?" asked the count.



"He? He's crazy... he did not want to listen. But what's the use

of talking? As it is we have worn the poor girl out," said Marya

Dmitrievna. "My advice to you is finish your business and go back home

to Otradnoe... and wait there."



"Oh, no!" exclaimed Natasha.



"Yes, go back," said Marya Dmitrievna, "and wait there. If your

betrothed comes here now--there will be no avoiding a quarrel; but

alone with the old man he will talk things over and then come on to

you."



Count Rostov approved of this suggestion, appreciating its

reasonableness. If the old man came round it would be all the better

to visit him in Moscow or at Bald Hills later on; and if not, the

wedding, against his wishes, could only be arranged at Otradnoe.



"That is perfectly true. And I am sorry I went to see him and took

her," said the old count.



"No, why be sorry? Being here, you had to pay your respects. But

if he won't--that's his affair," said Marya Dmitrievna, looking for

something in her reticule. "Besides, the trousseau is ready, so

there is nothing to wait for; and what is not ready I'll send after

you. Though I don't like letting you go, it is the best way. So go,

with God's blessing!"



Having found what she was looking for in the reticule she handed

it to Natasha. It was a letter from Princess Mary.



"She has written to you. How she torments herself, poor thing! She's

afraid you might think that she does not like you."



"But she doesn't like me," said Natasha.



"Don't talk nonsense!" cried Marya Dmitrievna.



"I shan't believe anyone, I know she doesn't like me," replied

Natasha boldly as she took the letter, and her face expressed a cold

and angry resolution that caused Marya Dmitrievna to look at her

more intently and to frown.



"Don't answer like that, my good girl!" she said. "What I say is

true! Write an answer!" Natasha did not reply and went to her own room

to read Princess Mary's letter.



Princess Mary wrote that she was in despair at the

misunderstanding that had occurred between them. Whatever her father's

feelings might be, she begged Natasha to believe that she could not

help loving her as the one chosen by her brother, for whose

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happiness she was ready to sacrifice everything.



"Do not think, however," she wrote, "that my father is

ill-disposed toward you. He is an invalid and an old man who must be

forgiven; but he is good and magnanimous and will love her who makes

his son happy." Princess Mary went on to ask Natasha to fix a time

when she could see her again.



After reading the letter Natasha sat down at the writing table to

answer it. "Dear Princess," she wrote in French quickly and

mechanically, and then paused. What more could she write after all

that had happened the evening before? "Yes, yes! All that has

happened, and now all is changed," she thought as she sat with the

letter she had begun before her. "Must I break off with him? Must I

really? That's awful..." and to escape from these dreadful thoughts

she went to Sonya and began sorting patterns with her.



After dinner Natasha went to her room and again took up Princess

Mary's letter. "Can it be that it is all over?" she thought. "Can it

be that all this has happened so quickly and has destroyed all that

went before?" She recalled her love for Prince Andrew in all its

former strength, and at the same time felt that she loved Kuragin. She

vividly pictured herself as Prince Andrew's wife, and the scenes of

happiness with him she had so often repeated in her imagination, and

at the same time, aglow with excitement, recalled every detail of

yesterday's interview with Anatole.



"Why could that not be as well?" she sometimes asked herself in

complete bewilderment. "Only so could I be completely happy; but now I

have to choose, and I can't be happy without either of them. Only,"

she thought, "to tell Prince Andrew what has happened or to hide it

from him are both equally impossible. But with that one nothing is

spoiled. But am I really to abandon forever the joy of Prince Andrew's

love, in which I have lived so long?"



"Please, Miss!" whispered a maid entering the room with a mysterious

air. "A man told me to give you this-" and she handed Natasha a

letter.



"Only, for Christ's sake..." the girl went on, as Natasha, without

thinking, mechanically broke the seal and read a love letter from

Anatole, of which, without taking in a word, she understood only

that it was a letter from him--from the man she loved. Yes, she

loved him, or else how could that have happened which had happened?

And how could she have a love letter from him in her hand?



With trembling hands Natasha held that passionate love letter

which Dolokhov had composed for Anatole, and as she read it she

found in it an echo of all that she herself imagined she was feeling.



"Since yesterday evening my fate has been sealed; to be loved by you

or to die. There is no other way for me," the letter began. Then he

went on to say that he knew her parents would not give her to him--for

this there were secret reasons he could reveal only to her--but that

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if she loved him she need only say the word yes, and no human power

could hinder their bliss. Love would conquer all. He would steal her

away and carry her off to the ends of the earth.



"Yes, yes! I love him!" thought Natasha, reading the letter for

the twentieth time and finding some peculiarly deep meaning in each

word of it.



That evening Marya Dmitrievna was going to the Akharovs' and

proposed to take the girls with her. Natasha, pleading a headache,

remained at home.









CHAPTER XV





On returning late in the evening Sonya went to Natasha's room, and

to her surprise found her still dressed and asleep on the sofa. Open

on the table, beside her lay Anatole's letter. Sonya picked it up

and read it.



As she read she glanced at the sleeping Natasha, trying to find in

her face an explanation of what she was reading, but did not find

it. Her face was calm, gentle, and happy. Clutching her breast to keep

herself from choking, Sonya, pale and trembling with fear and

agitation, sat down in an armchair and burst into tears.



"How was it I noticed nothing? How could it go so far? Can she

have left off loving Prince Andrew? And how could she let Kuragin go

to such lengths? He is a deceiver and a villain, that's plain! What

will Nicholas, dear noble Nicholas, do when he hears of it? So this is

the meaning of her excited, resolute, unnatural look the day before

yesterday, yesterday, and today," thought Sonya. "But it can't be that

she loves him! She probably opened the letter without knowing who it

was from. Probably she is offended by it. She could not do such a

thing!"



Sonya wiped away her tears and went up to Natasha, again scanning

her face.



"Natasha!" she said, just audibly.



Natasha awoke and saw Sonya.



"Ah, you're back?"



And with the decision and tenderness that often come at the moment

of awakening, she embraced her friend, but noticing Sonya's look of

embarrassment, her own face expressed confusion and suspicion.



"Sonya, you've read that letter?" she demanded.

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"Yes," answered Sonya softly.



Natasha smiled rapturously.



"No, Sonya, I can't any longer!" she said. "I can't hide it from you

any longer. You know, we love one another! Sonya, darling, he

writes... Sonya..."



Sonya stared open-eyed at Natasha, unable to believe her ears.



"And Bolkonski?" she asked.



"Ah, Sonya, if you only knew how happy I am!" cried Natasha. "You

don't know what love is...."



"But, Natasha, can that be all over?"



Natasha looked at Sonya with wide-open eyes as if she could not

grasp the question.



"Well, then, are you refusing Prince Andrew?" said Sonya.



"Oh, you don't understand anything! Don't talk nonsense, just

listen!" said Natasha, with momentary vexation.



"But I can't believe it," insisted Sonya. "I don't understand. How

is it you have loved a man for a whole year and suddenly... Why, you

have only seen him three times! Natasha, I don't believe you, you're

joking! In three days to forget everything and so..."



"Three days?" said Natasha. "It seems to me I've loved him a hundred

years. It seems to me that I have never loved anyone before. You can't

understand it.... Sonya, wait a bit, sit here," and Natasha embraced

and kissed her.



"I had heard that it happens like this, and you must have heard it

too, but it's only now that I feel such love. It's not the same as

before. As soon as I saw him I felt he was my master and I his

slave, and that I could not help loving him. Yes, his slave!

Whatever he orders I shall do. You don't understand that. What can I

do? What can I do, Sonya?" cried Natasha with a happy yet frightened

expression.



"But think what you are doing," cried Sonya. "I can't leave it

like this. This secret correspondence... How could you let him go so

far?" she went on, with a horror and disgust she could hardly conceal.



"I told you that I have no will," Natasha replied. "Why can't you

understand? I love him!"



"Then I won't let it come to that... I shall tell!" cried Sonya,

bursting into tears.



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"What do you mean? For God's sake... If you tell, you are my enemy!"

declared Natasha. "You want me to be miserable, you want us to be

separated...."



When she saw Natasha's fright, Sonya shed tears of shame and pity

for her friend.



"But what has happened between you?" she asked. "What has he said to

you? Why doesn't he come to the house?"



Natasha did not answer her questions.



"For God's sake, Sonya, don't tell anyone, don't torture me,"

Natasha entreated. "Remember no one ought to interfere in such

matters! I have confided in you...."



"But why this secrecy? Why doesn't he come to the house?" asked

Sonya. "Why doesn't he openly ask for your hand? You know Prince

Andrew gave you complete freedom--if it is really so; but I don't

believe it! Natasha, have you considered what these secret reasons can

be?"



Natasha looked at Sonya with astonishment. Evidently this question

presented itself to her mind for the first time and she did not know

how to answer it.



"I don't know what the reasons are. But there must be reasons!"



Sonya sighed and shook her head incredulously.



"If there were reasons..." she began.



But Natasha, guessing her doubts, interrupted her in alarm.



"Sonya, one can't doubt him! One can't, one can't! Don't you

understand?" she cried.



"Does he love you?"



"Does he love me?" Natasha repeated with a smile of pity at her

friend's lack of comprehension. "Why, you have read his letter and you

have seen him."



"But if he is dishonorable?"



"He! dishonorable? If you only knew!" exclaimed Natasha.



"If he is an honorable man he should either declare his intentions

or cease seeing you; and if you won't do this, I will. I will write to

him, and I will tell Papa!" said Sonya resolutely.



"But I can't live without him!" cried Natasha.



"Natasha, I don't understand you. And what are you saying! Think

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of your father and of Nicholas."



"I don't want anyone, I don't love anyone but him. How dare you

say he is dishonorable? Don't you know that I love him?" screamed

Natasha. "Go away, Sonya! I don't want to quarrel with you, but go,

for God's sake go! You see how I am suffering!" Natasha cried angrily,

in a voice of despair and repressed irritation. Sonya burst into

sobs and ran from the room.



Natasha went to the table and without a moment's reflection wrote

that answer to Princess Mary which she had been unable to write all

the morning. In this letter she said briefly that all their

misunderstandings were at an end; that availing herself of the

magnanimity of Prince Andrew who when he went abroad had given her her

freedom, she begged Princess Mary to forget everything and forgive her

if she had been to blame toward her, but that she could not be his wife.

At that moment this all seemed quite easy, simple, and clear to Natasha.





On Friday the Rostovs were to return to the country, but on

Wednesday the count went with the prospective purchaser to his

estate near Moscow.



On the day the count left, Sonya and Natasha were invited to a big

dinner party at the Karagins', and Marya Dmitrievna took them there.

At that party Natasha again met Anatole, and Sonya noticed that she

spoke to him, trying not to be overheard, and that all through

dinner she was more agitated than ever. When they got home Natasha was

the first to begin the explanation Sonya expected.



"There, Sonya, you were talking all sorts of nonsense about him,"

Natasha began in a mild voice such as children use when they wish to

be praised. "We have had an explanation today."



"Well, what happened? What did he say? Natasha, how glad I am you're

not angry with me! Tell me everything--the whole truth. What did he

say?"



Natasha became thoughtful.



"Oh, Sonya, if you knew him as I do! He said... He asked me what I

had promised Bolkonski. He was glad I was free to refuse him."



Sonya sighed sorrowfully.



"But you haven't refused Bolkonski?" said she.



"Perhaps I have. Perhaps all is over between me and Bolkonski. Why

do you think so badly of me?"



"I don't think anything, only I don't understand this..."



"Wait a bit, Sonya, you'll understand everything. You'll see what

a man he is! Now don't think badly of me or of him. I don't think

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badly of anyone: I love and pity everybody. But what am I to do?"



Sonya did not succumb to the tender tone Natasha used toward her.

The more emotional and ingratiating the expression of Natasha's face

became, the more serious and stern grew Sonya's.



"Natasha," said she, "you asked me not to speak to you, and I

haven't spoken, but now you yourself have begun. I don't trust him,

Natasha. Why this secrecy?"



"Again, again!" interrupted Natasha.



"Natasha, I am afraid for you!"



"Afraid of what?"



"I am afraid you're going to your ruin," said Sonya resolutely,

and was herself horrified at what she had said.



Anger again showed in Natasha's face.



"And I'll go to my ruin, I will, as soon as possible! It's not

your business! It won't be you, but I, who'll suffer. Leave me

alone, leave me alone! I hate you!"



"Natasha!" moaned Sonya, aghast.



"I hate you, I hate you! You're my enemy forever!" And Natasha ran

out of the room.



Natasha did not speak to Sonya again and avoided her. With the

same expression of agitated surprise and guilt she went about the

house, taking up now one occupation, now another, and at once

abandoning them.



Hard as it was for Sonya, she watched her friend and did not let her

out of her sight.



The day before the count was to return, Sonya noticed that Natasha

sat by the drawingroom window all the morning as if expecting

something and that she made a sign to an officer who drove past,

whom Sonya took to be Anatole.



Sonya began watching her friend still more attentively and noticed

that at dinner and all that evening Natasha was in a strange and

unnatural state. She answered questions at random, began sentences she

did not finish, and laughed at everything.



After tea Sonya noticed a housemaid at Natasha's door timidly

waiting to let her pass. She let the girl go in, and then listening at

the door learned that another letter had been delivered.



Then suddenly it became clear to Sonya that Natasha had some

dreadful plan for that evening. Sonya knocked at her door. Natasha did

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not let her in.



"She will run away with him!" thought Sonya. "She is capable of

anything. There was something particularly pathetic and resolute in

her face today. She cried as she said good-by to Uncle," Sonya

remembered. "Yes, that's it, she means to elope with him, but what

am I to do?" thought she, recalling all the signs that clearly

indicated that Natasha had some terrible intention. "The count is

away. What am I to do? Write to Kuragin demanding an explanation?

But what is there to oblige him to reply? Write to Pierre, as Prince

Andrew asked me to in case of some misfortune?... But perhaps she

really has already refused Bolkonski--she sent a letter to Princess

Mary yesterday. And Uncle is away...." To tell Marya Dmitrievna who

had such faith in Natasha seemed to Sonya terrible. "Well, anyway,"

thought Sonya as she stood in the dark passage, "now or never I must

prove that I remember the family's goodness to me and that I love

Nicholas. Yes! If I don't sleep for three nights I'll not leave this

passage and will hold her back by force and will and not let the

family be disgraced," thought she.









CHAPTER XVI





Anatole had lately moved to Dolokhov's. The plan for Natalie

Rostova's abduction had been arranged and the preparations made by

Dolokhov a few days before, and on the day that Sonya, after listening

at Natasha's door, resolved to safeguard her, it was to have been

put into execution. Natasha had promised to come out to Kuragin at the

back porch at ten that evening. Kuragin was to put her into a troyka

he would have ready and to drive her forty miles to the village of

Kamenka, where an unfrocked priest was in readiness to perform a

marriage ceremony over them. At Kamenka a relay of horses was to

wait which would take them to the Warsaw highroad, and from there they

would hasten abroad with post horses.



Anatole had a passport, an order for post horses, ten thousand

rubles he had taken from his sister and another ten thousand

borrowed with Dolokhov's help.



Two witnesses for the mock marriage--Khvostikov, a retired petty

official whom Dolokhov made use of in his gambling transactions, and

Makarin, a retired hussar, a kindly, weak fellow who had an

unbounded affection for Kuragin--were sitting at tea in Dolokhov's

front room.



In his large study, the walls of which were hung to the ceiling with

Persian rugs, bearskins, and weapons, sat Dolokhov in a traveling

cloak and high boots, at an open desk on which lay abacus and some

bundles of paper money. Anatole, with uniform unbuttoned, walked to

and fro from the room where the witnesses were sitting, through the

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study to the room behind, where his French valet and others were

packing the last of his things. Dolokhov was counting the money and

noting something down.



"Well," he said, "Khvostikov must have two thousand."



"Give it to him, then," said Anatole.



"Makarka" (their name for Makarin) "will go through fire and water

for you for nothing. So here are our accounts all settled," said

Dolokhov, showing him the memorandum. "Is that right?"



"Yes, of course," returned Anatole, evidently not listening to

Dolokhov and looking straight before him with a smile that did not

leave his face.



Dolokhov banged down the or of his and turned to Anatole with an

ironic smile:



"Do you know? You'd really better drop it all. There's still time!"



"Fool," retorted Anatole. "Don't talk nonsense! If you only

knew... it's the devil knows what!"



"No, really, give it up!" said Dolokhov. "I am speaking seriously.

It's no joke, this plot you've hatched."



"What, teasing again? Go to the devil! Eh?" said Anatole, making a

grimace. "Really it's no time for your stupid jokes," and he left

the room.



Dolokhov smiled contemptuously and condescendingly when Anatole

had gone out.



"You wait a bit," he called after him. "I'm not joking, I'm

talking sense. Come here, come here!"



Anatole returned and looked at Dolokhov, trying to give him his

attention and evidently submitting to him involuntarily.



"Now listen to me. I'm telling you this for the last time. Why

should I joke about it? Did I hinder you? Who arranged everything

for you? Who found the priest and got the passport? Who raised the

money? I did it all."



"Well, thank you for it. Do you think I am not grateful?" And

Anatole sighed and embraced Dolokhov.



"I helped you, but all the same I must tell you the truth; it is a

dangerous business, and if you think about it--a stupid business.

Well, you'll carry her off--all right! Will they let it stop at

that? It will come out that you're already married. Why, they'll

have you in the criminal court...."



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"Oh, nonsense, nonsense!" Anatole ejaculated and again made a

grimace. "Didn't I explain to you? What?" And Anatole, with the

partiality dull-witted people have for any conclusion they have

reached by their own reasoning, repeated the argument he had already

put to Dolokhov a hundred times. "Didn't I explain to you that I

have come to this conclusion: if this marriage is invalid," he went

on, crooking one finger, "then I have nothing to answer for; but if it

is valid, no matter! Abroad no one will know anything about it.

Isn't that so? And don't talk to me, don't, don't."



"Seriously, you'd better drop it! You'll only get yourself into a

mess!"



"Go to the devil!" cried Anatole and, clutching his hair, left the

room, but returned at once and dropped into an armchair in front of

Dolokhov with his feet turned under him. "It's the very devil! What?

Feel how it beats!" He took Dolokhov's hand and put it on his heart.

"What a foot, my dear fellow! What a glance! A goddess!" he added in

French. "What?"



Dolokhov with a cold smile and a gleam in his handsome insolent eyes

looked at him--evidently wishing to get some more amusement out of

him.



"Well and when the money's gone, what then?"



"What then? Eh?" repeated Anatole, sincerely perplexed by a

thought of the future. "What then?... Then, I don't know.... But why

talk nonsense!" He glanced at his watch. "It's time!"



Anatole went into the back room.



"Now then! Nearly ready? You're dawdling!" he shouted to the

servants.



Dolokhov put away the money, called a footman whom he ordered to

bring something for them to eat and drink before the journey, and went

into the room where Khvostikov and Makarin were sitting.



Anatole lay on the sofa in the study leaning on his elbow and

smiling pensively, while his handsome lips muttered tenderly to

himself.



"Come and eat something. Have a drink!" Dolokhov shouted to him from

the other room.



"I don't want to," answered Anatole continuing to smile.



"Come! Balaga is here."



Anatole rose and went into the dining room. Balaga was a famous

troyka driver who had known Dolokhov and Anatole some six years and

had given them good service with his troykas. More than once when

Anatole's regiment was stationed at Tver he had taken him from Tver in

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the evening, brought him to Moscow by daybreak, and driven him back

again the next night. More than once he had enabled Dolokhov to escape

when pursued. More than once he had driven them through the town

with gypsies and "ladykins" as he called the cocottes. More than

once in their service he had run over pedestrians and upset vehicles

in the streets of Moscow and had always been protected from the

consequences by "my gentlemen" as he called them. He had ruined more

than one horse in their service. More than once they had beaten him,

and more than once they had made him drunk on champagne and Madeira,

which he loved; and he knew more than one thing about each of them

which would long ago have sent an ordinary man to Siberia. They

often called Balaga into their orgies and made him drink and dance

at the gypsies', and more than one thousand rubles of their money

had passed through his hands. In their service he risked his skin

and his life twenty times a year, and in their service had lost more

horses than the money he had from them would buy. But he liked them;

liked that mad driving at twelve miles an hour, liked upsetting a

driver or running down a pedestrian, and flying at full gallop through

the Moscow streets. He liked to hear those wild, tipsy shouts behind

him: "Get on! Get on!" when it was impossible to go any faster. He

liked giving a painful lash on the neck to some peasant who, more dead

than alive, was already hurrying out of his way. "Real gentlemen!"

he considered them.



Anatole and Dolokhov liked Balaga too for his masterly driving and

because he liked the things they liked. With others Balaga

bargained, charging twenty-five rubles for a two hours' drive, and

rarely drove himself, generally letting his young men do so. But

with "his gentlemen" he always drove himself and never demanded

anything for his work. Only a couple of times a year--when he knew

from their valets that they had money in hand--he would turn up of a

morning quite sober and with a deep bow would ask them to help him.

The gentlemen always made him sit down.



"Do help me out, Theodore Ivanych, sir," or "your excellency," he

would say. "I am quite out of horses. Let me have what you can to go

to the fair."



And Anatole and Dolokhov, when they had money, would give him a

thousand or a couple of thousand rubles.



Balaga was a fair-haired, short, and snub-nosed peasant of about

twenty-seven; red-faced, with a particularly red thick neck,

glittering little eyes, and a small beard. He wore a fine,

dark-blue, silk-lined cloth coat over a sheepskin.



On entering the room now he crossed himself, turning toward the

front corner of the room, and went up to Dolokhov, holding out a

small, black hand.



"Theodore Ivanych!" he said, bowing.



"How d'you do, friend? Well, here he is!"



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"Good day, your excellency!" he said, again holding out his hand

to Anatole who had just come in.



"I say, Balaga," said Anatole, putting his hands on the man's

shoulders, "do you care for me or not? Eh? Now, do me a service....

What horses have you come with? Eh?"



"As your messenger ordered, your special beasts," replied Balaga.



"Well, listen, Balaga! Drive all three to death but get me there

in three hours. Eh?"



"When they are dead, what shall I drive?" said Balaga with a wink.



"Mind, I'll smash your face in! Don't make jokes!" cried Anatole,

suddenly rolling his eyes.



"Why joke?" said the driver, laughing. "As if I'd grudge my

gentlemen anything! As fast as ever the horses can gallop, so fast

we'll go!"



"Ah!" said Anatole. "Well, sit down."



"Yes, sit down!" said Dolokhov.



"I'll stand, Theodore Ivanych."



"Sit down; nonsense! Have a drink!" said Anatole, and filled a large

glass of Madeira for him.



The driver's eyes sparkled at the sight of the wine. After

refusing it for manners' sake, he drank it and wiped his mouth with

a red silk handkerchief he took out of his cap.



"And when are we to start, your excellency?"



"Well..." Anatole looked at his watch. "We'll start at once. Mind,

Balaga! You'll get there in time? Eh?"



"That depends on our luck in starting, else why shouldn't we be

there in time?" replied Balaga. "Didn't we get you to Tver in seven

hours? I think you remember that, your excellency?"



"Do you know, one Christmas I drove from Tver," said Anatole,

smilingly at the recollection and turning to Makarin who gazed

rapturously at him with wide-open eyes. "Will you believe it, Makarka,

it took one's breath away, the rate we flew. We came across a train of

loaded sleighs and drove right over two of them. Eh?"



"Those were horses!" Balaga continued the tale. "That time I'd

harnessed two young side horses with the bay in the shafts," he went

on, turning to Dolokhov. "Will you believe it, Theodore Ivanych, those

animals flew forty miles? I couldn't hold them in, my hands grew

numb in the sharp frost so that I threw down the reins--'Catch hold

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yourself, your excellency!' says I, and I just tumbled on the bottom

of the sleigh and sprawled there. It wasn't a case of urging them

on, there was no holding them in till we reached the place. The devils

took us there in three hours! Only the near one died of it."









CHAPTER XVII





Anatole went out of the room and returned a few minutes later

wearing a fur coat girt with a silver belt, and a sable cap jauntily

set on one side and very becoming to his handsome face. Having

looked in a mirror, and standing before Dolokhov in the same pose he

had assumed before it, he lifted a glass of wine.



"Well, good-by, Theodore. Thank you for everything and farewell!"

said Anatole. "Well, comrades and friends..." he considered for a

moment "...of my youth, farewell!" he said, turning to Makarin and the

others.



Though they were all going with him, Anatole evidently wished to

make something touching and solemn out of this address to his

comrades. He spoke slowly in a loud voice and throwing out his chest

slightly swayed one leg.



"All take glasses; you too, Balaga. Well, comrades and friends of my

youth, we've had our fling and lived and reveled. Eh? And now, when

shall we meet again? I am going abroad. We have had a good time--now

farewell, lads! To our health! Hurrah!..." he cried, and emptying

his glass flung it on the floor.



"To your health!" said Balaga who also emptied his glass, and

wiped his mouth with his handkerchief.



Makarin embraced Anatole with tears in his eyes.



"Ah, Prince, how sorry I am to part from you!



"Let's go. Let's go!" cried Anatole.



Balaga was about to leave the room.



"No, stop!" said Anatole. "Shut the door; we have first to sit down.

That's the way."



They shut the door and all sat down.



"Now, quick march, lads!" said Anatole, rising.



Joseph, his valet, handed him his sabretache and saber, and they all

went out into the vestibule.

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"And where's the fur cloak?" asked Dolokhov. "Hey, Ignatka! Go to

Matrena Matrevna and ask her for the sable cloak. I have heard what

elopements are like," continued Dolokhov with a wink. "Why, she'll

rush out more dead than alive just in the things she is wearing; if

you delay at all there'll be tears and 'Papa' and 'Mamma,' and she's

frozen in a minute and must go back--but you wrap the fur cloak

round her first thing and carry her to the sleigh."



The valet brought a woman's fox-lined cloak.



"Fool, I told you the sable one! Hey, Matrena, the sable!" he

shouted so that his voice rang far through the rooms.



A handsome, slim, and pale-faced gypsy girl with glittering black

eyes and curly blue-black hair, wearing a red shawl, ran out with a

sable mantle on her arm.



"Here, I don't grudge it--take it!" she said, evidently afraid of

her master and yet regretful of her cloak.



Dolokhov, without answering, took the cloak, threw it over

Matrena, and wrapped her up in it.



"That's the way," said Dolokhov, "and then so!" and he turned the

collar up round her head, leaving only a little of the face uncovered.

"And then so, do you see?" and he pushed Anatole's head forward to

meet the gap left by the collar, through which Matrena's brilliant

smile was seen.



"Well, good-by, Matrena," said Anatole, kissing her. "Ah, my

revels here are over. Remember me to Steshka. There, good-by! Good-by,

Matrena, wish me luck!"



"Well, Prince, may God give you great luck!" said Matrena in her

gypsy accent.



Two troykas were standing before the porch and two young drivers

were holding the horses. Balaga took his seat in the front one and

holding his elbows high arranged the reins deliberately. Anatole and

Dolokhov got in with him. Makarin, Khvostikov, and a valet seated

themselves in the other sleigh.



"Well, are you ready?" asked Balaga.



"Go!" he cried, twisting the reins round his hands, and the troyka

tore down the Nikitski Boulevard.



"Tproo! Get out of the way! Hi!... Tproo!..." The shouting of Balaga

and of the sturdy young fellow seated on the box was all that could be

heard. On the Arbat Square the troyka caught against a carriage;

something cracked, shouts were heard, and the troyka flew along the

Arbat Street.



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After taking a turn along the Podnovinski Boulevard, Balaga began to

rein in, and turning back drew up at the crossing of the old

Konyusheny Street.



The young fellow on the box jumped down to hold the horses and

Anatole and Dolokhov went along the pavement. When they reached the

gate Dolokhov whistled. The whistle was answered, and a maidservant

ran out.



"Come into the courtyard or you'll be seen; she'll come out

directly," said she.



Dolokhov stayed by the gate. Anatole followed the maid into the

courtyard, turned the corner, and ran up into the porch.



He was met by Gabriel, Marya Dmitrievna's gigantic footman.



"Come to the mistress, please," said the footman in his deep bass,

intercepting any retreat.



"To what Mistress? Who are you?" asked Anatole in a breathless

whisper.



"Kindly step in, my orders are to bring you in."



"Kuragin! Come back!" shouted Dolokhov. "Betrayed! Back!"



Dolokhov, after Anatole entered, had remained at the wicket gate and

was struggling with the yard porter who was trying to lock it. With

a last desperate effort Dolokhov pushed the porter aside, and when

Anatole ran back seized him by the arm, pulled him through the wicket,

and ran back with him to the troyka.









CHAPTER XVIII





Marya Dmitrievna, having found Sonya weeping in the corridor, made

her confess everything, and intercepting the note to Natasha she

read it and went into Natasha's room with it in her hand.



"You shameless good-for-nothing!" said she. "I won't hear a word."



Pushing back Natasha who looked at her with astonished but

tearless eyes, she locked her in; and having given orders to the

yard porter to admit the persons who would be coming that evening, but

not to let them out again, and having told the footman to bring them

up to her, she seated herself in the drawing room to await the

abductors.



When Gabriel came to inform her that the men who had come had run

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away again, she rose frowning, and clasping her hands behind her paced

through the rooms a long time considering what she should do. Toward

midnight she went to Natasha's room fingering the key in her pocket.

Sonya was sitting sobbing in the corridor. "Marya Dmitrievna, for

God's sake let me in to her!" she pleaded, but Marya Dmitrievna

unlocked the door and went in without giving her an answer....

"Disgusting, abominable... In my house... horrid girl, hussy! I'm only

sorry for her father!" thought she, trying to restrain her wrath.

"Hard as it may be, I'll tell them all to hold their tongues and

will hide it from the count." She entered the room with resolute

steps. Natasha lying on the sofa, her head hidden in her hands, and

she did not stir. She was in just the same position in which Marya

Dmitrievna had left her.



"A nice girl! Very nice!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "Arranging meetings

with lovers in my house! It's no use pretending: you listen when I

speak to you!" And Marya Dmitrievna touched her arm. "Listen when when

I speak! You've disgraced yourself like the lowest of hussies. I'd

treat you differently, but I'm sorry for your father, so I will

conceal it."



Natasha did not change her position, but her whole body heaved

with noiseless, convulsive sobs which choked her. Marya Dmitrievna

glanced round at Sonya and seated herself on the sofa beside Natasha.



"It's lucky for him that he escaped me; but I'll find him!" she said

in her rough voice. "Do you hear what I am saying or not?" she added.



She put her large hand under Natasha's face and turned it toward

her. Both Marya Dmitrievna and Sonya were amazed when they saw how

Natasha looked. Her eyes were dry and glistening, her lips compressed,

her cheeks sunken.



"Let me be!... What is it to me?... I shall die!" she muttered,

wrenching herself from Marya Dmitrievna's hands with a vicious

effort and sinking down again into her former position.



"Natalie!" said Marya Dmitrievna. "I wish for your good. Lie

still, stay like that then, I won't touch you. But listen. I won't

tell you how guilty you are. You know that yourself. But when your

father comes back tomorrow what am I to tell him? Eh?"



Again Natasha's body shook with sobs.



"Suppose he finds out, and your brother, and your betrothed?"



"I have no betrothed: I have refused him!" cried Natasha.



"That's all the same," continued Dmitrievna. "If they hear of

this, will they let it pass? He, your father, I know him... if he

challenges him to a duel will that be all right? Eh?"



"Oh, let me be! Why have you interfered at all? Why? Why? Who

asked you to?" shouted Natasha, raising herself on the sofa and

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looking malignantly at Marya Dmitrievna.



"But what did you want?" cried Marya Dmitrievna, growing angry

again. "Were you kept under lock and key? Who hindered his coming to

the house? Why carry you off as if you were some gypsy singing

girl?... Well, if he had carried you off... do you think they wouldn't

have found him? Your father, or brother, or your betrothed? And he's a

scoundrel, a wretch--that's a fact!"



"He is better than any of you!" exclaimed Natasha getting up. "If

you hadn't interfered... Oh, my God! What is it all? What is it?

Sonya, why?... Go away!"



And she burst into sobs with the despairing vehemence with which

people bewail disasters they feel they have themselves occasioned.

Marya Dmitrievna was to speak again but Natasha cried out:



"Go away! Go away! You all hate and despise me!" and she threw

herself back on the sofa.



Marya Dmitrievna went on admonishing her for some time, enjoining on

her that it must all be kept from her father and assuring her that

nobody would know anything about it if only Natasha herself would

undertake to forget it all and not let anyone see that something had

happened. Natasha did not reply, nor did she sob any longer, but she

grew cold and had a shivering fit. Marya Dmitrievna put a pillow under

her head, covered her with two quilts, and herself brought her some

lime-flower water, but Natasha did not respond to her.



"Well, let her sleep," said Marya Dmitrievna as she went of the room

supposing Natasha to be asleep.



But Natasha was not asleep; with pale face and fixed wide-open

eyes she looked straight before her. All that night she did not

sleep or weep and did not speak to Sonya who got up and went to her

several times.



Next day Count Rostov returned from his estate near Moscow in time

for lunch as he had promised. He was in very good spirits; the

affair with the purchaser was going on satisfactorily, and there was

nothing to keep him any longer in Moscow, away from the countess

whom he missed. Marya Dmitrievna met him and told him that Natasha had

been very unwell the day before and that they had sent for the doctor,

but that she was better now. Natasha had not left her room that

morning. With compressed and parched lips and dry fixed eyes, she

sat at the window, uneasily watching the people who drove past and

hurriedly glancing round at anyone who entered the room. She was

evidently expecting news of him and that he would come or would

write to her.



When the count came to see her she turned anxiously round at the

sound of a man's footstep, and then her face resumed its cold and

malevolent expression. She did not even get up to greet him. "What

is the matter with you, my angel? Are you ill?" asked the count.

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After a moment's silence Natasha answered: "Yes, ill."



In reply to the count's anxious inquiries as to why she was so

dejected and whether anything had happened to her betrothed, she

assured him that nothing had happened and asked him not to worry.

Marya Dmitrievna confirmed Natasha's assurances that nothing had

happened. From the pretense of illness, from his daughter's

distress, and by the embarrassed faces of Sonya and Marya

Dmitrievna, the count saw clearly that something had gone wrong during

his absence, but it was so terrible for him to think that anything

disgraceful had happened to his beloved daughter, and he so prized his

own cheerful tranquillity, that he avoided inquiries and tried to

assure himself that nothing particularly had happened; and he was only

dissatisfied that her indisposition delayed their return to the

country.









CHAPTER XIX





From the day his wife arrived in Moscow Pierre had been intending to

go away somewhere, so as not to be near her. Soon after the Rostovs

came to Moscow the effect Natasha had on him made him hasten to

carry out his intention. He went to Tver to see Joseph Alexeevich's

widow, who had long since promised to hand over to him some papers

of her deceased husband's.



When he returned to Moscow Pierre was handed a letter from Marya

Dmitrievna asking him to come and see her on a matter of great

importance relating to Andrew Bolkonski and his betrothed. Pierre

had been avoiding Natasha because it seemed to him that his feeling

for her was stronger than a married man's should be for his friend's

fiancee. Yet some fate constantly threw them together.



"What can have happened? And what can they want with me?" thought he

as he dressed to go to Marya Dmitrievna's. "If only Prince Andrew

would hurry up and come and marry her!" thought he on his way to the

house.



On the Tverskoy Boulevard a familiar voice called to him.



"Pierre! Been back long?" someone shouted. Pierre raised his head.

In a sleigh drawn by two gray trotting-horses that were bespattering

the dashboard with snow, Anatole and his constant companion Makarin

dashed past. Anatole was sitting upright in the classic pose of

military dandies, the lower part of his face hidden by his beaver

collar and his head slightly bent. His face was fresh and rosy, his

white-plumed hat, tilted to one side, disclosed his curled and pomaded

hair besprinkled with powdery snow.



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"Yes, indeed, that's a true sage," thought Pierre. "He sees

nothing beyond the pleasure of the moment, nothing troubles him and so

he is always cheerful, satisfied, and serene. What wouldn't I give

to be like him!" he thought enviously.



In Marya Dmitrievna's anteroom the footman who helped him off with

his fur coat said that the mistress asked him to come to her bedroom.



When he opened the ballroom door Pierre saw Natasha sitting at the

window, with a thin, pale, and spiteful face. She glanced round at

him, frowned, and left the room with an expression of cold dignity.



"What has happened?" asked Pierre, entering Marya Dmitrievna's room.



"Fine doings!" answered Dmitrievna. "For fifty-eight years have I

lived in this world and never known anything so disgraceful!"



And having put him on his honor not to repeat anything she told him,

Marya Dmitrievna informed him that Natasha had refused Prince Andrew

without her parents' knowledge and that the cause of this was

Anatole Kuragin into whose society Pierre's wife had thrown her and

with whom Natasha had tried to elope during her father's absence, in

order to be married secretly.



Pierre raised his shoulders and listened open-mouthed to what was

told him, scarcely able to believe his own ears. That Prince

Andrew's deeply loved affianced wife--the same Natasha Rostova who

used to be so charming--should give up Bolkonski for that fool Anatole

who was already secretly married (as Pierre knew), and should be so in

love with him as to agree to run away with him, was something Pierre

could not conceive and could not imagine.



He could not reconcile the charming impression he had of Natasha,

whom he had known from a child, with this new conception of her

baseness, folly, and cruelty. He thought of his wife. "They are all

alike!" he said to himself, reflecting that he was not the only man

unfortunate enough to be tied to a bad woman. But still he pitied

Prince Andrew to the point of tears and sympathized with his wounded

pride, and the more he pitied his friend the more did he think with

contempt and even with disgust of that Natasha who had just passed him

in the ballroom with such a look of cold dignity. He did not know that

Natasha's soul was overflowing with despair, shame, and humiliation,

and that it was not her fault that her face happened to assume an

expression of calm dignity and severity.



"But how get married?" said Pierre, in answer to Marya Dmitrievna.

"He could not marry--he is married!"



"Things get worse from hour to hour!" ejaculated Marya Dmitrievna.

"A nice youth! What a scoundrel! And she's expecting him--expecting

him since yesterday. She must be told! Then at least she won't go on

expecting him."



After hearing the details of Anatole's marriage from Pierre, and

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giving vent to her anger against Anatole in words of abuse, Marya

Dmitrievna told Pierre why she had sent for him. She was afraid that

the count or Bolkonski, who might arrive at any moment, if they knew

of this affair (which she hoped to hide from them) might challenge

Anatole to a duel, and she therefore asked Pierre to tell his

brother-in-law in her name to leave Moscow and not dare to let her set

eyes on him again. Pierre--only now realizing the danger to the old

count, Nicholas, and Prince Andrew--promised to do as she wished.

Having briefly and exactly explained her wishes to him, she let him go

to the drawing room.



"Mind, the count knows nothing. Behave as if you know nothing

either," she said. "And I will go and tell her it is no use

expecting him! And stay to dinner if you care to!" she called after

Pierre.



Pierre met the old count, who seemed nervous and upset. That morning

Natasha had told him that she had rejected Bolkonski.



"Troubles, troubles, my dear fellow!" he said to Pierre. "What

troubles one has with these girls without their mother! I do so regret

having come here.... I will be frank with you. Have you heard she

has broken off her engagement without consulting anybody? It's true

this engagement never was much to my liking. Of course he is an

excellent man, but still, with his father's disapproval they

wouldn't have been happy, and Natasha won't lack suitors. Still, it

has been going on so long, and to take such a step without father's or

mother's consent! And now she's ill, and God knows what! It's hard,

Count, hard to manage daughters in their mother's absence...."



Pierre saw that the count was much upset and tried to change the

subject, but the count returned to his troubles.



Sonya entered the room with an agitated face.



"Natasha is not quite well; she's in her room and would like to

see you. Marya Dmitrievna is with her and she too asks you to come."



"Yes, you are a great friend of Bolkonski's, no doubt she wants to

send him a message," said the count. "Oh dear! Oh dear! How happy it

all was!"



And clutching the spare gray locks on his temples the count left the

room.



When Marya Dmitrievna told Natasha that Anatole was married, Natasha

did not wish to believe it and insisted on having it confirmed by

Pierre himself. Sonya told Pierre this as she led him along the

corridor to Natasha's room.



Natasha, pale and stern, was sitting beside Marya Dmitrievna, and

her eyes, glittering feverishly, met Pierre with a questioning look

the moment he entered. She did not smile or nod, but only gazed

fixedly at him, and her look asked only one thing: was he a friend, or

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like the others an enemy in regard to Anatole? As for Pierre, he

evidently did not exist for her.



"He knows all about it," said Marya Dmitrievna pointing to Pierre

and addressing Natasha. "Let him tell you whether I have told the

truth."



Natasha looked from one to the other as a hunted and wounded

animal looks at the approaching dogs and sportsmen.



"Natalya Ilynichna," Pierre began, dropping his eyes with a

feeling of pity for her and loathing for the thing he had to do,

"whether it is true or not should make no difference to you,

because..."



"Then it is not true that he's married!"



"Yes, it is true."



"Has he been married long?" she asked. "On your honor?..."



Pierre gave his word of honor.



"Is he still here?" she asked, quickly.



"Yes, I have just seen him."



She was evidently unable to speak and made a sign with her hands

that they should leave her alone.









CHAPTER XX





Pierre did not stay for dinner, but left the room and went away at

once. He drove through the town seeking Anatole Kuragin, at the

thought of whom now the blood rushed to his heart and he felt a

difficulty in breathing. He was not at the ice hills, nor at the

gypsies', nor at Komoneno's. Pierre drove to the Club. In the Club all

was going on as usual. The members who were assembling for dinner were

sitting about in groups; they greeted Pierre and spoke of the town

news. The footman having greeted him, knowing his habits and his

acquaintances, told him there was a place left for him in the small

dining room and that Prince Michael Zakharych was in the library,

but Paul Timofeevich had not yet arrived. One of Pierre's

acquaintances, while they were talking about the weather, asked if

he had heard of Kuragin's abduction of Rostova which was talked of

in the town, and was it true? Pierre laughed and said it was

nonsense for he had just come from the Rostovs'. He asked everyone

about Anatole. One man told him he had not come yet, and another

that he was coming to dinner. Pierre felt it strange to see this calm,

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indifferent crowd of people unaware of what was going on in his

soul. He paced through the ballroom, waited till everyone had come,

and as Anatole had not turned up did not stay for dinner but drove

home.



Anatole, for whom Pierre was looking, dined that day with

Dolokhov, consulting him as to how to remedy this unfortunate

affair. It seemed to him essential to see Natasha. In the evening he

drove to his sister's to discuss with her how to arrange a meeting.

When Pierre returned home after vainly hunting all over Moscow, his

valet informed him that Prince Anatole was with the countess. The

countess' drawing room was full of guests.



Pierre without greeting his wife whom he had not seen since his

return--at that moment she was more repulsive to him than ever-

entered the drawing room and seeing Anatole went up to him.



"Ah, Pierre," said the countess going up to her husband. "You

don't know what a plight our Anatole..."



She stopped, seeing in the forward thrust of her husband's head,

in his glowing eyes and his resolute gait, the terrible indications of

that rage and strength which she knew and had herself experienced

after his duel with Dolokhov.



"Where you are, there is vice and evil!" said Pierre to his wife.

"Anatole, come with me! I must speak to you," he added in French.



Anatole glanced round at his sister and rose submissively, ready

to follow Pierre. Pierre, taking him by the arm, pulled him toward

himself and was leading him from the room.



"If you allow yourself in my drawing room..." whispered Helene,

but Pierre did not reply and went out of the room.



Anatole followed him with his usual jaunty step but his face

betrayed anxiety.



Having entered his study Pierre closed the door and addressed

Anatole without looking at him.



"You promised Countess Rostova to marry her and were about to

elope with her, is that so?"



"Mon cher," answered Anatole (their whole conversation was in

French), "I don't consider myself bound to answer questions put to

me in that tone."



Pierre's face, already pale, became distorted by fury. He seized

Anatole by the collar of his uniform with his big hand and shook him

from side to side till Anatole's face showed a sufficient degree of

terror.



"When I tell you that I must talk to you!..." repeated Pierre.

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"Come now, this is stupid. What?" said Anatole, fingering a button

of his collar that had been wrenched loose with a bit of the cloth.



"You're a scoundrel and a blackguard, and I don't know what deprives

me from the pleasure of smashing your head with this!" said Pierre,

expressing himself so artificially because he was talking French.



He took a heavy paperweight and lifted it threateningly, but at once

put it back in its place.



"Did you promise to marry her?"



"I... I didn't think of it. I never promised, because..."



Pierre interrupted him.



"Have you any letters of hers? Any letters?" he said, moving

toward Anatole.



Anatole glanced at him and immediately thrust his hand into his

pocket and drew out his pocketbook.



Pierre took the letter Anatole handed him and, pushing aside a table

that stood in his way, threw himself on the sofa.



"I shan't be violent, don't be afraid!" said Pierre in answer to a

frightened gesture of Anatole's. "First, the letters," said he, as

if repeating a lesson to himself. "Secondly," he continued after a

short pause, again rising and again pacing the room, "tomorrow you

must get out of Moscow."



"But how can I?..."



"Thirdly," Pierre continued without listening to him, "you must

never breathe a word of what has passed between you and Countess

Rostova. I know I can't prevent your doing so, but if you have a spark

of conscience..." Pierre paced the room several times in silence.



Anatole sat at a table frowning and biting his lips.



"After all, you must understand that besides your pleasure there

is such a thing as other people's happiness and peace, and that you

are ruining a whole life for the sake of amusing yourself! Amuse

yourself with women like my wife--with them you are within your

rights, for they know what you want of them. They are armed against

you by the same experience of debauchery; but to promise a maid to

marry her... to deceive, to kidnap.... Don't you understand that it is

as mean as beating an old man or a child?..."



Pierre paused and looked at Anatole no longer with an angry but with

a questioning look.



"I don't know about that, eh?" said Anatole, growing more

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confident as Pierre mastered his wrath. "I don't know that and don't

want to," he said, not looking at Pierre and with a slight tremor of

his lower jaw, "but you have used such words to me--'mean' and so

on--which as a man of honor I can't allow anyone to use."



Pierre glanced at him with amazement, unable to understand what he

wanted.



"Though it was tete-a-tete," Anatole continued, "still I can't..."



"Is it satisfaction you want?" said Pierre ironically.



"You could at least take back your words. What? If you want me to do

as you wish, eh?"



"I take them back, I take them back!" said Pierre, "and I ask you to

forgive me." Pierre involuntarily glanced at the loose button. "And if

you require money for your journey..."



Anatole smiled. The expression of that base and cringing smile,

which Pierre knew so well in his wife, revolted him.



"Oh, vile and heartless brood!" he exclaimed, and left the room.



Next day Anatole left for Petersburg.









CHAPTER XXI





Pierre drove to Marya Dmitrievna's to tell her of the fulfillment of

her wish that Kuragin should be banished from Moscow. The whole

house was in a state of alarm and commotion. Natasha was very ill,

having, as Marya Dmitrievna told him in secret, poisoned herself the

night after she had been told that Anatole was married, with some

arsenic she had stealthily procured. After swallowing a little she had

been so frightened that she woke Sonya and told her what she had done.

The necessary antidotes had been administered in time and she was

now out of danger, though still so weak that it was out of the

question to move her to the country, and so the countess had been sent

for. Pierre saw the distracted count, and Sonya, who had a

tear-stained face, but he could not see Natasha.



Pierre dined at the club that day and heard on all sides gossip

about the attempted abduction of Rostova. He resolutely denied these

rumors, assuring everyone that nothing had happened except that his

brother-in-law had proposed to her and been refused. It seemed to

Pierre that it was his duty to conceal the whole affair and

re-establish Natasha's reputation.



He was awaiting Prince Andrew's return with dread and went every day

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to the old prince's for news of him.



Old Prince Bolkonski heard all the rumors current in the town from

Mademoiselle Bourienne and had read the note to Princess Mary in which

Natasha had broken off her engagement. He seemed in better spirits

than usual and awaited his son with great impatience.



Some days after Anatole's departure Pierre received a note from

Prince Andrew, informing him of his arrival and asking him to come

to see him.



As soon as he reached Moscow, Prince Andrew had received from his

father Natasha's note to Princess Mary breaking off her engagement

(Mademoiselle Bourienne had purloined it from Princess Mary and

given it to the old prince), and he heard from him the story of

Natasha's elopement, with additions.



Prince Andrew had arrived in the evening and Pierre came to see

him next morning. Pierre expected to find Prince Andrew in almost

the same state as Natasha and was therefore surprised on entering

the drawing room to hear him in the study talking in a loud animated

voice about some intrigue going on in Petersburg. The old prince's

voice and another now and then interrupted him. Princess Mary came out

to meet Pierre. She sighed, looking toward the door of the room

where Prince Andrew was, evidently intending to express her sympathy

with his sorrow, but Pierre saw by her face that she was glad both

at what had happened and at the way her brother had taken the news

of Natasha's faithlessness.



"He says he expected it," she remarked. "I know his pride will not

let him express his feelings, but still he has taken it better, far

better, than I expected. Evidently it had to be...."



"But is it possible that all is really ended?" asked Pierre.



Princess Mary looked at him with astonishment. She did not

understand how he could ask such a question. Pierre went into the

study. Prince Andrew, greatly changed and plainly in better health,

but with a fresh horizontal wrinkle between his brows, stood in

civilian dress facing his father and Prince Meshcherski, warmly

disputing and vigorously gesticulating. The conversation was about

Speranski--the news of whose sudden exile and alleged treachery had

just reached Moscow.



"Now he is censured and accused by all who were enthusiastic about

him a month ago," Prince Andrew was saying, "and by those who were

unable to understand his aims. To judge a man who is in disfavor and

to throw on him all the blame of other men's mistakes is very easy,

but I maintain that if anything good has been accomplished in this

reign it was done by him, by him alone."



He paused at the sight of Pierre. His face quivered and

immediately assumed a vindictive expression.



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"Posterity will do him justice," he concluded, and at once turned to

Pierre.



"Well, how are you? Still getting stouter?" he said with

animation, but the new wrinkle on his forehead deepened. "Yes, I am

well," he said in answer to Pierre's question, and smiled.



To Pierre that smile said plainly: "I am well, but my health is

now of no use to anyone."



After a few words to Pierre about the awful roads from the Polish

frontier, about people he had met in Switzerland who knew Pierre,

and about M. Dessalles, whom he had brought from abroad to be his

son's tutor, Prince Andrew again joined warmly in the conversation

about Speranski which was still going on between the two old men.



"If there were treason, or proofs of secret relations with Napoleon,

they would have been made public," he said with warmth and haste. "I

do not, and never did, like Speranski personally, but I like justice!"



Pierre now recognized in his friend a need with which he was only

too familiar, to get excited and to have arguments about extraneous

matters in order to stifle thoughts that were too oppressive and too

intimate. When Prince Meshcherski had left, Prince Andrew took

Pierre's arm and asked him into the room that had been assigned him. A

bed had been made up there, and some open portmanteaus and trunks

stood about. Prince Andrew went to one and took out a small casket,

from which he drew a packet wrapped in paper. He did it all silently

and very quickly. He stood up and coughed. His face was gloomy and his

lips compressed.



"Forgive me for troubling you..."



Pierre saw that Prince Andrew was going to speak of Natasha, and his

broad face expressed pity and sympathy. This expression irritated

Prince Andrew, and in a determined, ringing, and unpleasant tone he

continued:



"I have received a refusal from Countess Rostova and have heard

reports of your brother-in-law having sought her hand, or something of

that kind. Is that true?"



"Both true and untrue," Pierre began; but Prince Andrew

interrupted him.



"Here are her letters and her portrait," said he.



He took the packet from the table and handed it to Pierre.



"Give this to the countess... if you see her."



"She is very ill," said Pierre.



"Then she is here still?" said Prince Andrew. "And Prince

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Kuragin?" he added quickly.



"He left long ago. She has been at death's door."



"I much regret her illness," said Prince Andrew; and he smiled

like his father, coldly, maliciously, and unpleasantly.



"So Monsieur Kuragin has not honored Countess Rostova with his

hand?" said Prince Andrew, and he snorted several times.



"He could not marry, for he was married already," said Pierre.



Prince Andrew laughed disagreeably, again reminding one of his

father.



"And where is your brother-in-law now, if I may ask?" he said.



"He has gone to Peters... But I don't know," said Pierre.



"Well, it doesn't matter," said Prince Andrew. "Tell Countess

Rostova that she was and is perfectly free and that I wish her all

that is good."



Pierre took the packet. Prince Andrew, as if trying to remember

whether he had something more to say, or waiting to see if Pierre

would say anything, looked fixedly at him.



"I say, do you remember our discussion in Petersburg?" asked Pierre,

"about..."



"Yes," returned Prince Andrew hastily. "I said that a fallen woman

should be forgiven, but I didn't say I could forgive her. I can't."



"But can this be compared...?" said Pierre.



Prince Andrew interrupted him and cried sharply: "Yes, ask her

hand again, be magnanimous, and so on?... Yes, that would be very

noble, but I am unable to follow in that gentleman's footsteps. If you

wish to be my friend never speak to me of that... of all that! Well,

good-by. So you'll give her the packet?"



Pierre left the room and went to the old prince and Princess Mary.



The old man seemed livelier than usual. Princess Mary was the same

as always, but beneath her sympathy for her brother, Pierre noticed

her satisfaction that the engagement had been broken off. Looking at

them Pierre realized what contempt and animosity they all felt for the

Rostovs, and that it was impossible in their presence even to

mention the name of her who could give up Prince Andrew for anyone

else.



At dinner the talk turned on the war, the approach of which was

becoming evident. Prince Andrew talked incessantly, arguing now with

his father, now with the Swiss tutor Dessalles, and showing an

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unnatural animation, the cause of which Pierre so well understood.









CHAPTER XXII





That same evening Pierre went to the Rostovs' to fulfill the

commission entrusted to him. Natasha was in bed, the count at the

Club, and Pierre, after giving the letters to Sonya, went to Marya

Dmitrievna who was interested to know how Prince Andrew had taken

the news. Ten minutes later Sonya came to Marya Dmitrievna.



"Natasha insists on seeing Count Peter Kirilovich," said she.



"But how? Are we to take him up to her? The room there has not

been tidied up."



"No, she has dressed and gone into the drawing room," said Sonya.



Marya Dmitrievna only shrugged her shoulders.



"When will her mother come? She has worried me to death! Now mind,

don't tell her everything!" said she to Pierre. "One hasn't the

heart to scold her, she is so much to be pitied, so much to be

pitied."



Natasha was standing in the middle of the drawing room, emaciated,

with a pale set face, but not at all shamefaced as Pierre expected

to find her. When he appeared at the door she grew flurried, evidently

undecided whether to go to meet him or to wait till he came up.



Pierre hastened to her. He thought she would give him her hand as

usual; but she, stepping up to him, stopped, breathing heavily, her

arms hanging lifelessly just in the pose she used to stand in when she

went to the middle of the ballroom to sing, but with quite a different

expression of face.



"Peter Kirilovich," she began rapidly, "Prince Bolkonski was your

friend--is your friend," she corrected herself. (It seemed to her that

everything that had once been must now be different.) "He told me once

to apply to you..."



Pierre sniffed as he looked at her, but did not speak. Till then

he had reproached her in his heart and tried to despise her, but he

now felt so sorry for her that there was no room in his soul for

reproach.



"He is here now: tell him... to for... forgive me!" She stopped

and breathed still more quickly, but did not shed tears.



"Yes... I will tell him," answered Pierre; "but..."

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He did not know what to say.



Natasha was evidently dismayed at the thought of what he might think

she had meant.



"No, I know all is over," she said hurriedly. "No, that can never

be. I'm only tormented by the wrong I have done him. Tell him only

that I beg him to forgive, forgive, forgive me for everything...."



She trembled all over and sat down on a chair.



A sense of pity he had never before known overflowed Pierre's heart.



"I will tell him, I will tell him everything once more," said

Pierre. "But... I should like to know one thing...."



"Know what?" Natasha's eyes asked.



"I should like to know, did you love..." Pierre did not know how

to refer to Anatole and flushed at the thought of him--"did you love

that bad man?"



"Don't call him bad!" said Natasha. "But I don't know, don't know at

all...."



She began to cry and a still greater sense of pity, tenderness,

and love welled up in Pierre. He felt the tears trickle under his

spectacles and hoped they would not be noticed.



"We won't speak of it any more, my dear," said Pierre, and his

gentle, cordial tone suddenly seemed very strange to Natasha.



"We won't speak of it, my dear--I'll tell him everything; but one

thing I beg of you, consider me your friend and if you want help,

advice, or simply to open your heart to someone--not now, but when

your mind is clearer think of me!" He took her hand and kissed it.

"I shall be happy if it's in my power..."



Pierre grew confused.



"Don't speak to me like that. I am not worth it!" exclaimed

Natasha and turned to leave the room, but Pierre held her hand.



He knew he had something more to say to her. But when he said it

he was amazed at his own words.



"Stop, stop! You have your whole life before you," said he to her.



"Before me? No! All is over for me," she replied with shame and

self-abasement.



"All over?" he repeated. "If I were not myself, but the handsomest,

cleverest, and best man in the world, and were free, I would this

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moment ask on my knees for your hand and your love!"



For the first time for many days Natasha wept tears of gratitude and

tenderness, and glancing at Pierre she went out of the room.



Pierre too when she had gone almost ran into the anteroom,

restraining tears of tenderness and joy that choked him, and without

finding the sleeves of his fur cloak threw it on and got into his

sleigh.



"Where to now, your excellency?" asked the coachman.



"Where to?" Pierre asked himself. "Where can I go now? Surely not to

the Club or to pay calls?" All men seemed so pitiful, so poor, in

comparison with this feeling of tenderness and love he experienced: in

comparison with that softened, grateful, last look she had given him

through her tears.



"Home!" said Pierre, and despite twenty-two degrees of frost

Fahrenheit he threw open the bearskin cloak from his broad chest and

inhaled the air with joy.



It was clear and frosty. Above the dirty, ill-lit streets, above the

black roofs, stretched the dark starry sky. Only looking up at the sky

did Pierre cease to feel how sordid and humiliating were all mundane

things compared with the heights to which his soul had just been

raised. At the entrance to the Arbat Square an immense expanse of dark

starry sky presented itself to his eyes. Almost in the center of it,

above the Prechistenka Boulevard, surrounded and sprinkled on all

sides by stars but distinguished from them all by its nearness to

the earth, its white light, and its long uplifted tail, shone the

enormous and brilliant comet of 1812--the comet which was said to

portend all kinds of woes and the end of the world. In Pierre,

however, that comet with its long luminous tail aroused no feeling

of fear. On the contrary he gazed joyfully, his eyes moist with tears,

at this bright comet which, having traveled in its orbit with

inconceivable velocity through immeasurable space, seemed suddenly-

like an arrow piercing the earth--to remain fixed in a chosen spot,

vigorously holding its tail erect, shining and displaying its white

light amid countless other scintillating stars. It seemed to Pierre

that this comet fully responded to what was passing in his own

softened and uplifted soul, now blossoming into a new life.









BOOK NINE: 1812









CHAPTER I

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From the close of the year 1811 intensified arming and concentrating

of the forces of Western Europe began, and in 1812 these forces-

millions of men, reckoning those transporting and feeding the army-

moved from the west eastwards to the Russian frontier, toward which

since 1811 Russian forces had been similarly drawn. On the twelfth

of June, 1812, the forces of Western Europe crossed the Russian

frontier and war began, that is, an event took place opposed to

human reason and to human nature. Millions of men perpetrated

against one another such innumerable crimes, frauds, treacheries,

thefts, forgeries, issues of false money, burglaries, incendiarisms,

and murders as in whole centuries are not recorded in the annals of

all the law courts of the world, but which those who committed them

did not at the time regard as being crimes.



What produced this extraordinary occurrence? What were its causes?

The historians tell us with naive assurance that its causes were the

wrongs inflicted on the Duke of Oldenburg, the nonobservance of the

Continental System, the ambition of Napoleon, the firmness of

Alexander, the mistakes of the diplomatists, and so on.



Consequently, it would only have been necessary for Metternich,

Rumyantsev, or Talleyrand, between a levee and an evening party, to

have taken proper pains and written a more adroit note, or for

Napoleon to have written to Alexander: "My respected Brother, I

consent to restore the duchy to the Duke of Oldenburg"--and there

would have been no war.



We can understand that the matter seemed like that to

contemporaries. It naturally seemed to Napoleon that the war was

caused by England's intrigues (as in fact he said on the island of St.

Helena). It naturally seemed to members of the English Parliament that

the cause of the war was Napoleon's ambition; to the Duke of

Oldenburg, that the cause of the war was the violence done to him;

to businessmen that the cause of the way was the Continental System

which was ruining Europe; to the generals and old soldiers that the

chief reason for the war was the necessity of giving them

employment; to the legitimists of that day that it was the need of

re-establishing les bons principes, and to the diplomatists of that

time that it all resulted from the fact that the alliance between

Russia and Austria in 1809 had not been sufficiently well concealed

from Napoleon, and from the awkward wording of Memorandum No. 178.

It is natural that these and a countless and infinite quantity of

other reasons, the number depending on the endless diversity of points

of view, presented themselves to the men of that day; but to us, to

posterity who view the thing that happened in all its magnitude and

perceive its plain and terrible meaning, these causes seem

insufficient. To us it is incomprehensible that millions of

Christian men killed and tortured each other either because Napoleon

was ambitious or Alexander was firm, or because England's policy was

astute or the Duke of Oldenburg wronged. We cannot grasp what

connection such circumstances have with the actual fact of slaughter

and violence: why because the Duke was wronged, thousands of men

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from the other side of Europe killed and ruined the people of Smolensk

and Moscow and were killed by them.



To us, their descendants, who are not historians and are not carried

away by the process of research and can therefore regard the event

with unclouded common sense, an incalculable number of causes

present themselves. The deeper we delve in search of these causes

the more of them we find; and each separate cause or whole series of

causes appears to us equally valid in itself and equally false by

its insignificance compared to the magnitude of the events, and by its

impotence--apart from the cooperation of all the other coincident

causes--to occasion the event. To us, the wish or objection of this or

that French corporal to serve a second term appears as much a cause as

Napoleon's refusal to withdraw his troops beyond the Vistula and to

restore the duchy of Oldenburg; for had he not wished to serve, and

had a second, a third, and a thousandth corporal and private also

refused, there would have been so many less men in Napoleon's army and

the war could not have occurred.



Had Napoleon not taken offense at the demand that he should withdraw

beyond the Vistula, and not ordered his troops to advance, there would

have been no war; but had all his sergeants objected to serving a

second term then also there could have been no war. Nor could there

have been a war had there been no English intrigues and no Duke of

Oldenburg, and had Alexander not felt insulted, and had there not been

an autocratic government in Russia, or a Revolution in France and a

subsequent dictatorship and Empire, or all the things that produced

the French Revolution, and so on. Without each of these causes nothing

could have happened. So all these causes--myriads of causes--coincided

to bring it about. And so there was no one cause for that

occurrence, but it had to occur because it had to. Millions of men,

renouncing their human feelings and reason, had to go from west to

east to slay their fellows, just as some centuries previously hordes

of men had come from the east to the west, slaying their fellows.



The actions of Napoleon and Alexander, on whose words the event

seemed to hang, were as little voluntary as the actions of any soldier

who was drawn into the campaign by lot or by conscription. This

could not be otherwise, for in order that the will of Napoleon and

Alexander (on whom the event seemed to depend) should be carried

out, the concurrence of innumerable circumstances was needed without

any one of which the event could not have taken place. It was

necessary that millions of men in whose hands lay the real power-

the soldiers who fired, or transported provisions and guns--should

consent to carry out the will of these weak individuals, and should

have been induced to do so by an infinite number of diverse and

complex causes.



We are forced to fall back on fatalism as an explanation of

irrational events (that is to say, events the reasonableness of

which we do not understand). The more we try to explain such events in

history reasonably, the more unreasonable and incomprehensible do they

become to us.



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Each man lives for himself, using his freedom to attain his personal

aims, and feels with his whole being that he can now do or abstain

from doing this or that action; but as soon as he has done it, that

action performed at a certain moment in time becomes irrevocable and

belongs to history, in which it has not a free but a predestined

significance.



There are two sides to the life of every man, his individual life,

which is the more free the more abstract its interests, and his

elemental hive life in which he inevitably obeys laws laid down for

him.



Man lives consciously for himself, but is an unconscious

instrument in the attainment of the historic, universal, aims of

humanity. A deed done is irrevocable, and its result coinciding in

time with the actions of millions of other men assumes an historic

significance. The higher a man stands on the social ladder, the more

people he is connected with and the more power he has over others, the

more evident is the predestination and inevitability of his every

action.



"The king's heart is in the hands of the Lord."



A king is history's slave.



History, that is, the unconscious, general, hive life of mankind,

uses every moment of the life of kings as a tool for its own purposes.



Though Napoleon at that time, in 1812, was more convinced than

ever that it depended on him, verser (ou ne pas verser) le sang de ses

peuples*--as Alexander expressed it in the last letter he wrote him-

he had never been so much in the grip of inevitable laws, which

compelled him, while thinking that he was acting on his own

volition, to perform for the hive life--that is to say, for history-

whatever had to be performed.





*"To shed (or not to shed) the blood of his peoples."





The people of the west moved eastwards to slay their fellow men, and

by the law of coincidence thousands of minute causes fitted in and

co-ordinated to produce that movement and war: reproaches for the

nonobservance of the Continental System, the Duke of Oldenburg's

wrongs, the movement of troops into Prussia--undertaken (as it

seemed to Napoleon) only for the purpose of securing an armed peace,

the French Emperor's love and habit of war coinciding with his

people's inclinations, allurement by the grandeur of the preparations,

and the expenditure on those preparations and the need of obtaining

advantages to compensate for that expenditure, the intoxicating honors

he received in Dresden, the diplomatic negotiations which, in the

opinion of contemporaries, were carried on with a sincere desire to

attain peace, but which only wounded the self-love of both sides,

and millions of other causes that adapted themselves to

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the event that was happening or coincided with it.



When an apple has ripened and falls, why does it fall? Because of

its attraction to the earth, because its stalk withers, because it

is dried by the sun, because it grows heavier, because the wind shakes

it, or because the boy standing below wants to eat it?



Nothing is the cause. All this is only the coincidence of conditions

in which all vital organic and elemental events occur. And the

botanist who finds that the apple falls because the cellular tissue

decays and so forth is equally right with the child who stands under

the tree and says the apple fell because he wanted to eat it and

prayed for it. Equally right or wrong is he who says that Napoleon

went to Moscow because he wanted to, and perished because Alexander

desired his destruction, and he who says that an undermined hill

weighing a million tons fell because the last navvy struck it for

the last time with his mattock. In historic events the so-called great

men are labels giving names to events, and like labels they have but

the smallest connection with the event itself.



Every act of theirs, which appears to them an act of their own will,

is in an historical sense involuntary and is related to the whole

course of history and predestined from eternity.









CHAPTER II





On the twenty-ninth of May Napoleon left Dresden, where he had spent

three weeks surrounded by a court that included princes, dukes, kings,

and even an emperor. Before leaving, Napoleon showed favor to the

emperor, kings, and princes who had deserved it, reprimanded the kings

and princes with whom he was dissatisfied, presented pearls and

diamonds of his own--that is, which he had taken from other kings-

to the Empress of Austria, and having, as his historian tells us,

tenderly embraced the Empress Marie Louise--who regarded him as her

husband, though he had left another wife in Paris--left her grieved by

the parting which she seemed hardly able to bear. Though the

diplomatists still firmly believed in the possibility of peace and

worked zealously to that end, and though the Emperor Napoleon

himself wrote a letter to Alexander, calling him Monsieur mon frere,

and sincerely assured him that he did not want war and would always

love and honor him--yet he set off to join his army, and at every

station gave fresh orders to accelerate the movement of his troops

from west to east. He went in a traveling coach with six horses,

surrounded by pages, aides-de-camp, and an escort, along the road to

Posen, Thorn, Danzig, and Konigsberg. At each of these towns thousands

of people met him with excitement and enthusiasm.



The army was moving from west to east, and relays of six horses

carried him in the same direction. On the tenth of June,* coming up

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with the army, he spent the night in apartments prepared for him on

the estate of a Polish count in the Vilkavisski forest.





*Old style.





Next day, overtaking the army, he went in a carriage to the

Niemen, and, changing into a Polish uniform, he drove to the riverbank

in order to select a place for the crossing.



Seeing, on the other side, some Cossacks (les Cosaques) and the

wide-spreading steppes in the midst of which lay the holy city of

Moscow (Moscou, la ville sainte), the capital of a realm such as the

Scythia into which Alexander the Great had marched--Napoleon

unexpectedly, and contrary alike to strategic and diplomatic

considerations, ordered an advance, and the next day his army began to

cross the Niemen.



Early in the morning of the twelfth of June he came out of his tent,

which was pitched that day on the steep left bank of the Niemen, and

looked through a spyglass at the streams of his troops pouring out

of the Vilkavisski forest and flowing over the three bridges thrown

across the river. The troops, knowing of the Emperor's presence,

were on the lookout for him, and when they caught sight of a figure in

an overcoat and a cocked hat standing apart from his suite in front of

his tent on the hill, they threw up their caps and shouted: "Vive

l'Empereur!" and one after another poured in a ceaseless stream out of

the vast forest that had concealed them and, separating, flowed on and

on by the three bridges to the other side.



"Now we'll go into action. Oh, when he takes it in hand himself,

things get hot... by heaven!... There he is!... Vive l'Empereur! So

these are the steppes of Asia! It's a nasty country all the same. Au

revoir, Beauche; I'll keep the best palace in Moscow for you! Au

revoir. Good luck!... Did you see the Emperor? Vive l'Empereur!...

preur!--If they make me Governor of India, Gerard, I'll make you

Minister of Kashmir--that's settled. Vive l'Empereur! Hurrah!

hurrah! hurrah! The Cossacks--those rascals--see how they run! Vive

l'Empereur! There he is, do you see him? I've seen him twice, as I see

you now. The little corporal... I saw him give the cross to one of the

veterans.... Vive l'Empereur!" came the voices of men, old and

young, of most diverse characters and social positions. On the faces

of all was one common expression of joy at the commencement of the

long-expected campaign and of rapture and devotion to the man in the

gray coat who was standing on the hill.



On the thirteenth of June a rather small, thoroughbred Arab horse

was brought to Napoleon. He mounted it and rode at a gallop to one

of the bridges over the Niemen, deafened continually by incessant

and rapturous acclamations which he evidently endured only because

it was impossible to forbid the soldiers to express their love of

him by such shouting, but the shouting which accompanied him

everywhere disturbed him and distracted him from the military cares

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that had occupied him from the time he joined the army. He rode across

one of the swaying pontoon bridges to the farther side, turned sharply

to the left, and galloped in the direction of Kovno, preceded by

enraptured, mounted chasseurs of the Guard who, breathless with

delight, galloped ahead to clear a path for him through the troops. On

reaching the broad river Viliya, he stopped near a regiment of

Polish Uhlans stationed by the river.



"Vivat!" shouted the Poles, ecstatically, breaking their ranks and

pressing against one another to see him.



Napoleon looked up and down the river, dismounted, and sat down on a

log that lay on the bank. At a mute sign from him, a telescope was

handed him which he rested on the back of a happy page who had run

up to him, and he gazed at the opposite bank. Then he became

absorbed in a map laid out on the logs. Without lifting his head he

said something, and two of his aides-de-camp galloped off to the

Polish Uhlans.



"What? What did he say?" was heard in the ranks of the Polish Uhlans

when one of the aides-de-camp rode up to them.



The order was to find a ford and to cross the river. The colonel

of the Polish Uhlans, a handsome old man, flushed and, fumbling in his

speech from excitement, asked the aide-de-camp whether he would be

permitted to swim the river with his Uhlans instead of seeking a ford.

In evident fear of refusal, like a boy asking for permission to get on

a horse, he begged to be allowed to swim across the river before the

Emperor's eyes. The aide-de-camp replied that probably the Emperor

would not be displeased at this excess of zeal.



As soon as the aide-de-camp had said this, the old mustached

officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, raised his saber, shouted

"Vivat!" and, commanding the Uhlans to follow him, spurred his horse

and galloped into the river. He gave an angry thrust to his horse,

which had grown restive under him, and plunged into the water, heading

for the deepest part where the current was swift. Hundreds of Uhlans

galloped in after him. It was cold and uncanny in the rapid current in

the middle of the stream, and the Uhlans caught hold of one another as

they fell off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned and some

of the men; the others tried to swim on, some in the saddle and some

clinging to their horses' manes. They tried to make their way

forward to the opposite bank and, though there was a ford one third of

a mile away, were proud that they were swimming and drowning in this

river under the eyes of the man who sat on the log and was not even

looking at what they were doing. When the aide-de-camp, having

returned and choosing an opportune moment, ventured to draw the

Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the

little man in the gray overcoat got up and, having summoned

Berthier, began pacing up and down the bank with him, giving him

instructions and occasionally glancing disapprovingly at the

drowning Uhlans who distracted his attention.



For him it was no new conviction that his presence in any part of

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the world, from Africa to the steppes of Muscovy alike, was enough

to dumfound people and impel them to insane self-oblivion. He called

for his horse and rode to his quarters.



Some forty Uhlans were drowned in the river, though boats were

sent to their assistance. The majority struggled back to the bank from

which they had started. The colonel and some of his men got across and

with difficulty clambered out on the further bank. And as soon as they

had got out, in their soaked and streaming clothes, they shouted

"Vivat!" and looked ecstatically at the spot where Napoleon had been

but where he no longer was and at that moment considered themselves

happy.



That evening, between issuing one order that the forged Russian

paper money prepared for use in Russia should be delivered as

quickly as possible and another that a Saxon should be shot, on whom a

letter containing information about the orders to the French army

had been found, Napoleon also gave instructions that the Polish

colonel who had needlessly plunged into the river should be enrolled

in the Legion d'honneur of which Napoleon was himself the head.



Quos vult perdere dementat.*





*Those whom (God) wishes to destroy he drives mad.









CHAPTER III





The Emperor of Russia had, meanwhile, been in Vilna for more than

a month, reviewing troops and holding maneuvers. Nothing was ready for

the war that everyone expected and to prepare for which the Emperor

had come from Petersburg. There was no general plan of action. The

vacillation between the various plans that were proposed had even

increased after the Emperor had been at headquarters for a month. Each

of the three armies had its own commander in chief, but there was no

supreme commander of all the forces, and the Emperor did not assume

that responsibility himself.



The longer the Emperor remained in Vilna the less did everybody-

tired of waiting--prepare for the war. All the efforts of those who

surrounded the sovereign seemed directed merely to making him spend

his time pleasantly and forget that war was impending.



In June, after many balls and fetes given by the Polish magnates, by

the courtiers, and by the Emperor himself, it occurred to one of the

Polish aides-de-camp in attendance that a dinner and ball should be

given for the Emperor by his aides-de-camp. This idea was eagerly

received. The Emperor gave his consent. The aides-de-camp collected

money by subscription. The lady who was thought to be most pleasing to

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the Emperor was invited to act as hostess. Count Bennigsen, being a

landowner in the Vilna province, offered his country house for the

fete, and the thirteenth of June was fixed for a ball, dinner,

regatta, and fireworks at Zakret, Count Bennigsen's country seat.



The very day that Napoleon issued the order to cross the Niemen, and

his vanguard, driving off the Cossacks, crossed the Russian

frontier, Alexander spent the evening at the entertainment given by

his aides-de-camp at Bennigsen's country house.



It was a gay and brilliant fete. Connoisseurs of such matters

declared that rarely had so many beautiful women been assembled in one

place. Countess Bezukhova was present among other Russian ladies who

had followed the sovereign from Petersburg to Vilna and eclipsed the

refined Polish ladies by her massive, so called Russian type of

beauty. The Emperor noticed her and honored her with a dance.



Boris Drubetskoy, having left his wife in Moscow and being for the

present en garcon (as he phrased it), was also there and, though not

an aide-de-camp, had subscribed a large sum toward the expenses. Boris

was now a rich man who had risen to high honors and no longer sought

patronage but stood on an equal footing with the highest of those of

his own age. He was meeting Helene in Vilna after not having seen

her for a long time and did not recall the past, but as Helene was

enjoying the favors of a very important personage and Boris had only

recently married, they met as good friends of long standing.



At midnight dancing was still going on. Helene, not having a

suitable partner, herself offered to dance the mazurka with Boris.

They were the third couple. Boris, coolly looking at Helene's dazzling

bare shoulders which emerged from a dark, gold-embroidered, gauze

gown, talked to her of old acquaintances and at the same time, unaware

of it himself and unnoticed by others, never for an instant ceased

to observe the Emperor who was in the same room. The Emperor was not

dancing, he stood in the doorway, stopping now one pair and now

another with gracious words which he alone knew how to utter.



As the mazurka began, Boris saw that Adjutant General Balashev,

one of those in closest attendance on the Emperor, went up to him

and contrary to court etiquette stood near him while he was talking to

a Polish lady. Having finished speaking to her, the Emperor looked

inquiringly at Balashev and, evidently understanding that he only

acted thus because there were important reasons for so doing, nodded

slightly to the lady and turned to him. Hardly had Balashev begun to

speak before a look of amazement appeared on the Emperor's face. He

took Balashev by the arm and crossed the room with him,

unconsciously clearing a path seven yards wide as the people on both

sides made way for him. Boris noticed Arakcheev's excited face when

the sovereign went out with Balashev. Arakcheev looked at the

Emperor from under his brow and, sniffing with his red nose, stepped

forward from the crowd as if expecting the Emperor to address him.

(Boris understood that Arakcheev envied Balashev and was displeased

that evidently important news had reached the Emperor otherwise than

through himself.)

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But the Emperor and Balashev passed out into the illuminated

garden without noticing Arakcheev who, holding his sword and

glancing wrathfully around, followed some twenty paces behind them.



All the time Boris was going through the figures of the mazurka,

he was worried by the question of what news Balashev had brought and

how he could find it out before others. In the figure in which he

had to choose two ladies, he whispered to Helene that he meant to

choose Countess Potocka who, he thought, had gone out onto the

veranda, and glided over the parquet to the door opening into the

garden, where, seeing Balashev and the Emperor returning to the

veranda, he stood still. They were moving toward the door. Boris,

fluttering as if he had not had time to withdraw, respectfully pressed

close to the doorpost with bowed head.



The Emperor, with the agitation of one who has been personally

affronted, was finishing with these words:



"To enter Russia without declaring war! I will not make peace as

long as a single armed enemy remains in my country!" It seemed to

Boris that it gave the Emperor pleasure to utter these words. He was

satisfied with the form in which he had expressed his thoughts, but

displeased that Boris had overheard it.



"Let no one know of it!" the Emperor added with a frown.



Boris understood that this was meant for him and, closing his

eyes, slightly bowed his head. The Emperor re-entered the ballroom and

remained there about another half-hour.



Boris was thus the first to learn the news that the French army

had crossed the Niemen and, thanks to this, was able to show certain

important personages that much that was concealed from others was

usually known to him, and by this means he rose higher in their

estimation.





The unexpected news of the French having crossed the Niemen was

particularly startling after a month of unfulfilled expectations,

and at a ball. On first receiving the news, under the influence of

indignation and resentment the Emperor had found a phrase that pleased

him, fully expressed his feelings, and has since become famous. On

returning home at two o'clock that night he sent for his secretary,

Shishkov, and told him to write an order to the troops and a

rescript to Field Marshal Prince Saltykov, in which he insisted on the

words being inserted that he would not make peace so long as a

single armed Frenchman remained on Russian soil.



Next day the following letter was sent to Napoleon:





Monsieur mon frere,



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Yesterday I learned that, despite the loyalty which I have kept my

engagements with Your Majesty, your troops have crossed the Russian

frontier, and I have this moment received from Petersburg a note, in

which Count Lauriston informs me, as a reason for this aggression,

that Your Majesty has considered yourself to be in a state of war with

me from the time Prince Kuragin asked for his passports. The reasons

on which the Duc de Bassano based his refusal to deliver them to him

would never have led me to suppose that that could serve as a

pretext for aggression. In fact, the ambassador, as he himself has

declared, was never authorized to make that demand, and as soon as I

was informed of it I let him know how much I disapproved of it and

ordered him to remain at his post. If Your Majesty does not intend

to shed the blood of our peoples for such a misunderstanding, and

consents to withdraw your troops from Russian territory, I will regard

what has passed as not having occurred and an understanding between us

will be possible. In the contrary case, Your Majesty, I shall see

myself forced to repel an attack that nothing on my part has provoked.

It still depends on Your Majesty to preserve humanity from the

calamity of another war. I am, etc.,

(signed) Alexander









CHAPTER IV





At two in the morning of the fourteenth of June, the Emperor, having

sent for Balashev and read him his letter to Napoleon, ordered him

to take it and hand it personally to the French Emperor. When

dispatching Balashev, the Emperor repeated to him the words that he

would not make peace so long as a single armed enemy remained on

Russian soil and told him to transmit those words to Napoleon.

Alexander did not insert them in his letter to Napoleon, because

with his characteristic tact he felt it would be injudicious to use

them at a moment when a last attempt at reconciliation was being made,

but he definitely instructed Balashev to repeat them personally to

Napoleon.



Having set off in the small hours of the fourteenth, accompanied

by a bugler and two Cossacks, Balashev reached the French outposts

at the village of Rykonty, on the Russian side of the Niemen, by dawn.

There he was stopped by French cavalry sentinels.



A French noncommissioned officer of hussars, in crimson uniform

and a shaggy cap, shouted to the approaching Balashev to halt.

Balashev did not do so at once, but continued to advance along the

road at a walking pace.



The noncommissioned officer frowned and, muttering words of abuse,

advanced his horse's chest against Balashev, put his hand to his

saber, and shouted rudely at the Russian general, asking: was he

deaf that he did not do as he was told? Balashev mentioned who he was.

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The noncommissioned officer began talking with his comrades about

regimental matters without looking at the Russian general.



After living at the seat of the highest authority and power, after

conversing with the Emperor less than three hours before, and in

general being accustomed to the respect due to his rank in the

service, Balashev found it very strange here on Russian soil to

encounter this hostile, and still more this disrespectful, application

of brute force to himself.



The sun was only just appearing from behind the clouds, the air

was fresh and dewy. A herd of cattle was being driven along the road

from the village, and over the fields the larks rose trilling, one

after another, like bubbles rising in water.



Balashev looked around him, awaiting the arrival of an officer

from the village. The Russian Cossacks and bugler and the French

hussars looked silently at one another from time to time.



A French colonel of hussars, who had evidently just left his bed,

came riding from the village on a handsome sleek gray horse,

accompanied by two hussars. The officer, the soldiers, and their

horses all looked smart and well kept.



It was that first period of a campaign when troops are still in full

trim, almost like that of peacetime maneuvers, but with a shade of

martial swagger in their clothes, and a touch of the gaiety and spirit

of enterprise which always accompany the opening of a campaign.



The French colonel with difficulty repressed a yawn, but was

polite and evidently understood Balashev's importance. He led him past

his soldiers and behind the outposts and told him that his wish to

be presented to the Emperor would most likely be satisfied

immediately, as the Emperor's quarters were, he believed, not far off.



They rode through the village of Rykonty, past tethered French

hussar horses, past sentinels and men who saluted their colonel and

stared with curiosity at a Russian uniform, and came out at the

other end of the village. The colonel said that the commander of the

division was a mile and a quarter away and would receive Balashev

and conduct him to his destination.



The sun had by now risen and shone gaily on the bright verdure.



They had hardly ridden up a hill, past a tavern, before they saw a

group of horsemen coming toward them. In front of the group, on a

black horse with trappings that glittered in the sun, rode a tall

man with plumes in his hat and black hair curling down to his

shoulders. He wore a red mantle, and stretched his long legs forward

in French fashion. This man rode toward Balashev at a gallop, his

plumes flowing and his gems and gold lace glittering in the bright

June sunshine.



Balashev was only two horses' length from the equestrian with the

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bracelets, plunies, necklaces, and gold embroidery, who was

galloping toward him with a theatrically solemn countenance, when

Julner, the French colonel, whispered respectfully: "The King of

Naples!" It was, in fact, Murat, now called "King of Naples." Though

it was quite incomprehensible why he should be King of Naples, he

was called so, and was himself convinced that he was so, and therefore

assumed a more solemn and important air than formerly. He was so

sure that he really was the King of Naples that when, on the eve of

his departure from that city, while walking through the streets with

his wife, some Italians called out to him: "Viva il re!"* he turned to

his wife with a pensive smile and said: "Poor fellows, they don't know

that I am leaving them tomorrow!"





*"Long live the king."





But though he firmly believed himself to be King of Naples and

pitied the grief felt by the subjects he was abandoning, latterly,

after he had been ordered to return to military service--and

especially since his last interview with Napoleon in Danzig, when

his august brother-in-law had told him: "I made you King that you

should reign in my way, but not in yours!"--he had cheerfully taken up

his familiar business, and--like a well-fed but not overfat horse that

feels himself in harness and grows skittish between the shafts--he

dressed up in clothes as variegated and expensive as possible, and

gaily and contentedly galloped along the roads of Poland, without

himself knowing why or whither.



On seeing the Russian general he threw back his head, with its

long hair curling to his shoulders, in a majestically royal manner,

and looked inquiringly at the French colonel. The colonel respectfully

informed His Majesty of Balashev's mission, whose name he could not

pronounce.



"De Bal-macheve!" said the King (overcoming by his assurance the

difficulty that had presented itself to the colonel). "Charmed to make

your acquaintance, General!" he added, with a gesture of kingly

condescension.



As soon as the King began to speak loud and fast his royal dignity

instantly forsook him, and without noticing it he passed into his

natural tone of good-natured familiarity. He laid his hand on the

withers of Balashev's horse and said:



"Well, General, it all looks like war," as if regretting a

circumstance of which he was unable to judge.



"Your Majesty," replied Balashev, "my master, the Emperor, does

not desire war and as Your Majesty sees..." said Balashev, using the

words Your Majesty at every opportunity, with the affectation

unavoidable in frequently addressing one to whom the title was still a

novelty.



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Murat's face beamed with stupid satisfaction as he listened to

"Monsieur de Bal-macheve." But royaute oblige!* and he felt it

incumbent on him, as a king and an ally, to confer on state affairs

with Alexander's envoy. He dismounted, took Balashev's arm, and moving

a few steps away from his suite, which waited respectfully, began to

pace up and down with him, trying to speak significantly. He

referred to the fact that the Emperor Napoleon had resented the demand

that he should withdraw his troops from Prussia, especially when

that demand became generally known and the dignity of France was

thereby offended.





*"Royalty has its obligations."





Balashev replied that there was "nothing offensive in the demand,

because..." but Murat interrupted him.



"Then you don't consider the Emperor Alexander the aggressor?" he

asked unexpectedly, with a kindly and foolish smile.



Balashev told him why he considered Napoleon to be the originator of

the war.



"Oh, my dear general!" Murat again interrupted him, "with all my

heart I wish the Emperors may arrange the affair between them, and

that the war begun by no wish of mine may finish as quickly as

possible!" said he, in the tone of a servant who wants to remain

good friends with another despite a quarrel between their masters.



And he went on to inquiries about the Grand Duke and the state of

his health, and to reminiscences of the gay and amusing times he had

spent with him in Naples. Then suddenly, as if remembering his royal

dignity, Murat solemnly drew himself up, assumed the pose in which

he had stood at his coronation, and, waving his right arm, said:



"I won't detain you longer, General. I wish success to your

mission," and with his embroidered red mantle, his flowing feathers,

and his glittering ornaments, he rejoined his suite who were

respectfully awaiting him.



Balashev rode on, supposing from Murat's words that he would very

soon be brought before Napoleon himself. But instead of that, at the

next village the sentinels of Davout's infantry corps detained him

as the pickets of the vanguard had done, and an adjutant of the

corps commander, who was fetched, conducted him into the village to

Marshal Davout.









CHAPTER V



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Davout was to Napoleon what Arakcheev was to Alexander--though not a

coward like Arakcheev, he was as precise, as cruel, and as unable to

express his devotion to his monarch except by cruelty.



In the organism of states such men are necessary, as wolves are

necessary in the organism of nature, and they always exist, always

appear and hold their own, however incongruous their presence and

their proximity to the head of the government may be. This

inevitability alone can explain how the cruel Arakcheev, who tore

out a grenadier's mustache with his own hands, whose weak nerves

rendered him unable to face danger, and who was neither an educated

man nor a courtier, was able to maintain his powerful position with

Alexander, whose own character was chivalrous, noble, and gentle.



Balashev found Davout seated on a barrel in the shed of a

peasant's hut, writing--he was auditing accounts. Better quarters

could have been found him, but Marshal Davout was one of those men who

purposely put themselves in most depressing conditions to have a

justification for being gloomy. For the same reason they are always

hard at work and in a hurry. "How can I think of the bright side of

life when, as you see, I am sitting on a barrel and working in a dirty

shed?" the expression of his face seemed to say. The chief pleasure

and necessity of such men, when they encounter anyone who shows

animation, is to flaunt their own dreary, persistent activity.

Davout allowed himself that pleasure when Balashev was brought in.

He became still more absorbed in his task when the Russian general

entered, and after glancing over his spectacles at Balashev's face,

which was animated by the beauty of the morning and by his talk with

Murat, he did not rise or even stir, but scowled still more and

sneered malevolently.



When he noticed in Balashev's face the disagreeable impression

this reception produced, Davout raised his head and coldly asked

what he wanted.



Thinking he could have been received in such a manner only because

Davout did not know that he was adjutant general to the Emperor

Alexander and even his envoy to Napoleon, Balashev hastened to

inform him of his rank and mission. Contrary to his expectation,

Davout, after hearing him, became still surlier and ruder.



"Where is your dispatch?" he inquired. "Give it to me. I will send

it to the Emperor."



Balashev replied that he had been ordered to hand it personally to

the Emperor.



"Your Emperor's orders are obeyed in your army, but here," said

Davout, "you must do as you're told."



And, as if to make the Russian general still more conscious of his

dependence on brute force, Davout sent an adjutant to call the officer

on duty.

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Balashev took out the packet containing the Emperor's letter and

laid it on the table (made of a door with its hinges still hanging

on it, laid across two barrels). Davout took the packet and read the

inscription.



"You are perfectly at liberty to treat me with respect or not,"

protested Balashev, "but permit me to observe that I have the honor to

be adjutant general to His Majesty...."



Davout glanced at him silently and plainly derived pleasure from the

signs of agitation and confusion which appeared on Balashev's face.



"You will be treated as is fitting," said he and, putting the packet

in his pocket, left the shed.



A minute later the marshal's adjutant, de Castres, came in and

conducted Balashev to the quarters assigned him.



That day he dined with the marshal, at the same board on the

barrels.



Next day Davout rode out early and, after asking Balashev to come to

him, peremptorily requested him to remain there, to move on with the

baggage train should orders come for it to move, and to talk to no one

except Monsieur de Castres.



After four days of solitude, ennui, and consciousness of his

impotence and insignificance--particularly acute by contrast with

the sphere of power in which he had so lately moved--and after several

marches with the marshal's baggage and the French army, which occupied

the whole district, Balashev was brought to Vilna--now occupied by the

French--through the very gate by which he had left it four days

previously.



Next day the imperial gentleman-in-waiting, the Comte de Turenne,

came to Balashev and informed him of the Emperor Napoleon's wish to

honor him with an audience.



Four days before, sentinels of the Preobrazhensk regiment had

stood in front of the house to which Balashev was conducted, and now

two French grenadiers stood there in blue uniforms unfastened in front

and with shaggy caps on their heads, and an escort of hussars and

Uhlans and a brilliant suite of aides-de-camp, pages, and generals,

who were waiting for Napoleon to come out, were standing at the porch,

round his saddle horse and his Mameluke, Rustan. Napoleon received

Balashev in the very house in Vilna from which Alexander had

dispatched him on his mission.









CHAPTER VI

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Though Balashev was used to imperial pomp, he was amazed at the

luxury and magnificence of Napoleon's court.



The Comte de Turenne showed him into a big reception room where many

generals, gentlemen-in-waiting, and Polish magnates--several of whom

Balashev had seen at the court of the Emperor of Russia--were waiting.

Duroc said that Napoleon would receive the Russian general before

going for his ride.



After some minutes, the gentleman-in-waiting who was on duty came

into the great reception room and, bowing politely, asked Balashev

to follow him.



Balashev went into a small reception room, one door of which led

into a study, the very one from which the Russian Emperor had

dispatched him on his mission. He stood a minute or two, waiting. He

heard hurried footsteps beyond the door, both halves of it were opened

rapidly; all was silent and then from the study the sound was heard of

other steps, firm and resolute--they were those of Napoleon. He had

just finished dressing for his ride, and wore a blue uniform,

opening in front over a white waistcoat so long that it covered his

rotund stomach, white leather breeches tightly fitting the fat

thighs of his short legs, and Hessian boots. His short hair had

evidently just been brushed, but one lock hung down in the middle of

his broad forehead. His plump white neck stood out sharply above the

black collar of his uniform, and he smelled of Eau de Cologne. His

full face, rather young-looking, with its prominent chin, wore a

gracious and majestic expression of imperial welcome.



He entered briskly, with a jerk at every step and his head

slightly thrown back. His whole short corpulent figure with broad

thick shoulders, and chest and stomach involuntarily protruding, had

that imposing and stately appearance one sees in men of forty who live

in comfort. It was evident, too, that he was in the best of spirits

that day.



He nodded in answer to Balashav's low and respectful bow, and coming

up to him at once began speaking like a man who values every moment of

his time and does not condescend to prepare what he has to say but

is sure he will always say the right thing and say it well.



"Good day, General!" said he. "I have received the letter you

brought from the Emperor Alexander and am very glad to see you." He

glanced with his large eyes into Balashav's face and immediately

looked past him.



It was plain that Balashev's personality did not interest him at

all. Evidently only what took place within his own mind interested

him. Nothing outside himself had any significance for him, because

everything in the world, it seemed to him, depended entirely on his

will.



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"I do not, and did not, desire war," he continued, "but it has

been forced on me. Even now" (he emphasized the word) "I am ready to

receive any explanations you can give me."



And he began clearly and concisely to explain his reasons for

dissatisfaction with the Russian government. Judging by the calmly

moderate and amicable tone in which the French Emperor spoke, Balashev

was firmly persuaded that he wished for peace and intended to enter

into negotiations.



When Napoleon, having finished speaking, looked inquiringly at the

Russian envoy, Balashev began a speech he had prepared long before:

"Sire! The Emperor, my master..." but the sight of the Emperor's

eyes bent on him confused him. "You are flurried--compose yourself!"

Napoleon seemed to say, as with a scarcely perceptible smile he looked

at Balashev's uniform and sword.



Balashev recovered himself and began to speak. He said that the

Emperor Alexander did not consider Kurakin's demand for his

passports a sufficient cause for war; that Kurakin had acted on his

own initiative and without his sovereign's assent, that the Emperor

Alexander did not desire war, and had no relations with England.



"Not yet!" interposed Napoleon, and, as if fearing to give vent to

his feelings, he frowned and nodded slightly as a sign that Balashev

might proceed.



After saying all he had been instructed to say, Balashev added

that the Emperor Alexander wished for peace, but would not enter

into negotiations except on condition that... Here Balashev hesitated:

he remembered the words the Emperor Alexander had not written in his

letter, but had specially inserted in the rescript to Saltykov and had

told Balashev to repeat to Napoleon. Balashev remembered these

words, "So long as a single armed foe remains on Russian soil," but

some complex feeling restrained him. He could not utter them, though

he wished to do so. He grew confused and said: "On condition that

the French army retires beyond the Niemen."



Napoleon noticed Balashev's embarrassment when uttering these last

words; his face twitched and the calf of his left leg began to

quiver rhythmically. Without moving from where he stood he began

speaking in a louder tone and more hurriedly than before. During the

speech that followed, Balashev, who more than once lowered his eyes,

involuntarily noticed the quivering of Napoleon's left leg which

increased the more Napoleon raised his voice.



"I desire peace, no less than the Emperor Alexander," he began.

"Have I not for eighteen months been doing everything to obtain it?

I have waited eighteen months for explanations. But in order to

begin negotiations, what is demanded of me?" he said, frowning and

making an energetic gesture of inquiry with his small white plump

hand.



"The withdrawal of your army beyond the Niemen, sire," replied

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Balashev.



"The Niemen?" repeated Napoleon. "So now you want me to retire

beyond the Niemen--only the Niemen?" repeated Napoleon, looking

straight at Balashev.



The latter bowed his head respectfully.



Instead of the demand of four months earlier to withdraw from

Pomerania, only a withdrawal beyond the Niemen was now demanded.

Napoleon turned quickly and began to pace the room.



"You say the demand now is that I am to withdraw beyond the Niemen

before commencing negotiations, but in just the same way two months

ago the demand was that I should withdraw beyond the Vistula and the

Oder, and yet you are willing to negotiate."



He went in silence from one corner of the room to the other and

again stopped in front of Balashev. Balashev noticed that his left leg

was quivering faster than before and his face seemed petrified in

its stern expression. This quivering of his left leg was a thing

Napoleon was conscious of. "The vibration of my left calf is a great

sign with me," he remarked at a later date.



"Such demands as to retreat beyond the Vistula and Oder may be

made to a Prince of Baden, but not to me!" Napoleon almost screamed,

quite to his own surprise. "If you gave me Petersburg and Moscow I

could not accept such conditions. You say I have begun this war! But

who first joined his army? The Emperor Alexander, not I! And you offer

me negotiations when I have expended millions, when you are in

alliance with England, and when your position is a bad one. You

offer me negotiations! But what is the aim of your alliance with

England? What has she given you?" he continued hurriedly, evidently no

longer trying to show the advantages of peace and discuss its

possibility, but only to prove his own rectitude and power and

Alexander's errors and duplicity.



The commencement of his speech had obviously been made with the

intention of demonstrating the advantages of his position and

showing that he was nevertheless willing to negotiate. But he had

begun talking, and the more he talked the less could he control his

words.



The whole purport of his remarks now was evidently to exalt

himself and insult Alexander--just what he had least desired at the

commencement of the interview.



"I hear you have made peace with Turkey?"



Balashev bowed his head affirmatively.



"Peace has been concluded..." he began.



But Napoleon did not let him speak. He evidently wanted to do all

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the talking himself, and continued to talk with the sort of

eloquence and unrestrained irritability to which spoiled people are so

prone.



"Yes, I know you have made peace with the Turks without obtaining

Moldavia and Wallachia; I would have given your sovereign those

provinces as I gave him Finland. Yes," he went on, "I promised and

would have given the Emperor Alexander Moldavia and Wallachia, and now

he won't have those splendid provinces. Yet he might have united

them to his empire and in a single reign would have extended Russia

from the Gulf of Bothnia to the mouths of the Danube. Catherine the

Great could not have done more," said Napoleon, growing more and

more excited as he paced up and down the room, repeating to Balashev

almost the very words he had used to Alexander himself at Tilsit. "All

that, he would have owed to my friendship. Oh, what a splendid reign!"

he repeated several times, then paused, drew from his pocket a gold

snuffbox, lifted it to his nose, and greedily sniffed at it.



"What a splendid reign the Emperor Alexander's might have been!"



He looked compassionately at Balashev, and as soon as the latter

tried to make some rejoinder hastily interrupted him.



"What could he wish or look for that he would not have obtained

through my friendship?" demanded Napoleon, shrugging his shoulders

in perplexity. "But no, he has preferred to surround himself with my

enemies, and with whom? With Steins, Armfeldts, Bennigsens, and

Wintzingerodes! Stein, a traitor expelled from his own country;

Armfeldt, a rake and an intriguer; Wintzingerode, a fugitive French

subject; Bennigsen, rather more of a soldier than the others, but

all the same an incompetent who was unable to do anything in 1807

and who should awaken terrible memories in the Emperor Alexander's

mind.... Granted that were they competent they might be made use

of," continued Napoleon--hardly able to keep pace in words with the

rush of thoughts that incessantly sprang up, proving how right and

strong he was (in his perception the two were one and the same)-

"but they are not even that! They are neither fit for war nor peace!

Barclay is said to be the most capable of them all, but I cannot say

so, judging by his first movements. And what are they doing, all these

courtiers? Pfuel proposes, Armfeldt disputes, Bennigsen considers, and

Barclay, called on to act, does not know what to decide on, and time

passes bringing no result. Bagration alone is a military man. He's

stupid, but he has experience, a quick eye, and resolution.... And

what role is your young monarch playing in that monstrous crowd?

They compromise him and throw on him the responsibility for all that

happens. A sovereign should not be with the army unless he is a

general!" said Napoleon, evidently uttering these words as a direct

challenge to the Emperor. He knew how Alexander desired to be a

military commander.



"The campaign began only a week ago, and you haven't even been

able to defend Vilna. You are cut in two and have been driven out of

the Polish provinces. Your army is grumbling."



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"On the contrary, Your Majesty," said Balashev, hardly able to

remember what had been said to him and following these verbal

fireworks with difficulty, "the troops are burning with eagerness..."



"I know everything!" Napoleon interrupted him. "I know everything. I

know the number of your battalions as exactly as I know my own. You

have not two hundred thousand men, and I have three times that number.

I give you my word of honor," said Napoleon, forgetting that his

word of honor could carry no weight--"I give you my word of honor that

I have five hundred and thirty thousand men this side of the

Vistula. The Turks will be of no use to you; they are worth nothing

and have shown it by making peace with you. As for the Swedes--it is

their fate to be governed by mad kings. Their king was insane and they

changed him for another--Bernadotte, who promptly went mad--for no

Swede would ally himself with Russia unless he were mad."



Napoleon grinned maliciously and again raised his snuffbox to his

nose.



Balashev knew how to reply to each of Napoleon's remarks, and

would have done so; he continually made the gesture of a man wishing

to say something, but Napoleon always interrupted him. To the

alleged insanity of the Swedes, Balashev wished to reply that when

Russia is on her side Sweden is practically an island: but Napoleon

gave an angry exclamation to drown his voice. Napoleon was in that

state of irritability in which a man has to talk, talk, and talk,

merely to convince himself that he is in the right. Balashev began

to feel uncomfortable: as envoy he feared to demean his dignity and

felt the necessity of replying; but, as a man, he shrank before the

transport of groundless wrath that had evidently seized Napoleon. He

knew that none of the words now uttered by Napoleon had any

significance, and that Napoleon himself would be ashamed of them

when he came to his senses. Balashev stood with downcast eyes, looking

at the movements of Napoleon's stout legs and trying to avoid

meeting his eyes.



"But what do I care about your allies?" said Napoleon. "I have

allies--the Poles. There are eighty thousand of them and they fight

like lions. And there will be two hundred thousand of them."



And probably still more perturbed by the fact that he had uttered

this obvious falsehood, and that Balashev still stood silently

before him in the same attitude of submission to fate, Napoleon

abruptly turned round, drew close to Balashev's face, and,

gesticulating rapidly and energetically with his white hands, almost

shouted:



"Know that if you stir up Prussia against me, I'll wipe it off the

map of Europe!" he declared, his face pale and distorted by anger, and

he struck one of his small hands energetically with the other. "Yes, I

will throw you back beyond the Dvina and beyond the Dnieper, and

will re-erect against you that barrier which it was criminal and blind

of Europe to allow to be destroyed. Yes, that is what will happen to

you. That is what you have gained by alienating me!" And he walked

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silently several times up and down the room, his fat shoulders

twitching.



He put his snuffbox into his waistcoat pocket, took it out again,

lifted it several times to his nose, and stopped in front of Balashev.

He paused, looked ironically straight into Balashev's eyes, and said

in a quiet voice:



"And yet what a splendid reign your master might have had!"



Balashev, feeling it incumbent on him to reply, said that from the

Russian side things did not appear in so gloomy a light. Napoleon

was silent, still looking derisively at him and evidently not

listening to him. Balashev said that in Russia the best results were

expected from the war. Napoleon nodded condescendingly, as if to

say, "I know it's your duty to say that, but you don't believe it

yourself. I have convinced you."



When Balashev had ended, Napoleon again took out his snuffbox,

sniffed at it, and stamped his foot twice on the floor as a signal.

The door opened, a gentleman-in-waiting, bending respectfully,

handed the Emperor his hat and gloves; another brought him a pocket

handkerchief. Napoleon, without giving them a glance, turned to

Balashev:



"Assure the Emperor Alexander from me," said he, taking his hat,

"that I am as devoted to him as before: I know him thoroughly and very

highly esteem his lofty qualities. I will detain you no longer,

General; you shall receive my letter to the Emperor."



And Napoleon went quickly to the door. Everyone in the reception

room rushed forward and descended the staircase.









CHAPTER VII





After all that Napoleon had said to him--those bursts of anger and

the last dryly spoken words: "I will detain you no longer, General;

you shall receive my letter," Balashev felt convinced that Napoleon

would not wish to see him, and would even avoid another meeting with

him--an insulted envoy--especially as he had witnessed his unseemly

anger. But, to his surprise, Balashev received, through Duroc, an

invitation to dine with the Emperor that day.



Bessieres, Caulaincourt, and Berthier were present at that dinner.



Napoleon met Balashev cheerfully and amiably. He not only showed

no sign of constraint or self-reproach on account of his outburst that

morning, but, on the contrary, tried to reassure Balashev. It was

evident that he had long been convinced that it was impossible for him

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to make a mistake, and that in his perception whatever he did was

right, not because it harmonized with any idea of right and wrong, but

because he did it.



The Emperor was in very good spirits after his ride through Vilna,

where crowds of people had rapturously greeted and followed him.

From all the windows of the streets through which he rode, rugs,

flags, and his monogram were displayed, and the Polish ladies,

welcoming him, waved their handkerchiefs to him.



At dinner, having placed Balashev beside him, Napoleon not only

treated him amiably but behaved as if Balashev were one of his own

courtiers, one of those who sympathized with his plans and ought to

rejoice at his success. In the course of conversation he mentioned

Moscow and questioned Balashev about the Russian capital, not merely

as an interested traveler asks about a new city he intends to visit,

but as if convinced that Balashev, as a Russian, must be flattered

by his curiosity.



"How many inhabitants are there in Moscow? How many houses? Is it

true that Moscow is called 'Holy Moscow'? How many churches are

there in Moscow?" he asked.



And receiving the reply that there were more than two hundred

churches, he remarked:



"Why such a quantity of churches?"



"The Russians are very devout," replied Balashev.



"But a large number of monasteries and churches is always a sign

of the backwardness of a people," said Napoleon, turning to

Caulaincourt for appreciation of this remark.



Balashev respectfully ventured to disagree with the French Emperor.



"Every country has its own character," said he.



"But nowhere in Europe is there anything like that," said Napoleon.



"I beg your Majesty's pardon," returned Balashev, "besides Russia

there is Spain, where there are also many churches and monasteries."



This reply of Balashev's, which hinted at the recent defeats of

the French in Spain, was much appreciated when he related it at

Alexander's court, but it was not much appreciated at Napoleon's

dinner, where it passed unnoticed.



The uninterested and perplexed faces of the marshals showed that

they were puzzled as to what Balashev's tone suggested. "If there is a

point we don't see it, or it is not at all witty," their expressions

seemed to say. So little was his rejoinder appreciated that Napoleon

did not notice it at all and naively asked Balashev through what towns

the direct road from there to Moscow passed. Balashev, who was on

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the alert all through the dinner, replied that just as "all roads lead

to Rome," so all roads lead to Moscow: there were many roads, and

"among them the road through Poltava, which Charles XII chose."

Balashev involuntarily flushed with pleasure at the aptitude of this

reply, but hardly had he uttered the word Poltava before

Caulaincourt began speaking of the badness of the road from Petersburg

to Moscow and of his Petersburg reminiscences.



After dinner they went to drink coffee in Napoleon's study, which

four days previously had been that of the Emperor Alexander.

Napoleon sat down, toying with his Sevres coffee cup, and motioned

Balashev to a chair beside him.



Napoleon was in that well-known after-dinner mood which, more than

any reasoned cause, makes a man contented with himself and disposed to

consider everyone his friend. It seemed to him that he was

surrounded by men who adored him: and he felt convinced that, after

his dinner, Balashev too was his friend and worshiper. Napoleon turned

to him with a pleasant, though slightly ironic, smile.



"They tell me this is the room the Emperor Alexander occupied?

Strange, isn't it, General?" he said, evidently not doubting that this

remark would be agreeable to his hearer since it went to prove his,

Napoleon's, superiority to Alexander.



Balashev made no reply and bowed his head in silence.



"Yes. Four days ago in this room, Wintzingerode and Stein were

deliberating," continued Napoleon with the same derisive and

self-confident smile. "What I can't understand," he went on, "is

that the Emperor Alexander has surrounded himself with my personal

enemies. That I do not... understand. Has he not thought that I may

the same?" and he turned inquiringly to Balashev, and evidently this

thought turned him back on to the track of his morning's anger,

which was still fresh in him.



"And let him know that I will do so!" said Napoleon, rising and

pushing his cup away with his hand. "I'll drive all his Wurttemberg,

Baden, and Weimar relations out of Germany.... Yes. I'll drive them

out. Let him prepare an asylum for them in Russia!"



Balashev bowed his head with an air indicating that he would like to

make his bow and leave, and only listened because he could not help

hearing what was said to him. Napoleon did not notice this expression;

he treated Balashev not as an envoy from his enemy, but as a man now

fully devoted to him and who must rejoice at his former master's

humiliation.



"And why has the Emperor Alexander taken command of the armies? What

is the good of that? War is my profession, but his business is to

reign and not to command armies! Why has he taken on himself such a

responsibility?"



Again Napoleon brought out his snuffbox, paced several times up

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and down the room in silence, and then, suddenly and unexpectedly,

went up to Balashev and with a slight smile, as confidently,

quickly, and simply as if he were doing something not merely

important but pleasing to Balashev, he raised his hand to the

forty-year-old Russian general's face and, taking him by the ear,

pulled it gently, smiling with his lips only.



To have one's ear pulled by the Emperor was considered the

greatest honor and mark of favor at the French court.



"Well, adorer and courtier of the Emperor Alexander, why don't you

say anything?" said he, as if it was ridiculous, in his presence, to

be the adorer and courtier of anyone but himself, Napoleon. "Are the

horses ready for the general?" he added, with a slight inclination

of his head in reply to Balashev's bow. "Let him have mine, he has a

long way to go!"



The letter taken by Balashev was the last Napoleon sent to

Alexander. Every detail of the interview was communicated to the

Russian monarch, and the war began...









CHAPTER VIII





After his interview with Pierre in Moscow, Prince Andrew went to

Petersburg, on business as he told his family, but really to meet

Anatole Kuragin whom he felt it necessary to encounter. On reaching

Petersburg he inquired for Kuragin but the latter had already left the

city. Pierre had warned his brother-in-law that Prince Andrew was on

his track. Anatole Kuragin promptly obtained an appointment from the

Minister of War and went to join the army in Moldavia. While in

Petersburg Prince Andrew met Kutuzov, his former commander who was

always well disposed toward him, and Kutuzov suggested that he

should accompany him to the army in Moldavia, to which the old general

had been appointed commander in chief. So Prince Andrew, having

received an appointment on the headquarters staff, left for Turkey.



Prince Andrew did not think it proper to write and challenge

Kuragin. He thought that if he challenged him without some fresh cause

it might compromise the young Countess Rostova and so he wanted to

meet Kuragin personally in order to find a fresh pretext for a duel.

But he again failed to meet Kuragin in Turkey, for soon after Prince

Andrew arrived, the latter returned to Russia. In a new country,

amid new conditions, Prince Andrew found life easier to bear. After

his betrothed had broken faith with him--which he felt the more

acutely the more he tried to conceal its effects--the surroundings

in which he had been happy became trying to him, and the freedom and

independence he had once prized so highly were still more so. Not only

could he no longer think the thoughts that had first come to him as he

lay gazing at the sky on the field of Austerlitz and had later

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enlarged upon with Pierre, and which had filled his solitude at

Bogucharovo and then in Switzerland and Rome, but he even dreaded to

recall them and the bright and boundless horizons they had

revealed. He was now concerned only with the nearest practical matters

unrelated to his past interests, and he seized on these the more

eagerly the more those past interests were closed to him. It was as if

that lofty, infinite canopy of heaven that had once towered above

him had suddenly turned into a low, solid vault that weighed him down,

in which all was clear, but nothing eternal or mysterious.



Of the activities that presented themselves to him, army service was

the simplest and most familiar. As a general on duty on Kutuzov's

staff, he applied himself to business with zeal and perseverance and

surprised Kutuzov by his willingness and accuracy in work. Not

having found Kuragin in Turkey, Prince Andrew did not think it

necessary to rush back to Russia after him, but all the same he knew

that however long it might be before he met Kuragin, despite his

contempt for him and despite all the proofs he deduced to convince

himself that it was not worth stooping to a conflict with him--he knew

that when he did meet him he would not be able to resist calling him

out, any more than a ravenous man can help snatching at food. And

the consciousness that the insult was not yet avenged, that his rancor

was still unspent, weighed on his heart and poisoned the artificial

tranquillity which he managed to obtain in Turkey by means of

restless, plodding, and rather vainglorious and ambitious activity.



In the year 1812, when news of the war with Napoleon reached

Bucharest--where Kutuzov had been living for two months, passing his

days and nights with a Wallachian woman--Prince Andrew asked Kutuzov

to transfer him to the Western Army. Kutuzov, who was already weary of

Bolkonski's activity which seemed to reproach his own idleness, very

readily let him go and gave him a mission to Barclay de Tolly.



Before joining the Western Army which was then, in May, encamped

at Drissa, Prince Andrew visited Bald Hills which was directly on

his way, being only two miles off the Smolensk highroad. During the

last three years there had been so many changes in his life, he had

thought, felt, and seen so much (having traveled both in the east

and the west), that on reaching Bald Hills it struck him as strange

and unexpected to find the way of life there unchanged and still the

same in every detail. He entered through the gates with their stone

pillars and drove up the avenue leading to the house as if he were

entering an enchanted, sleeping castle. The same old stateliness,

the same cleanliness, the same stillness reigned there, and inside

there was the same furniture, the same walls, sounds, and smell, and

the same timid faces, only somewhat older. Princess Mary was still the

same timid, plain maiden getting on in years, uselessly and

joylessly passing the best years of her life in fear and constant

suffering. Mademoiselle Bourienne was the same coquettish,

self-satisfied girl, enjoying every moment of her existence and full

of joyous hopes for the future. She had merely become more

self-confident, Prince Andrew thought. Dessalles, the tutor he had

brought from Switzerland, was wearing a coat of Russian cut and

talking broken Russian to the servants, but was still the same

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narrowly intelligent, conscientious, and pedantic preceptor. The old

prince had changed in appearance only by the loss of a tooth, which

left a noticeable gap on one side of his mouth; in character he was

the same as ever, only showing still more irritability and

skepticism as to what was happening in the world. Little Nicholas

alone had changed. He had grown, become rosier, had curly dark hair,

and, when merry and laughing, quite unconsciously lifted the upper lip

of his pretty little mouth just as the little princess used to do.

He alone did not obey the law of immutability in the enchanted,

sleeping castle. But though externally all remained as of old, the

inner relations of all these people had changed since Prince Andrew

had seen them last. The household was divided into two alien and

hostile camps, who changed their habits for his sake and only met

because he was there. To the one camp belonged the old prince,

Madmoiselle Bourienne, and the architect; to the other Princess

Mary, Dessalles, little Nicholas, and all the old nurses and maids.



During his stay at Bald Hills all the family dined together, but

they were ill at ease and Prince Andrew felt that he was a visitor for

whose sake an exception was being made and that his presence made them

all feel awkward. Involuntarily feeling this at dinner on the first

day, he was taciturn, and the old prince noticing this also became

morosely dumb and retired to his apartments directly after dinner.

In the evening, when Prince Andrew went to him and, trying to rouse

him, began to tell him of the young Count Kamensky's campaign, the old

prince began unexpectedly to talk about Princess Mary, blaming her for

her superstitions and her dislike of Mademoiselle Bourienne, who, he

said, was the only person really attached to him.



The old prince said that if he was ill it was only because of

Princess Mary: that she purposely worried and irritated him, and

that by indulgence and silly talk she was spoiling little Prince

Nicholas. The old prince knew very well that he tormented his daughter

and that her life was very hard, but he also knew that he could not

help tormenting her and that she deserved it. "Why does Prince Andrew,

who sees this, say nothing to me about his sister? Does he think me

a scoundrel, or an old fool who, without any reason, keeps his own

daughter at a distance and attaches this Frenchwoman to himself? He

doesn't understand, so I must explain it, and he must hear me out,"

thought the old prince. And he began explaining why he could not put

up with his daughter's unreasonable character.



"If you ask me," said Prince Andrew, without looking up (he was

censuring his father for the first time in his life), "I did not

wish to speak about it, but as you ask me I will give you my frank

opinion. If there is any misunderstanding and discord between you

and Mary, I can't blame her for it at all. I know how she loves and

respects you. Since you ask me," continued Prince Andrew, becoming

irritable--as he was always liable to do of late--"I can only say that

if there are any misunderstandings they are caused by that worthless

woman, who is not fit to be my sister's companion."



The old man at first stared fixedly at his son, and an unnatural

smile disclosed the fresh gap between his teeth to which Prince Andrew

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could not get accustomed.



"What companion, my dear boy? Eh? You've already been talking it

over! Eh?"



"Father, I did not want to judge," said Prince Andrew, in a hard and

bitter tone, "but you challenged me, and I have said, and always shall

say, that Mary is not to blame, but those to blame--the one to

blame--is that Frenchwoman."



"Ah, he has passed judgment... passed judgement!" said the old man

in a low voice and, as it seemed to Prince Andrew, with some

embarrassment, but then he suddenly jumped up and cried: "Be off, be

off! Let not a trace of you remain here!..."





Prince Andrew wished to leave at once, but Princess Mary persuaded

him to stay another day. That day he did not see his father, who did

not leave his room and admitted no one but Mademoiselle Bourienne

and Tikhon, but asked several times whether his son had gone. Next

day, before leaving, Prince Andrew went to his son's rooms. The boy,

curly-headed like his mother and glowing with health, sat on his knee,

and Prince Andrew began telling him the story of Bluebeard, but fell

into a reverie without finishing the story. He thought not of this

pretty child, his son whom he held on his knee, but of himself. He

sought in himself either remorse for having angered his father or

regret at leaving home for the first time in his life on bad terms

with him, and was horrified to find neither. What meant still more

to him was that he sought and did not find in himself the former

tenderness for his son which he had hoped to reawaken by caressing the

boy and taking him on his knee.



"Well, go on!" said his son.



Prince Andrew, without replying, put him down from his knee and went

out of the room.



As soon as Prince Andrew had given up his daily occupations, and

especially on returning to the old conditions of life amid which he

had been happy, weariness of life overcame him with its former

intensity, and he hastened to escape from these memories and to find

some work as soon as possible.



"So you've decided to go, Andrew?" asked his sister.



"Thank God that I can," replied Prince Andrew. "I am very sorry

you can't."



"Why do you say that?" replied Princess Mary. "Why do you say

that, when you are going to this terrible war, and he is so old?

Mademoiselle Bourienne says he has been asking about you...."



As soon as she began to speak of that, her lips trembled and her

tears began to fall. Prince Andrew turned away and began pacing the

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room.



"Ah, my God! my God! When one thinks who and what--what trash--can

cause people misery!" he said with a malignity that alarmed Princess

Mary.



She understood that when speaking of "trash" he referred not only to

Mademoiselle Bourienne, the cause of her misery, but also to the man

who had ruined his own happiness.



"Andrew! One thing I beg, I entreat of you!" she said, touching

his elbow and looking at him with eyes that shone through her tears.

"I understand you" (she looked down). "Don't imagine that sorrow is

the work of men. Men are His tools." She looked a little above

Prince Andrew's head with the confident, accustomed look with which

one looks at the place where a familiar portrait hangs. "Sorrow is

sent by Him, not by men. Men are His instruments, they are not to

blame. If you think someone has wronged you, forget it and forgive! We

have no right to punish. And then you will know the happiness of

forgiving."



"If I were a woman I would do so, Mary. That is a woman's virtue.

But a man should not and cannot forgive and forget," he replied, and

though till that moment he had not been thinking of Kuragin, all his

unexpended anger suddenly swelled up in his heart.



"If Mary is already persuading me forgive, it means that I ought

long ago to have punished him," he thought. And giving her no

further reply, he began thinking of the glad vindictive moment when he

would meet Kuragin who he knew was now in the army.



Princess Mary begged him to stay one day more, saying that she

knew how unhappy her father would be if Andrew left without being

reconciled to him, but Prince Andrew replied that he would probably

soon be back again from the army and would certainly write to his

father, but that the longer he stayed now the more embittered their

differences would become.



"Good-by, Andrew! Remember that misfortunes come from God, and men

are never to blame," were the last words he heard from his sister when

he took leave of her.



"Then it must be so!" thought Prince Andrew as he drove out of the

avenue from the house at Bald Hills. "She, poor innocent creature,

is left to be victimized by an old man who has outlived his wits.

The old man feels he is guilty, but cannot change himself. My boy is

growing up and rejoices in life, in which like everybody else he

will deceive or be deceived. And I am off to the army. Why? I myself

don't know. I want to meet that man whom I despise, so as to give

him a chance to kill and laugh at me!"



These conditions of life had been the same before, but then they

were all connected, while now they had all tumbled to pieces. Only

senseless things, lacking coherence, presented themselves one after

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another to Prince Andrew's mind.









CHAPTER IX





Prince Andrew reached the general headquarters of the army at the

end of June. The first army, with which was the Emperor, occupied

the fortified camp at Drissa; the second army was retreating, trying

to effect a junction with the first one from which it was said to be

cut off by large French forces. Everyone was dissatisfied with the

general course of affairs in the Russian army, but no one

anticipated any danger of invasion of the Russian provinces, and no

one thought the war would extend farther than the western, the Polish,

provinces.



Prince Andrew found Barclay de Tolly, to whom he had been

assigned, on the bank of the Drissa. As there was not a single town or

large village in the vicinity of the camp, the immense number of

generals and courtiers accompanying the army were living in the best

houses of the villages on both sides of the river, over a radius of

six miles. Barclay de Tolly was quartered nearly three miles from

the Emperor. He received Bolkonski stiffly and coldly and told him

in his foreign accent that he would mention him to the Emperor for a

decision as to his employment, but asked him meanwhile to remain on

his staff. Anatole Kuragin, whom Prince Andrew had hoped to find

with the army, was not there. He had gone to Petersburg, but Prince

Andrew was glad to hear this. His mind was occupied by the interests

of the center that was conducting a gigantic war, and he was glad to

be free for a while from the distraction caused by the thought of

Kuragin. During the first four days, while no duties were required

of him, Prince Andrew rode round the whole fortified camp and, by

the aid of his own knowledge and by talks with experts, tried to

form a definite opinion about it. But the question whether the camp

was advantageous or disadvantageous remained for him undecided.

Already from his military experience and what he had seen in the

Austrian campaign, he had come to the conclusion that in war the

most deeply considered plans have no significance and that all depends

on the way unexpected movements of the enemy--that cannot be foreseen-

are met, and on how and by whom the whole matter is handled. To

clear up this last point for himself, Prince Andrew, utilizing his

position and acquaintances, tried to fathom the character of the

control of the army and of the men and parties engaged in it, and he

deduced for himself the following of the state of affairs.



While the Emperor had still been at Vilna, the forces had been

divided into three armies. First, the army under Barclay de Tolly,

secondly, the army under Bagration, and thirdly, the one commanded

by Tormasov. The Emperor was with the first army, but not as commander

in chief. In the orders issued it was stated, not that the Emperor

would take command, but only that he would be with the army. The

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Emperor, moreover, had with him not a commander in chief's staff but

the imperial headquarters staff. In attendance on him was the head

of the imperial staff, Quartermaster General Prince Volkonski, as well

as generals, imperial aides-de-camp, diplomatic officials, and a large

number of foreigners, but not the army staff. Besides these, there

were in attendance on the Emperor without any definite appointments:

Arakcheev, the ex-Minister of War; Count Bennigsen, the senior general

in rank; the Grand Duke Tsarevich Constantine Pavlovich; Count

Rumyantsev, the Chancellor; Stein, a former Prussian minister;

Armfeldt, a Swedish general; Pfuel, the chief author of the plan of

campaign; Paulucci, an adjutant general and Sardinian emigre;

Wolzogen--and many others. Though these men had no military

appointment in the army, their position gave them influence, and often

a corps commander, or even the commander in chief, did not know in

what capacity he was questioned by Bennigsen, the Grand Duke,

Arakcheev, or Prince Volkonski, or was given this or that advice and

did not know whether a certain order received in the form of advice

emanated from the man who gave it or from the Emperor and whether it

had to be executed or not. But this was only the external condition;

the essential significance of the presence of the Emperor and of all

these people, from a courtier's point of view (and in an Emperor's

vicinity all became courtiers), was clear to everyone. It was this:

the Emperor did not assume the title of commander in chief, but

disposed of all the armies; the men around him were his assistants.

Arakcheev was a faithful custodian to enforce order and acted as the

sovereign's bodyguard. Bennigsen was a landlord in the Vilna

province who appeared to be doing the honors of the district, but

was in reality a good general, useful as an adviser and ready at

hand to replace Barclay. The Grand Duke was there because it suited

him to be. The ex-Minister Stein was there because his advice was

useful and the Emperor Alexander held him in high esteem personally.

Armfeldt virulently hated Napoleon and was a general full of

self-confidence, a quality that always influenced Alexander.

Paulucci was there because he was bold and decided in speech. The

adjutants general were there because they always accompanied the

Emperor, and lastly and chiefly Pfuel was there because he had drawn

up the plan of campaign against Napoleon and, having induced Alexander

to believe in the efficacy of that plan, was directing the whole

business of the war. With Pfuel was Wolzogen, who expressed Pfuel's

thoughts in a more comprehensible way than Pfuel himself (who was a

harsh, bookish theorist, self-confident to the point of despising

everyone else) was able to do.



Besides these Russians and foreigners who propounded new and

unexpected ideas every day--especially the foreigners, who did so with

a boldness characteristic of people employed in a country not their

own--there were many secondary personages accompanying the army

because their principals were there.



Among the opinions and voices in this immense, restless,

brilliant, and proud sphere, Prince Andrew noticed the following

sharply defined subdivisions of and parties:



The first party consisted of Pfuel and his adherents--military

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theorists who believed in a science of war with immutable laws--laws

of oblique movements, outflankings, and so forth. Pfuel and his

adherents demanded a retirement into the depths of the country in

accordance with precise laws defined by a pseudo-theory of war, and

they saw only barbarism, ignorance, or evil intention in every

deviation from that theory. To this party belonged the foreign nobles,

Wolzogen, Wintzingerode, and others, chiefly Germans.



The second party was directly opposed to the first; one extreme,

as always happens, was met by representatives of the other. The

members of this party were those who had demanded an advance from

Vilna into Poland and freedom from all prearranged plans. Besides

being advocates of bold action, this section also represented

nationalism, which made them still more one-sided in the dispute. They

were Russians: Bagration, Ermolov (who was beginning to come to the

front), and others. At that time a famous joke of Ermolov's was

being circulated, that as a great favor he had petitioned the

Emperor to make him a German. The men of that party, remembering

Suvorov, said that what one had to do was not to reason, or stick pins

into maps, but to fight, beat the enemy, keep him out of Russia, and

not let the army get discouraged.



To the third party--in which the Emperor had most confidence-

belonged the courtiers who tried to arrange compromises between the

other two. The members of this party, chiefly civilians and to whom

Arakcheev belonged, thought and said what men who have no

convictions but wish to seem to have some generally say. They said

that undoubtedly war, particularly against such a genius as

Bonaparte (they called him Bonaparte now), needs most deeply devised

plans and profound scientific knowledge and in that respect Pfuel

was a genius, but at the same time it had to be acknowledged that

the theorists are often one sided, and therefore one should not

trust them absolutely, but should also listen to what Pfuel's

opponents and practical men of experience in warfare had to say, and

then choose a middle course. They insisted on the retention of the

camp at Drissa, according to Pfuel's plan, but on changing the

movements of the other armies. Though, by this course, neither one aim

nor the other could be attained, yet it seemed best to the adherents

of this third party.



Of a fourth opinion the most conspicuous representative was the

Tsarevich, who could not forget his disillusionment at Austerlitz,

where he had ridden out at the head of the Guards, in his casque and

cavalry uniform as to a review, expecting to crush the French

gallantly; but unexpectedly finding himself in the front line had

narrowly escaped amid the general confusion. The men of this party had

both the quality and the defect of frankness in their opinions. They

feared Napoleon, recognized his strength and their own weakness, and

frankly said so. They said: "Nothing but sorrow, shame, and ruin

will come of all this! We have abandoned Vilna and Vitebsk and shall

abandon Drissa. The only reasonable thing left to do is to conclude

peace as soon as possible, before we are turned out of Petersburg."



This view was very general in the upper army circles and found

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support also in Petersburg and from the chancellor, Rumyantsev, who,

for other reasons of state, was in favor of peace.



The fifth party consisted of those who were adherents of Barclay

de Tolly, not so much as a man but as minister of war and commander in

chief. "Be he what he may" (they always began like that), "he is an

honest, practical man and we have nobody better. Give him real

power, for war cannot be conducted successfully without unity of

command, and he will show what he can do, as he did in Finland. If our

army is well organized and strong and has withdrawn to Drissa

without suffering any defeats, we owe this entirely to Barclay. If

Barclay is now to be superseded by Bennigsen all will be lost, for

Bennigsen showed his incapacity already in 1807."



The sixth party, the Bennigsenites, said, on the contrary, that at

any rate there was no one more active and experienced than

Bennigsen: "and twist about as you may, you will have to come to

Bennigsen eventually. Let the others make mistakes now!" said they,

arguing that our retirement to Drissa was a most shameful reverse

and an unbroken series of blunders. "The more mistakes that are made

the better. It will at any rate be understood all the sooner that

things cannot go on like this. What is wanted is not some Barclay or

other, but a man like Bennigsen, who made his mark in 1807, and to

whom Napoleon himself did justice--a man whose authority would be

willingly recognized, and Bennigsen is the only such man."



The seventh party consisted of the sort of people who are always

to be found, especially around young sovereigns, and of whom there

were particularly many round Alexander--generals and imperial

aides-de-camp passionately devoted to the Emperor, not merely as a

monarch but as a man, adoring him sincerely and disinterestedly, as

Rostov had done in 1805, and who saw in him not only all the virtues

but all human capabilities as well. These men, though enchanted with

the sovereign for refusing the command of the army, yet blamed him for

such excessive modesty, and only desired and insisted that their

adored sovereign should abandon his diffidence and openly announce

that he would place himself at the head of the army, gather round

him a commander in chief's staff, and, consulting experienced

theoreticians and practical men where necessary, would himself lead

the troops, whose spirits would thereby be raised to the highest

pitch.



The eighth and largest group, which in its enormous numbers was to

the others as ninety-nine to one, consisted of men who desired neither

peace nor war, neither an advance nor a defensive camp at the Drissa

or anywhere else, neither Barclay nor the Emperor, neither Pfuel nor

Bennigsen, but only the one most essential thing--as much advantage

and pleasure for themselves as possible. In the troubled waters of

conflicting and intersecting intrigues that eddied about the Emperor's

headquarters, it was possible to succeed in many ways unthinkable at

other times. A man who simply wished to retain his lucrative post

would today agree with Pfuel, tomorrow with his opponent, and the

day after, merely to avoid responsibility or to please the Emperor,

would declare that he had no opinion at all on the matter. Another who

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wished to gain some advantage would attract the Emperor's attention by

loudly advocating the very thing the Emperor had hinted at the day

before, and would dispute and shout at the council, beating his breast

and challenging those who did not agree with him to duels, thereby

proving that he was prepared to sacrifice himself for the common good.

A third, in the absence of opponents, between two councils would

simply solicit a special gratuity for his faithful services, well

knowing that at that moment people would be too busy to refuse him.

A fourth while seemingly overwhelmed with work would often come

accidentally under the Emperor's eye. A fifth, to achieve his

long-cherished aim of dining with the Emperor, would stubbornly insist

on the correctness or falsity of some newly emerging opinion and for

this object would produce arguments more or less forcible and correct.



All the men of this party were fishing for rubles, decorations,

and promotions, and in this pursuit watched only the weathercock of

imperial favor, and directly they noticed it turning in any direction,

this whole drone population of the army began blowing hard that way,

so that it was all the harder for the Emperor to turn it elsewhere.

Amid the uncertainties of the position, with the menace of serious

danger giving a peculiarly threatening character to everything, amid

this vortex of intrigue, egotism, conflict of views and feelings,

and the diversity of race among these people--this eighth and

largest party of those preoccupied with personal interests imparted

great confusion and obscurity to the common task. Whatever question

arose, a swarm of these drones, without having finished their

buzzing on a previous theme, flew over to the new one and by their hum

drowned and obscured the voices of those who were disputing honestly.



From among all these parties, just at the time Prince Andrew reached

the army, another, a ninth party, was being formed and was beginning

to raise its voice. This was the party of the elders, reasonable men

experienced and capable in state affairs, who, without sharing any

of those conflicting opinions, were able to take a detached view of

what was going on at the staff at headquarters and to consider means

of escape from this muddle, indecision, intricacy, and weakness.



The men of this party said and thought that what was wrong

resulted chiefly from the Emperor's presence in the army with his

military court and from the consequent presence there of an

indefinite, conditional, and unsteady fluctuation of relations,

which is in place at court but harmful in an army; that a sovereign

should reign but not command the army, and that the only way out of

the position would be for the Emperor and his court to leave the army;

that the mere presence of the Emperor paralyzed the action of fifty

thousand men required to secure his personal safety, and that the

worst commander in chief if independent would be better than the

very best one trammeled by the presence and authority of the monarch.



Just at the time Prince Andrew was living unoccupied at Drissa,

Shishkov, the Secretary of State and one of the chief

representatives of this party, wrote a letter to the Emperor which

Arakcheev and Balashev agreed to sign. In this letter, availing

himself of permission given him by the Emperor to discuss the

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general course of affairs, he respectfully suggested--on the plea that

it was necessary for the sovereign to arouse a warlike spirit in the

people of the capital--that the Emperor should leave the army.



That arousing of the people by their sovereign and his call to

them to defend their country--the very incitement which was the

chief cause of Russia's triumph in so far as it was produced by the

Tsar's personal presence in Moscow--was suggested to the Emperor,

and accepted by him, as a pretext for quitting the army.









CHAPTER X





This letter had not yet been presented to the Emperor when

Barclay, one day at dinner, informed Bolkonski that the sovereign

wished to see him personally, to question him about Turkey, and that

Prince Andrew was to present himself at Bennigsen's quarters at six

that evening.



News was received at the Emperor's quarters that very day of a fresh

movement by Napoleon which might endanger the army--news

subsequently found to be false. And that morning Colonel Michaud had

ridden round the Drissa fortifications with the Emperor and had

pointed out to him that this fortified camp constructed by Pfuel,

and till then considered a chef-d'oeuvre of tactical science which

would ensure Napoleon's destruction, was an absurdity, threatening the

destruction of the Russian army.



Prince Andrew arrived at Bennigsen's quarters--a country gentleman's

house of moderate size, situated on the very banks of the river.

Neither Bennigsen nor the Emperor was there, but Chernyshev, the

Emperor's aide-de-camp, received Bolkonski and informed him that the

Emperor, accompanied by General Bennigsen and Marquis Paulucci, had

gone a second time that day to inspect the fortifications of the

Drissa camp, of the suitability of which serious doubts were beginning

to be felt.



Chernyshev was sitting at a window in the first room with a French

novel in his hand. This room had probably been a music room; there was

still an organ in it on which some rugs were piled, and in one

corner stood the folding bedstead of Bennigsen's adjutant. This

adjutant was also there and sat dozing on the rolled-up bedding,

evidently exhausted by work or by feasting. Two doors led from the

room, one straight on into what had been the drawing room, and

another, on the right, to the study. Through the first door came the

sound of voices conversing in German and occasionally in French. In

that drawing room were gathered, by the Emperor's wish, not a military

council (the Emperor preferred indefiniteness), but certain persons

whose opinions he wished to know in view of the impending

difficulties. It was not a council of war, but, as it were, a

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council to elucidate certain questions for the Emperor personally.

To this semicouncil had been invited the Swedish General Armfeldt,

Adjutant General Wolzogen, Wintzingerode (whom Napoleon had referred

to as a renegade French subject), Michaud, Toll, Count Stein who was

not a military man at all, and Pfuel himself, who, as Prince Andrew

had heard, was the mainspring of the whole affair. Prince Andrew had

an opportunity of getting a good look at him, for Pfuel arrived soon

after himself and, in passing through to the drawing room, stopped a

minute to speak to Chernyshev.



At first sight, Pfuel, in his ill-made uniform of a Russian general,

which fitted him badly like a fancy costume, seemed familiar to Prince

Andrew, though he saw him now for the first time. There was about

him something of Weyrother, Mack, and Schmidt, and many other German

theorist-generals whom Prince Andrew had seen in 1805, but he was more

typical than any of them. Prince Andrew had never yet seen a German

theorist in whom all the characteristics of those others were united

to such an extent.



Pfuel was short and very thin but broad-boned, of coarse, robust

build, broad in the hips, and with prominent shoulder blades. His face

was much wrinkled and his eyes deep set. His hair had evidently been

hastily brushed smooth in front of the temples, but stuck up behind in

quaint little tufts. He entered the room, looking restlessly and

angrily around, as if afraid of everything in that large apartment.

Awkwardly holding up his sword, he addressed Chernyshev and asked in

German where the Emperor was. One could see that he wished to pass

through the rooms as quickly as possible, finish with the bows and

greetings, and sit down to business in front of a map, where he

would feel at home. He nodded hurriedly in reply to Chernyshev, and

smiled ironically on hearing that the sovereign was inspecting the

fortifications that he, Pfuel, had planned in accord with his

theory. He muttered something to himself abruptly and in a bass voice,

as self-assured Germans do--it might have been "stupid fellow"... or

"the whole affair will be ruined," or "something absurd will come of

it."... Prince Andrew did not catch what he said and would have passed

on, but Chernyshev introduced him to Pfuel, remarking that Prince

Andrew was just back from Turkey where the war had terminated so

fortunately. Pfuel barely glanced--not so much at Prince Andrew as

past him--and said, with a laugh: "That must have been a fine tactical

war"; and, laughing contemptuously, went on into the room from which

the sound of voices was heard.



Pfuel, always inclined to be irritably sarcastic, was particularly

disturbed that day, evidently by the fact that they had dared to

inspect and criticize his camp in his absence. From this short

interview with Pfuel, Prince Andrew, thanks to his Austerlitz

experiences, was able to form a clear conception of the man. Pfuel was

one of those hopelessly and immutably self-confident men,

self-confident to the point of martyrdom as only Germans are,

because only Germans are self-confident on the basis of an abstract

notion--science, that is, the supposed knowledge of absolute truth.

A Frenchman is self-assured because he regards himself personally,

both in mind and body, as irresistibly attractive to men and women. An

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Englishman is self-assured, as being a citizen of the best-organized

state in the world, and therefore as an Englishman always knows what

he should do and knows that all he does as an Englishman is

undoubtedly correct. An Italian is self-assured because he is

excitable and easily forgets himself and other people. A Russian is

self-assured just because he knows nothing does not want to know

anything, since he does not believe that anything can be known. The

German's self-assurance is worst of all, stronger and more repulsive

than any other, because he imagines that he knows the truth-

science--which he himself has invented but which is for him the

absolute truth.



Pfuel was evidently of that sort. He had a science--the theory of

oblique movements deduced by him from the history of Frederick the

Great's wars, and all he came across in the history of more recent

warfare seemed to him absurd and barbarous--monstrous collisions in

which so many blunders were committed by both sides that these wars

could not be called wars, they did not accord with the theory, and

therefore could not serve as material for science.



In 1806 Pfuel had been one of those responsible, for the plan of

campaign that ended in Jena and Auerstadt, but he did not see the

least proof of the fallibility of his theory in the disasters of

that war. On the contrary, the deviations made from his theory were,

in his opinion, the sole cause of the whole disaster, and with

characteristically gleeful sarcasm he would remark, "There, I said the

whole affair would go to the devil!" Pfuel was one of those

theoreticians who so love their theory that they lose sight of the

theory's object--its practical application. His love of theory made

him hate everything practical, and he would not listen to it. He was

even pleased by failures, for failures resulting from deviations in

practice from the theory only proved to him the accuracy of his

theory.



He said a few words to Prince Andrew and Chernyshev about the

present war, with the air of a man who knows beforehand that all

will go wrong, and who is not displeased that it should be so. The

unbrushed tufts of hair sticking up behind and the hastily brushed

hair on his temples expressed this most eloquently.



He passed into the next room, and the deep, querulous sounds of

his voice were at once heard from there.









CHAPTER XI





Prince Andrew's eyes were still following Pfuel out of the room when

Count Bennigsen entered hurriedly, and nodding to Bolkonski, but not

pausing, went into the study, giving instructions to his adjutant as

he went. The Emperor was following him, and Bennigsen had hastened

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on to make some preparations and to be ready to receive the sovereign.

Chernyshev and Prince Andrew went out into the porch, where the

Emperor, who looked fatigued, was dismounting. Marquis Paulucci was

talking to him with particular warmth and the Emperor, with his head

bent to the left, was listening with a dissatisfied air. The Emperor

moved forward evidently wishing to end the conversation, but the

flushed and excited Italian, oblivious of decorum, followed him and

continued to speak.



"And as for the man who advised forming this camp--the Drissa camp,"

said Paulucci, as the Emperor mounted the steps and noticing Prince

Andrew scanned his unfamiliar face, "as to that person, sire..."

continued Paulucci, desperately, apparently unable to restrain

himself, "the man who advised the Drissa camp--I see no alternative

but the lunatic asylum or the gallows!"



Without heeding the end of the Italian's remarks, and as though

not hearing them, the Emperor, recognizing Bolkonski, addressed him

graciously.



"I am very glad to see you! Go in there where they are meeting,

and wait for me."



The Emperor went into the study. He was followed by Prince Peter

Mikhaylovich Volkonski and Baron Stein, and the door closed behind

them. Prince Andrew, taking advantage of the Emperor's permission,

accompanied Paulucci, whom he had known in Turkey, into the drawing

room where the council was assembled.



Prince Peter Mikhaylovich Volkonski occupied the position, as it

were, of chief of the Emperor's staff. He came out of the study into

the drawing room with some maps which he spread on a table, and put

questions on which he wished to hear the opinion of the gentlemen

present. What had happened was that news (which afterwards proved to

be false) had been received during the night of a movement by the

French to outflank the Drissa camp.



The first to speak was General Armfeldt who, to meet the

difficulty that presented itself, unexpectedly proposed a perfectly

new position away from the Petersburg and Moscow roads. The reason for

this was inexplicable (unless he wished to show that he, too, could

have an opinion), but he urged that at this point the army should

unite and there await the enemy. It was plain that Armfeldt had

thought out that plan long ago and now expounded it not so much to

answer the questions put--which, in fact, his plan did not answer-

as to avail himself of the opportunity to air it. It was one of the

millions of proposals, one as good as another, that could be made as

long as it was quite unknown what character the war would take. Some

disputed his arguments, others defended them. Young Count Toll

objected to the Swedish general's views more warmly than anyone

else, and in the course of the dispute drew from his side pocket a

well-filled notebook, which he asked permission to read to them. In

these voluminous notes Toll suggested another scheme, totally

different from Armfeldt's or Pfuel's plan of campaign. In answer to

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Toll, Paulucci suggested an advance and an attack, which, he urged,

could alone extricate us from the present uncertainty and from the

trap (as he called the Drissa camp) in which we were situated.



During all these discussions Pfuel and his interpreter, Wolzogen

(his "bridge" in court relations), were silent. Pfuel only snorted

contemptuously and turned away, to show that he would never demean

himself by replying to such nonsense as he was now hearing. So when

Prince Volkonski, who was in the chair, called on him to give his

opinion, he merely said:



"Why ask me? General Armfeldt has proposed a splendid position

with an exposed rear, or why not this Italian gentleman's attack--very

fine, or a retreat, also good! Why ask me?" said he. "Why, you

yourselves know everything better than I do."



But when Volkonski said, with a frown, that it was in the

Emperor's name that he asked his opinion, Pfuel rose and, suddenly

growing animated, began to speak:



"Everything has been spoiled, everything muddled, everybody

thought they knew better than I did, and now you come to me! How

mend matters? There is nothing to mend! The principles laid down by me

must be strictly adhered to," said he, drumming on the table with

his bony fingers. "What is the difficulty? Nonsense, childishness!"



He went up to the map and speaking rapidly began proving that no

eventuality could alter the efficiency of the Drissa camp, that

everything had been foreseen, and that if the enemy were really

going to outflank it, the enemy would inevitably be destroyed.



Paulucci, who did not know German, began questioning him in

French. Wolzogen came to the assistance of his chief, who spoke French

badly, and began translating for him, hardly able to keep pace with

Pfuel, who was rapidly demonstrating that not only all that had

happened, but all that could happen, had been foreseen in his

scheme, and that if there were now any difficulties the whole fault

lay in the fact that his plan had not been precisely executed. He kept

laughing sarcastically, he demonstrated, and at last contemptuously

ceased to demonstrate, like a mathematician who ceases to prove in

various ways the accuracy of a problem that has already been proved.

Wolzogen took his place and continued to explain his views in

French, every now and then turning to Pfuel and saying, "Is it not so,

your excellency?" But Pfuel, like a man heated in a fight who

strikes those on his own side, shouted angrily at his own supporter,

Wolzogen:



"Well, of course, what more is there to explain?"



Paulucci and Michaud both attacked Wolzogen simultaneously in

French. Armfeldt addressed Pfuel in German. Toll explained to

Volkonski in Russian. Prince Andrew listened and observed in silence.



Of all these men Prince Andrew sympathized most with Pfuel, angry,

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determined, and absurdly self-confident as he was. Of all those

present, evidently he alone was not seeking anything for himself,

nursed no hatred against anyone, and only desired that the plan,

formed on a theory arrived at by years of toil, should be carried out.

He was ridiculous, and unpleasantly sarcastic, but yet he inspired

involuntary respect by his boundless devotion to an idea. Besides

this, the remarks of all except Pfuel had one common trait that had

not been noticeable at the council of war in 1805: there was now a

panic fear of Napoleon's genius, which, though concealed, was

noticeable in every rejoinder. Everything was assumed to be possible

for Napoleon, they expected him from every side, and invoked his

terrible name to shatter each other's proposals. Pfuel alone seemed to

consider Napoleon a barbarian like everyone else who opposed his

theory. But besides this feeling of respect, Pfuel evoked pity in

Prince Andrew. From the tone in which the courtiers addressed him

and the way Paulucci had allowed himself to speak of him to the

Emperor, but above all from a certain desperation in Pfuel's own

expressions, it was clear that the others knew, and Pfuel himself

felt, that his fall was at hand. And despite his self-confidence and

grumpy German sarcasm he was pitiable, with his hair smoothly

brushed on the temples and sticking up in tufts behind. Though he

concealed the fact under a show of irritation and contempt, he was

evidently in despair that the sole remaining chance of verifying his

theory by a huge experiment and proving its soundness to the whole

world was slipping away from him.



The discussions continued a long time, and the longer they lasted

the more heated became the disputes, culminating in shouts and

personalities, and the less was it possible to arrive at any general

conclusion from all that had been said. Prince Andrew, listening to

this polyglot talk and to these surmises, plans, refutations, and

shouts, felt nothing but amazement at what they were saying. A thought

that had long since and often occurred to him during his military

activities--the idea that there is not and cannot be any science of

war, and that therefore there can be no such thing as a military

genius--now appeared to him an obvious truth. "What theory and science

is possible about a matter the conditions and circumstances of which

are unknown and cannot be defined, especially when the strength of the

acting forces cannot be ascertained? No one was or is able to

foresee in what condition our or the enemy's armies will be in a day's

time, and no one can gauge the force of this or that detachment.

Sometimes--when there is not a coward at the front to shout, 'We are

cut off!' and start running, but a brave and jolly lad who shouts,

'Hurrah!'--a detachment of five thousand is worth thirty thousand,

as at Schon Grabern, while at times fifty thousand run from eight

thousand, as at Austerlitz. What science can there be in a matter in

which, as in all practical matters, nothing can be defined and

everything depends on innumerable conditions, the significance of

which is determined at a particular moment which arrives no one

knows when? Armfeldt says our army is cut in half, and Paulucci says

we have got the French army between two fires; Michaud says that the

worthlessness of the Drissa camp lies in having the river behind it,

and Pfuel says that is what constitutes its strength; Toll proposes

one plan, Armfeldt another, and they are all good and all bad, and the

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advantages of any suggestions can be seen only at the moment of trial.

And why do they all speak of a 'military genius'? Is a man a genius

who can order bread to be brought up at the right time and say who

is to go to the right and who to the left? It is only because military

men are invested with pomp and power and crowds of sychophants flatter

power, attributing to it qualities of genius it does not possess.

The best generals I have known were, on the contrary, stupid or

absent-minded men. Bagration was the best, Napoleon himself admitted

that. And of Bonaparte himself! I remember his limited, self-satisfied

face on the field of Austerlitz. Not only does a good army commander

not need any special qualities, on the contrary he needs the absence

of the highest and best human attributes--love, poetry, tenderness,

and philosophic inquiring doubt. He should be limited, firmly

convinced that what he is doing is very important (otherwise he will

not have sufficient patience), and only then will he be a brave

leader. God forbid that he should be humane, should love, or pity,

or think of what is just and unjust. It is understandable that a

theory of their 'genius' was invented for them long ago because they

have power! The success of a military action depends not on them,

but on the man in the ranks who shouts, 'We are lost!' or who

shouts, 'Hurrah!' And only in the ranks can one serve with assurance

of being useful."



So thought Prince Andrew as he listened to the talking, and he

roused himself only when Paulucci called him and everyone was leaving.



At the review next day the Emperor asked Prince Andrew where he

would like to serve, and Prince Andrew lost his standing in court

circles forever by not asking to remain attached to the sovereign's

person, but for permission to serve in the army.









CHAPTER XII





Before the beginning of the campaign, Rostov had received a letter

from his parents in which they told him briefly of Natasha's illness

and the breaking off of her engagement to Prince Andrew (which they

explained by Natasha's having rejected him) and again asked Nicholas

to retire from the army and return home. On receiving this letter,

Nicholas did not even make any attempt to get leave of absence or to

retire from the army, but wrote to his parents that he was sorry

Natasha was ill and her engagement broken off, and that he would do

all he could to meet their wishes. To Sonya he wrote separately.



"Adored friend of my soul!" he wrote. "Nothing but honor could

keep me from returning to the country. But now, at the commencement of

the campaign, I should feel dishonored, not only in my comrades'

eyes but in my own, if I preferred my own happiness to my love and

duty to the Fatherland. But this shall be our last separation. Believe

me, directly the war is over, if I am still alive and still loved by

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you, I will throw up everything and fly to you, to press you forever

to my ardent breast."



It was, in fact, only the commencement of the campaign that

prevented Rostov from returning home as he had promised and marrying

Sonya. The autumn in Otradnoe with the hunting, and the winter with

the Christmas holidays and Sonya's love, had opened out to him a vista

of tranquil rural joys and peace such as he had never known before,

and which now allured him. "A splendid wife, children, a good pack

of hounds, a dozen leashes of smart borzois, agriculture, neighbors,

service by election..." thought he. But now the campaign was

beginning, and he had to remain with his regiment. And since it had to

be so, Nicholas Rostov, as was natural to him, felt contented with the

life he led in the regiment and was able to find pleasure in that

life.



On his return from his furlough Nicholas, having been joyfully

welcomed by his comrades, was sent to obtain remounts and brought back

from the Ukraine excellent horses which pleased him and earned him

commendation from his commanders. During his absence he had been

promoted captain, and when the regiment was put on war footing with an

increase in numbers, he was again allotted his old squadron.



The campaign began, the regiment was moved into Poland on double

pay, new officers arrived, new men and horses, and above all everybody

was infected with the merrily excited mood that goes with the

commencement of a war, and Rostov, conscious of his advantageous

position in the regiment, devoted himself entirely to the pleasures

and interests of military service, though he knew that sooner or later

he would have to relinquish them.



The troops retired from Vilna for various complicated reasons of

state, political and strategic. Each step of the retreat was

accompanied by a complicated interplay of interests, arguments, and

passions at headquarters. For the Pavlograd hussars, however, the

whole of this retreat during the finest period of summer and with

sufficient supplies was a very simple and agreeable business.



It was only at headquarters that there was depression, uneasiness,

and intriguing; in the body of the army they did not ask themselves

where they were going or why. If they regretted having to retreat,

it was only because they had to leave billets they had grown

accustomed to, or some pretty young Polish lady. If the thought that

things looked bad chanced to enter anyone's head, he tried to be as

cheerful as befits a good soldier and not to think of the general

trend of affairs, but only of the task nearest to hand. First they

camped gaily before Vilna, making acquaintance with the Polish

landowners, preparing for reviews and being reviewed by the Emperor

and other high commanders. Then came an order to retreat to Sventsyani

and destroy any provisions they could not carry away with them.

Sventsyani was remembered by the hussars only as the drunken camp, a

name the whole army gave to their encampment there, and because many

complaints were made against the troops, who, taking advantage of

the order to collect provisions, took also horses, carriages, and

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carpets from the Polish proprietors. Rostov remembered Sventsyani,

because on the first day of their arrival at that small town he

changed his sergeant major and was unable to manage all the drunken

men of his squadron who, unknown to him, had appropriated five barrels

of old beer. From Sventsyani they retired farther and farther to

Drissa, and thence again beyond Drissa, drawing near to the frontier

of Russia proper.



On the thirteenth of July the Pavlograds took part in a serious

action for the first time.



On the twelfth of July, on the eve of that action, there was a heavy

storm of rain and hail. In general, the summer of 1812 was

remarkable for its storms.



The two Pavlograd squadrons were bivouacking on a field of rye,

which was already in ear but had been completely trodden down by

cattle and horses. The rain was descending in torrents, and Rostov,

with a young officer named Ilyin, his protege, was sitting in a

hastily constructed shelter. An officer of their regiment, with long

mustaches extending onto his cheeks, who after riding to the staff had

been overtaken by the rain, entered Rostov's shelter.



"I have come from the staff, Count. Have you heard of Raevski's

exploit?"



And the officer gave them details of the Saltanov battle, which he

had heard at the staff.



Rostov, smoking his pipe and turning his head about as the water

trickled down his neck, listened inattentively, with an occasional

glance at Ilyin, who was pressing close to him. This officer, a lad of

sixteen who had recently joined the regiment, was now in the same

relation to Nicholas that Nicholas had been to Denisov seven years

before. Ilyin tried to imitate Rostov in everything and adored him

as a girl might have done.



Zdrzhinski, the officer with the long mustache, spoke

grandiloquently of the Saltanov dam being "a Russian Thermopylae," and

of how a deed worthy of antiquity had been performed by General

Raevski. He recounted how Raevski had led his two sons onto the dam

under terrific fire and had charged with them beside him. Rostov heard

the story and not only said nothing to encourage Zdrzhinski's

enthusiasm but, on the contrary, looked like a man ashamed of what

he was hearing, though with no intention of contradicting it. Since

the campaigns of Austerlitz and of 1807 Rostov knew by experience that

men always lie when describing military exploits, as he himself had

done when recounting them; besides that, he had experience enough to

know that nothing happens in war at all as we can imagine or relate

it. And so he did not like Zdrzhinski's tale, nor did he like

Zdrzhinski himself who, with his mustaches extending over his

cheeks, bent low over the face of his hearer, as was his habit, and

crowded Rostov in the narrow shanty. Rostov looked at him in

silence. "In the first place, there must have been such a confusion

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and crowding on the dam that was being attacked that if Raevski did

lead his sons there, it could have had no effect except perhaps on

some dozen men nearest to him," thought he, "the rest could not have

seen how or with whom Raevski came onto the dam. And even those who

did see it would not have been much stimulated by it, for what had

they to do with Raevski's tender paternal feelings when their own

skins were in danger? And besides, the fate of the Fatherland did

not depend on whether they took the Saltanov dam or not, as we are

told was the case at Thermopylae. So why should he have made such a

sacrifice? And why expose his own children in the battle? I would

not have taken my brother Petya there, or even Ilyin, who's a stranger

to me but a nice lad, but would have tried to put them somewhere under

cover," Nicholas continued to think, as he listened to Zdrzhinski. But

he did not express his thoughts, for in such matters, too, he had

gained experience. He knew that this tale redounded to the glory of

our arms and so one had to pretend not to doubt it. And he acted

accordingly.



"I can't stand this any more," said Ilyin, noticing that Rostov

did not relish Zdrzhinski's conversation. "My stockings and shirt...

and the water is running on my seat! I'll go and look for shelter. The

rain seems less heavy."



Ilyin went out and Zdrzhinski rode away.



Five minutes later Ilyin, splashing through the mud, came running

back to the shanty.



"Hurrah! Rostov, come quick! I've found it! About two hundred

yards away there's a tavern where ours have already gathered. We can

at least get dry there, and Mary Hendrikhovna's there."



Mary Hendrikhovna was the wife of the regimental doctor, a pretty

young German woman he had married in Poland. The doctor, whether

from lack of means or because he did not like to part from his young

wife in the early days of their marriage, took her about with him

wherever the hussar regiment went and his jealousy had become a

standing joke among the hussar officers.



Rostov threw his cloak over his shoulders, shouted to Lavrushka to

follow with the things, and--now slipping in the mud, now splashing

right through it--set off with Ilyin in the lessening rain and the

darkness that was occasionally rent by distant lightning.



"Rostov, where are you?"



"Here. What lightning!" they called to one another.









CHAPTER XIII



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In the tavern, before which stood the doctor's covered cart, there

were already some five officers. Mary Hendrikhovna, a plump little

blonde German, in a dressing jacket and nightcap, was sitting on a

broad bench in the front corner. Her husband, the doctor, lay asleep

behind her. Rostov and Ilyin, on entering the room, were welcomed with

merry shouts and laughter.



"Dear me, how jolly we are!" said Rostov laughing.



"And why do you stand there gaping?"



"What swells they are! Why, the water streams from them! Don't

make our drawing room so wet."



"Don't mess Mary Hendrikhovna's dress!" cried other voices.



Rostov and Ilyin hastened to find a corner where they could change

into dry clothes without offending Mary Hendrikhovna's modesty. They

were going into a tiny recess behind a partition to change, but

found it completely filled by three officers who sat playing cards

by the light of a solitary candle on an empty box, and these

officers would on no account yield their position. Mary Hendrikhovna

obliged them with the loan of a petticoat to be used as a curtain, and

behind that screen Rostov and Ilyin, helped by Lavrushka who had

brought their kits, changed their wet things for dry ones.



A fire was made up in the dilapidated brick stove. A board was

found, fixed on two saddles and covered with a horsecloth, a small

samovar was produced and a cellaret and half a bottle of rum, and

having asked Mary Hendrikhovna to preside, they all crowded round her.

One offered her a clean handkerchief to wipe her charming hands,

another spread a jacket under her little feet to keep them from the

damp, another hung his coat over the window to keep out the draft, and

yet another waved the flies off her husband's face, lest he should

wake up.



"Leave him alone," said Mary Hendrikhovna, smiling timidly and

happily. "He is sleeping well as it is, after a sleepless night."



"Oh, no, Mary Hendrikhovna," replied the officer, "one must look

after the doctor. Perhaps he'll take pity on me someday, when it comes

to cutting off a leg or an arm for me."



There were only three tumblers, the water was so muddy that one

could not make out whether the tea was strong or weak, and the samovar

held only six tumblers of water, but this made it all the pleasanter

to take turns in order of seniority to receive one's tumbler from Mary

Hendrikhovna's plump little hands with their short and not overclean

nails. All the officers appeared to be, and really were, in love

with her that evening. Even those playing cards behind the partition

soon left their game and came over to the samovar, yielding to the

general mood of courting Mary Hendrikhovna. She, seeing herself

surrounded by such brilliant and polite young men, beamed with

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satisfaction, try as she might to hide it, and perturbed as she

evidently was each time her husband moved in his sleep behind her.



There was only one spoon, sugar was more plentiful than anything

else, but it took too long to dissolve, so it was decided that Mary

Hendrikhovna should stir the sugar for everyone in turn. Rostov

received his tumbler, and adding some rum to it asked Mary

Hendrikhovna to stir it.



"But you take it without sugar?" she said, smiling all the time,

as if everything she said and everything the others said was very

amusing and had a double meaning.



"It is not the sugar I want, but only that your little hand should

stir my tea."



Mary Hendrikhovna assented and began looking for the spoon which

someone meanwhile had pounced on.



"Use your finger, Mary Hendrikhovna, it will be still nicer," said

Rostov.



"Too hot!" she replied, blushing with pleasure.



Ilyin put a few drops of rum into the bucket of water and brought it

to Mary Hendrikhovna, asking her to stir it with her finger.



"This is my cup," said he. "Only dip your finger in it and I'll

drink it all up."



When they had emptied the samovar, Rostov took a pack of cards and

proposed that they should play "Kings" with Mary Hendrikhovna. They

drew lots to settle who should make up her set. At Rostov's suggestion

it was agreed that whoever became "King" should have the right to kiss

Mary Hendrikhovna's hand, and that the "Booby" should go to refill and

reheat the samovar for the doctor when the latter awoke.



"Well, but supposing Mary Hendrikhovna is 'King'?" asked Ilyin.



"As it is, she is Queen, and her word is law!"



They had hardly begun to play before the doctor's disheveled head

suddenly appeared from behind Mary Hendrikhovna. He had been awake for

some time, listening to what was being said, and evidently found

nothing entertaining or amusing in what was going on. His face was sad

and depressed. Without greeting the officers, he scratched himself and

asked to be allowed to pass as they were blocking the way. As soon

as he had left the room all the officers burst into loud laughter

and Mary Hendrikhovna blushed till her eyes filled with tears and

thereby became still more attractive to them. Returning from the yard,

the doctor told his wife (who had ceased to smile so happily, and

looked at him in alarm, awaiting her sentence) that the rain had

ceased and they must go to sleep in their covered cart, or

everything in it would be stolen.

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"But I'll send an orderly.... Two of them!" said Rostov. "What an

idea, doctor!"



"I'll stand guard on it myself!" said Ilyin.



"No, gentlemen, you have had your sleep, but I have not slept for

two nights," replied the doctor, and he sat down morosely beside his

wife, waiting for the game to end.



Seeing his gloomy face as he frowned at his wife, the officers

grew still merrier, and some of them could not refrain from

laughter, for which they hurriedly sought plausible pretexts. When

he had gone, taking his wife with him, and had settled down with her

in their covered cart, the officers lay down in the tavern, covering

themselves with their wet cloaks, but they did not sleep for a long

time; now they exchanged remarks, recalling the doctor's uneasiness

and his wife's delight, now they ran out into the porch and reported

what was taking place in the covered trap. Several times Rostov,

covering his head, tried to go to sleep, but some remark would

arouse him and conversation would be resumed, to the accompaniment

of unreasoning, merry, childlike laughter.









CHAPTER XIV





It was nearly three o'clock but no one was yet asleep, when the

quartermaster appeared with an order to move on to the little town

of Ostrovna. Still laughing and talking, the officers began

hurriedly getting ready and again boiled some muddy water

in the samovar. But Rostov went off to his squadron without waiting

for tea. Day was breaking, the rain had ceased, and the clouds were

dispersing. It felt damp and cold, especially in clothes that were

still moist. As they left the tavern in the twilight of the dawn,

Rostov and Ilyin both glanced under the wet and glistening leather

hood of the doctor's cart, from under the apron of which his feet were

sticking out, and in the middle of which his wife's nightcap was

visible and her sleepy breathing audible.



"She really is a dear little thing," said Rostov to Ilyin, who was

following him.



"A charming woman!" said Ilyin, with all the gravity of a boy of

sixteen.



Half an hour later the squadron was lined up on the road. The

command was heard to "mount" and the soldiers crossed themselves and

mounted. Rostov riding in front gave the order "Forward!" and the

hussars, with clanking sabers and subdued talk, their horses' hoofs

splashing in the mud, defiled in fours and moved along the broad

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road planted with birch trees on each side, following the infantry and

a battery that had gone on in front.



Tattered, blue-purple clouds, reddening in the east, were scudding

before the wind. It was growing lighter and lighter. That curly

grass which always grows by country roadsides became clearly

visible, still wet with the night's rain; the drooping branches of the

birches, also wet, swayed in the wind and flung down bright drops of

water to one side. The soldiers' faces were more and more clearly

visible. Rostov, always closely followed by Ilyin, rode along the side

of the road between two rows of birch trees.



When campaigning, Rostov allowed himself the indulgence of riding

not a regimental but a Cossack horse. A judge of horses and a

sportsman, he had lately procured himself a large, fine, mettlesome,

Donets horse, dun-colored, with light mane and tail, and when he

rode it no one could outgallop him. To ride this horse was a

pleasure to him, and he thought of the horse, of the morning, of the

doctor's wife, but not once of the impending danger.



Formerly, when going into action, Rostov had felt afraid; now he had

not the least feeling of fear. He was fearless, not because he had

grown used to being under fire (one cannot grow used to danger), but

because he had learned how to manage his thoughts when in danger. He

had grown accustomed when going into action to think about anything

but what would seem most likely to interest him--the impending danger.

During the first period of his service, hard as he tried and much as

he reproached himself with cowardice, he had not been able to do this,

but with time it had come of itself. Now he rode beside Ilyin under

the birch trees, occasionally plucking leaves from a branch that met

his hand, sometimes touching his horse's side with his foot, or,

without turning round, handing a pipe he had finished to an hussar

riding behind him, with as calm and careless an air as though he

were merely out for a ride. He glanced with pity at the excited face

of Ilyin, who talked much and in great agitation. He knew from

experience the tormenting expectation of terror and death the cornet

was suffering and knew that only time could help him.



As soon as the sun appeared in a clear strip of sky beneath the

clouds, the wind fell, as if it dared not spoil the beauty of the

summer morning after the storm; drops still continued to fall, but

vertically now, and all was still. The whole sun appeared on the

horizon and disappeared behind a long narrow cloud that hung above it.

A few minutes later it reappeared brighter still from behind the top

of the cloud, tearing its edge. Everything grew bright and

glittered. And with that light, and as if in reply to it, came the

sound of guns ahead of them.



Before Rostov had had time to consider and determine the distance of

that firing, Count Ostermann-Tolstoy's adjutant came galloping from

Vitebsk with orders to advance at a trot along the road.



The squadron overtook and passed the infantry and the battery--which

had also quickened their pace--rode down a hill, and passing through

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an empty and deserted village again ascended. The horses began to

lather and the men to flush.



"Halt! Dress your ranks!" the order of the regimental commander

was heard ahead. "Forward by the left. Walk, march!" came the order

from in front.



And the hussars, passing along the line of troops on the left

flank of our position, halted behind our Uhlans who were in the

front line. To the right stood our infantry in a dense column: they

were the reserve. Higher up the hill, on the very horizon, our guns

were visible through the wonderfully clear air, brightly illuminated

by slanting morning sunbeams. In front, beyond a hollow dale, could be

seen the enemy's columns and guns. Our advanced line, already in

action, could be heard briskly exchanging shots with the enemy in

the dale.



At these sounds, long unheard, Rostov's spirits rose, as at the

strains of the merriest music. Trap-ta-ta-tap! cracked the shots,

now together, now several quickly one after another. Again all was

silent and then again it sounded as if someone were walking on

detonators and exploding them.



The hussars remained in the same place for about an hour. A

cannonade began. Count Ostermann with his suite rode up behind the

squadron, halted, spoke to the commander of the regiment, and rode

up the hill to the guns.



After Ostermann had gone, a command rang out to the Uhlans.



"Form column! Prepare to charge!"



The infantry in front of them parted into platoons to allow the

cavalry to pass. The Uhlans started, the streamers on their spears

fluttering, and trotted downhill toward the French cavalry which was

seen below to the left.



As soon as the Uhlans descended the hill, the hussars were ordered

up the hill to support the battery. As they took the places vacated by

the Uhlans, bullets came from the front, whining and whistling, but

fell spent without taking effect.



The sounds, which he had not heard for so long, had an even more

pleasurable and exhilarating effect on Rostov than the previous sounds

of firing. Drawing himself up, he viewed the field of battle opening

out before him from the hill, and with his whole soul followed the

movement of the Uhlans. They swooped down close to the French

dragoons, something confused happened there amid the smoke, and five

minutes later our Uhlans were galloping back, not to the place they

had occupied but more to the left, and among the orange-colored Uhlans

on chestnut horses and behind them, in a large group, blue French

dragoons on gray horses could be seen.





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CHAPTER XV





Rostov, with his keen sportsman's eye, was one of the first to catch

sight of these blue French dragoons pursuing our Uhlans. Nearer and

nearer in disorderly crowds came the Uhlans and the French dragoons

pursuing them. He could already see how these men, who looked so small

at the foot of the hill, jostled and overtook one another, waving

their arms and their sabers in the air.



Rostov gazed at what was happening before him as at a hunt. He

felt instinctively that if the hussars struck at the French dragoons

now, the latter could not withstand them, but if a charge was to be

made it must be done now, at that very moment, or it would be too

late. He looked around. A captain, standing beside him, was gazing

like himself with eyes fixed on the cavalry below them.



"Andrew Sevastyanych!" said Rostov. "You know, we could crush

them...."



"A fine thing too!" replied the captain, "and really..."



Rostov, without waiting to hear him out, touched his horse, galloped

to the front of his squadron, and before he had time to finish

giving the word of command, the whole squadron, sharing his feeling,

was following him. Rostov himself did not know how or why he did it.

He acted as he did when hunting, without reflecting or considering. He

saw the dragoons near and that they were galloping in disorder; he

knew they could not withstand an attack--knew there was only that

moment and that if he let it slip it would not return. The bullets

were whining and whistling so stimulatingly around him and his horse

was so eager to go that he could not restrain himself. He touched

his horse, gave the word of command, and immediately, hearing behind

him the tramp of the horses of his deployed squadron, rode at full

trot downhill toward the dragoons. Hardly had they reached the

bottom of the hill before their pace instinctively changed to a

gallop, which grew faster and faster as they drew nearer to our Uhlans

and the French dragoons who galloped after them. The dragoons were now

close at hand. On seeing the hussars, the foremost began to turn,

while those behind began to halt. With the same feeling with which

he had galloped across the path of a wolf, Rostov gave rein to his

Donets horse and galloped to intersect the path of the dragoons'

disordered lines. One Uhlan stopped, another who was on foot flung

himself to the ground to avoid being knocked over, and a riderless

horse fell in among the hussars. Nearly all the French dragoons were

galloping back. Rostov, picking out one on a gray horse, dashed

after him. On the way he came upon a bush, his gallant horse cleared

it, and almost before he had righted himself in his saddle he saw that

he would immediately overtake the enemy he had selected. That

Frenchman, by his uniform an officer, was going at a gallop, crouching

on his gray horse and urging it on with his saber. In another moment

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Rostov's horse dashed its breast against the hindquarters of the

officer's horse, almost knocking it over, and at the same instant

Rostov, without knowing why, raised his saber and struck the Frenchman

with it.



The instant he had done this, all Rostov's animation vanished. The

officer fell, not so much from the blow--which had but slightly cut

his arm above the elbow--as from the shock to his horse and from

fright. Rostov reined in his horse, and his eyes sought his foe to see

whom he had vanquished. The French dragoon officer was hopping with

one foot on the ground, the other being caught in the stirrup. His

eyes, screwed up with fear as if he every moment expected another

blow, gazed up at Rostov with shrinking terror. His pale and

mud-stained face--fair and young, with a dimple in the chin and

light-blue eyes--was not an enemy's face at all suited to a

battlefield, but a most ordinary, homelike face. Before Rostov had

decided what to do with him, the officer cried, "I surrender!" He

hurriedly but vainly tried to get his foot out of the stirrup and

did not remove his frightened blue eyes from Rostov's face. Some

hussars who galloped up disengaged his foot and helped him into the

saddle. On all sides, the hussars were busy with the dragoons; one was

wounded, but though his face was bleeding, he would not give up his

horse; another was perched up behind an hussar with his arms round

him; a third was being helped by an hussar to mount his horse. In

front, the French infantry were firing as they ran. The hussars

galloped hastily back with their prisoners. Rostov galloped back

with the rest, aware of an unpleasant feeling of depression in his

heart. Something vague and confused, which he could not at all account

for, had come over him with the capture of that officer and the blow

he had dealt him.



Count Ostermann-Tolstoy met the returning hussars, sent for

Rostov, thanked him, and said he would report his gallant deed to

the Emperor and would recommend him for a St. George's Cross. When

sent for by Count Ostermann, Rostov, remembering that he had charged

without orders, felt sure his commander was sending for him to

punish him for breach of discipline. Ostermann's flattering words

and promise of a reward should therefore have struck him all the

more pleasantly, but he still felt that same vaguely disagreeable

feeling of moral nausea. "But what on earth is worrying me?" he

asked himself as he rode back from the general. "Ilyin? No, he's safe.

Have I disgraced myself in any way? No, that's not it." Something

else, resembling remorse, tormented him. "Yes, oh yes, that French

officer with the dimple. And I remember how my arm paused when I

raised it."



Rostov saw the prisoners being led away and galloped after them to

have a look at his Frenchman with the dimple on his chin. He was

sitting in his foreign uniform on an hussar packhorse and looked

anxiously about him; The sword cut on his arm could scarcely be called

a wound. He glanced at Rostov with a feigned smile and waved his

hand in greeting. Rostov still had the same indefinite feeling, as

of shame.



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All that day and the next his friends and comrades noticed that

Rostov, without being dull or angry, was silent, thoughtful, and

preoccupied. He drank reluctantly, tried to remain alone, and kept

turning something over in his mind.



Rostov was always thinking about that brilliant exploit of his,

which to his amazement had gained him the St. George's Cross and

even given him a reputation for bravery, and there was something he

could not at all understand. "So others are even more afraid than I

am!" he thought. "So that's all there is in what is called heroism!

And heroism! And did I do it for my country's sake? And how was he

to blame, with his dimple and blue eyes? And how frightened he was! He

thought that I should kill him. Why should I kill him? My hand

trembled. And they have given me a St. George's Cross.... I can't make

it out at all."



But while Nicholas was considering these questions and still could

reach no clear solution of what puzzled him so, the wheel of fortune

in the service, as often happens, turned in his favor. After the

affair at Ostrovna he was brought into notice, received command of

an hussar battalion, and when a brave officer was needed he was

chosen.









CHAPTER XVI





On receiving news of Natasha's illness, the countess, though not

quite well yet and still weak, went to Moscow with Petya and the

rest of the household, and the whole family moved from Marya

Dmitrievna's house to their own and settled down in town.



Natasha's illness was so serious that, fortunately for her and for

her parents, the consideration of all that had caused the illness, her

conduct and the breaking off of her engagement, receded into the

background. She was so ill that it was impossible for them to consider

in how far she was to blame for what had happened. She could not eat

or sleep, grew visibly thinner, coughed, and, as the doctors made them

feel, was in danger. They could not think of anything but how to

help her. Doctors came to see her singly and in consultation, talked

much in French, German, and Latin, blamed one another, and

prescribed a great variety of medicines for all the diseases known

to them, but the simple idea never occurred to any of them that they

could not know the disease Natasha was suffering from, as no disease

suffered by a live man can be known, for every living person has his

own peculiarities and always has his own peculiar, personal, novel,

complicated disease, unknown to medicine--not a disease of the

lungs, liver, skin, heart, nerves, and so on mentioned in medical

books, but a disease consisting of one of the innumerable combinations

of the maladies of those organs. This simple thought could not occur

to the doctors (as it cannot occur to a wizard that he is unable to

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work his charms) because the business of their lives was to cure,

and they received money for it and had spent the best years of their

lives on that business. But, above all, that thought was kept out of

their minds by the fact that they saw they were really useful, as in

fact they were to the whole Rostov family. Their usefulness did not

depend on making the patient swallow substances for the most part

harmful (the harm was scarcely perceptible, as they were given in

small doses), but they were useful, necessary, and indispensable

because they satisfied a mental need of the invalid and of those who

loved her--and that is why there are, and always will be,

pseudo-healers, wise women, homeopaths, and allopaths. They

satisfied that eternal human need for hope of relief, for sympathy,

and that something should be done, which is felt by those who are

suffering. They satisfied the need seen in its most elementary form in

a child, when it wants to have a place rubbed that has been hurt. A

child knocks itself and runs at once to the arms of its mother or

nurse to have the aching spot rubbed or kissed, and it feels better

when this is done. The child cannot believe that the strongest and

wisest of its people have no remedy for its pain, and the hope of

relief and the expression of its mother's sympathy while she rubs

the bump comforts it. The doctors were of use to Natasha because

they kissed and rubbed her bump, assuring her that it would soon

pass if only the coachman went to the chemist's in the Arbat and got a

powder and some pills in a pretty box of a ruble and seventy kopeks,

and if she took those powders in boiled water at intervals of

precisely two hours, neither more nor less.



What would Sonya and the count and countess have done, how would

they have looked, if nothing had been done, if there had not been

those pills to give by the clock, the warm drinks, the chicken

cutlets, and all the other details of life ordered by the doctors, the

carrying out of which supplied an occupation and consolation to the

family circle? How would the count have borne his dearly loved

daughter's illness had he not known that it was costing him a thousand

rubles, and that he would not grudge thousands more to benefit her, or

had he not known that if her illness continued he would not grudge yet

other thousands and would take her abroad for consultations there, and

had he not been able to explain the details of how Metivier and Feller

had not understood the symptoms, but Frise had, and Mudrov had

diagnosed them even better? What would the countess have done had

she not been able sometimes to scold the invalid for not strictly

obeying the doctor's orders?



"You'll never get well like that," she would say, forgetting her

grief in her vexation, "if you won't obey the doctor and take your

medicine at the right time! You mustn't trifle with it, you know, or

it may turn to pneumonia," she would go on, deriving much comfort from

the utterance of that foreign word, incomprehensible to others as well

as to herself.



What would Sonya have done without the glad consciousness that she

had not undressed during the first three nights, in order to be

ready to carry out all the doctor's injunctions with precision, and

that she still kept awake at night so as not to miss the proper time

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when the slightly harmful pills in the little gilt box had to be

administered? Even to Natasha herself it was pleasant to see that so

many sacrifices were being made for her sake, and to know that she had

to take medicine at certain hours, though she declared that no

medicine would cure her and that it was all nonsense. And it was

even pleasant to be able to show, by disregarding the orders, that she

did not believe in medical treatment and did not value her life.



The doctor came every day, felt her pulse, looked at her tongue, and

regardless of her grief-stricken face joked with her. But when he

had gone into another room, to which the countess hurriedly followed

him, he assumed a grave air and thoughtfully shaking his head said

that though there was danger, he had hopes of the effect of this

last medicine and one must wait and see, that the malady was chiefly

mental, but... And the countess, trying to conceal the action from

herself and from him, slipped a gold coin into his hand and always

returned to the patient with a more tranquil mind.



The symptoms of Natasha's illness were that she ate little, slept

little, coughed, and was always low-spirited. The doctors said that

she could not get on without medical treatment, so they kept her in

the stifling atmosphere of the town, and the Rostovs did not move to

the country that summer of 1812.



In spite of the many pills she swallowed and the drops and powders

out of the little bottles and boxes of which Madame Schoss who was

fond of such things made a large collection, and in spite of being

deprived of the country life to which she was accustomed, youth

prevailed. Natasha's grief began to be overlaid by the impressions

of daily life, it ceased to press so painfully on her heart, it

gradually faded into the past, and she began to recover physically.









CHAPTER XVII





Natasha was calmer but no happier. She not merely avoided all

external forms of pleasure--balls, promenades, concerts, and theaters-

but she never laughed without a sound of tears in her laughter. She

could not sing. As soon as she began to laugh, or tried to sing by

herself, tears choked her: tears of remorse, tears at the recollection

of those pure times which could never return, tears of vexation that

she should so uselessly have ruined her young life which might have

been so happy. Laughter and singing in particular seemed to her like a

blasphemy, in face of her sorrow. Without any need of

self-restraint, no wish to coquet ever entered her head. She said

and felt at that time that no man was more to her than Nastasya

Ivanovna, the buffoon. Something stood sentinel within her and forbade

her every joy. Besides, she had lost all the old interests of her

carefree girlish life that had been so full of hope. The previous

autumn, the hunting, "Uncle," and the Christmas holidays spent with

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Nicholas at Otradnoe were what she recalled oftenest and most

painfully. What would she not have given to bring back even a single

day of that time! But it was gone forever. Her presentiment at the

time had not deceived her--that that state of freedom and readiness

for any enjoyment would not return again. Yet it was necessary to live

on.



It comforted her to reflect that she was not better as she had

formerly imagined, but worse, much worse, than anybody else in the

world. But this was not enough. She knew that, and asked herself,

"What next?" But there was nothing to come. There was no joy in

life, yet life was passing. Natasha apparently tried not to be a

burden or a hindrance to anyone, but wanted nothing for herself. She

kept away from everyone in the house and felt at ease only with her

brother Petya. She liked to be with him better than with the others,

and when alone with him she sometimes laughed. She hardly ever left

the house and of those who came to see them was glad to see only one

person, Pierre. It would have been impossible to treat her with more

delicacy, greater care, and at the same time more seriously than did

Count Bezukhov. Natasha unconsciously felt this delicacy and so

found great pleasure in his society. But she was not even grateful

to him for it; nothing good on Pierre's part seemed to her to be an

effort, it seemed so natural for him to be kind to everyone that there

was no merit in his kindness. Sometimes Natasha noticed

embarrassment and awkwardness on his part in her presence,

especially when he wanted to do something to please her, or feared

that something they spoke of would awaken memories distressing to her.

She noticed this and attributed it to his general kindness and

shyness, which she imagined must be the same toward everyone as it was

to her. After those involuntary words--that if he were free he would

have asked on his knees for her hand and her love--uttered at a moment

when she was so strongly agitated, Pierre never spoke to Natasha of

his feelings; and it seemed plain to her that those words, which had

then so comforted her, were spoken as all sorts of meaningless words

are spoken to comfort a crying child. It was not because Pierre was

a married man, but because Natasha felt very strongly with him that

moral barrier the absence of which she had experienced with Kuragin

that it never entered her head that the relations between him and

herself could lead to love on her part, still less on his, or even

to the kind of tender, self-conscious, romantic friendship between a

man and a woman of which she had known several instances.



Before the end of the fast of St. Peter, Agrafena Ivanovna Belova, a

country neighbor of the Rostovs, came to Moscow to pay her devotions

at the shrines of the Moscow saints. She suggested that Natasha should

fast and prepare for Holy Communion, and Natasha gladly welcomed the

idea. Despite the doctor's orders that she should not go out early

in the morning, Natasha insisted on fasting and preparing for the

sacrament, not as they generally prepared for it in the Rostov

family by attending three services in their own house, but as Agrafena

Ivanovna did, by going to church every day for a week and not once

missing Vespers, Matins, or Mass.



The countess was pleased with Natasha's zeal; after the poor results

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of the medical treatment, in the depths of her heart she hoped that

prayer might help her daughter more than medicines and, though not

without fear and concealing it from the doctor, she agreed to

Natasha's wish and entrusted her to Belova. Agrafena Ivanovna used

to come to wake Natasha at three in the morning, but generally found

her already awake. She was afraid of being late for Matins. Hastily

washing, and meekly putting on her shabbiest dress and an old

mantilla, Natasha, shivering in the fresh air, went out into the

deserted streets lit by the clear light of dawn. By Agrafena

Ivanovna's advice Natasha prepared herself not in their own parish,

but at a church where, according to the devout Agrafena Ivanovna,

the priest was a man of very severe and lofty life. There were never

many people in the church; Natasha always stood beside Belova in the

customary place before an icon of the Blessed Virgin, let into the

screen before the choir on the left side, and a feeling, new to her,

of humility before something great and incomprehensible, seized her

when at that unusual morning hour, gazing at the dark face of the

Virgin illuminated by the candles burning before it and by the morning

light falling from the window, she listened to the words of the

service which she tried to follow with understanding. When she

understood them her personal feeling became interwoven in the

prayers with shades of its own. When she did not understand, it was

sweeter still to think that the wish to understand everything is

pride, that it is impossible to understand all, that it is only

necessary to believe and to commit oneself to God, whom she felt

guiding her soul at those moments. She crossed herself, bowed low, and

when she did not understand, in horror at her own vileness, simply

asked God to forgive her everything, everything, to have mercy upon

her. The prayers to which she surrendered herself most of all were

those of repentance. On her way home at an early hour when she met

no one but bricklayers going to work or men sweeping the street, and

everybody within the houses was still asleep, Natasha experienced a

feeling new to her, a sense of the possibility of correcting her

faults, the possibility of a new, clean life, and of happiness.



During the whole week she spent in this way, that feeling grew every

day. And the happiness of taking communion, or "communing" as Agrafena

Ivanovna, joyously playing with the word, called it, seemed to Natasha

so great that she felt she should never live till that blessed Sunday.



But the happy day came, and on that memorable Sunday, when,

dressed in white muslin, she returned home after communion, for the

first time for many months she felt calm and not oppressed by the

thought of the life that lay before her.



The doctor who came to see her that day ordered her to continue

the powders he had prescribed a fortnight previously.



"She must certainly go on taking them morning and evening," said he,

evidently sincerely satisfied with his success. "Only, please be

particular about it.



"Be quite easy," he continued playfully, as he adroitly took the

gold coin in his palm. "She will soon be singing and frolicking about.

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The last medicine has done her a very great deal of good. She has

freshened up very much."



The countess, with a cheerful expression on her face, looked down at

her nails and spat a little for luck as she returned to the drawing

room.









CHAPTER XVIII





At the beginning of July more and more disquieting reports about the

war began to spread in Moscow; people spoke of an appeal by the

Emperor to the people, and of his coming himself from the army to

Moscow. And as up to the eleventh of July no manifesto or appeal had

been received, exaggerated reports became current about them and about

the position of Russia. It was said that the Emperor was leaving the

army because it was in danger, it was said that Smolensk had

surrendered, that Napoleon had an army of a million and only a miracle

could save Russia.



On the eleventh of July, which was Saturday, the manifesto was

received but was not yet in print, and Pierre, who was at the

Rostovs', promised to come to dinner next day, Sunday, and bring a

copy of the manifesto and appeal, which he would obtain from Count

Rostopchin.



That Sunday, the Rostovs went to Mass at the Razumovskis' private

chapel as usual. It was a hot July day. Even at ten o'clock, when

the Rostovs got out of their carriage at the chapel, the sultry air,

the shouts of hawkers, the light and gay summer clothes of the

crowd, the dusty leaves of the trees on the boulevard, the sounds of

the band and the white trousers of a battalion marching to parade, the

rattling of wheels on the cobblestones, and the brilliant, hot

sunshine were all full of that summer languor, that content and

discontent with the present, which is most strongly felt on a

bright, hot day in town. All the Moscow notabilities, all the Rostovs'

acquaintances, were at the Razumovskis' chapel, for, as if expecting

something to happen, many wealthy families who usually left town for

their country estates had not gone away that summer. As Natasha, at

her mother's side, passed through the crowd behind a liveried

footman who cleared the way for them, she heard a young man speaking

about her in too loud a whisper.



"That's Rostova, the one who..."



"She's much thinner, but all the same she's pretty!"



She heard, or thought she heard, the names of Kuragin and Bolkonski.

But she was always imagining that. It always seemed to her that

everyone who looked at her was thinking only of what had happened to

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her. With a sinking heart, wretched as she always was now when she

found herself in a crowd, Natasha in her lilac silk dress trimmed with

black lace walked--as women can walk--with the more repose and

stateliness the greater the pain and shame in her soul. She knew for

certain that she was pretty, but this no longer gave her

satisfaction as it used to. On the contrary it tormented her more than

anything else of late, and particularly so on this bright, hot

summer day in town. "It's Sunday again--another week past," she

thought, recalling that she had been here the Sunday before, "and

always the same life that is no life, and the same surroundings in

which it used to be so easy to live. I'm pretty, I'm young, and I know

that now I am good. I used to be bad, but now I know I am good," she

thought, "but yet my best years are slipping by and are no good to

anyone." She stood by her mother's side and exchanged nods with

acquaintances near her. From habit she scrutinized the ladies'

dresses, condemned the bearing of a lady standing close by who was not

crossing herself properly but in a cramped manner, and again she

thought with vexation that she was herself being judged and was

judging others, and suddenly, at the sound of the service, she felt

horrified at her own vileness, horrified that the former purity of her

soul was again lost to her.



A comely, fresh-looking old man was conducting the service with that

mild solemnity which has so elevating and soothing an effect on the

souls of the worshipers. The gates of the sanctuary screen were

closed, the curtain was slowly drawn, and from behind it a soft

mysterious voice pronounced some words. Tears, the cause of which

she herself did not understand, made Natasha's breast heave, and a

joyous but oppressive feeling agitated her.



"Teach me what I should do, how to live my life, how I may grow good

forever, forever!" she pleaded.



The deacon came out onto the raised space before the altar screen

and, holding his thumb extended, drew his long hair from under his

dalmatic and, making the sign of the cross on his breast, began in a

loud and solemn voice to recite the words of the prayer...



"In peace let us pray unto the Lord."



"As one community, without distinction of class, without enmity,

united by brotherly love--let us pray!" thought Natasha.



"For the peace that is from above, and for the salvation of our

souls."



"For the world of angels and all the spirits who dwell above us,"

prayed Natasha.



When they prayed for the warriors, she thought of her brother and

Denisov. When they prayed for all traveling by land and sea, she

remembered Prince Andrew, prayed for him, and asked God to forgive her

all the wrongs she had done him. When they prayed for those who love

us, she prayed for the members of her own family, her father and

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mother and Sonya, realizing for the first time how wrongly she had

acted toward them, and feeling all the strength of her love for

them. When they prayed for those who hate us, she tried to think of

her enemies and people who hated her, in order to pray for them. She

included among her enemies the creditors and all who had business

dealings with her father, and always at the thought of enemies and

those who hated her she remembered Anatole who had done her so much

harm--and though he did not hate her she gladly prayed for him as

for an enemy. Only at prayer did she feel able to think clearly and

calmly of Prince Andrew and Anatole, as men for whom her feelings were

as nothing compared with her awe and devotion to God. When they prayed

for the Imperial family and the Synod, she bowed very low and made the

sign of the cross, saying to herself that even if she did not

understand, still she could not doubt, and at any rate loved the

governing Synod and prayed for it.



When he had finished the Litany the deacon crossed the stole over

his breast and said, "Let us commit ourselves and our whole lives to

Christ the Lord!"



"Commit ourselves to God," Natasha inwardly repeated. "Lord God, I

submit myself to Thy will!" she thought. "I want nothing, wish for

nothing; teach me what to do and how to use my will! Take me, take

me!" prayed Natasha, with impatient emotion in her heart, not crossing

herself but letting her slender arms hang down as if expecting some

invisible power at any moment to take her and deliver her from

herself, from her regrets, desires, remorse, hopes, and sins.



The countess looked round several times at her daughter's softened

face and shining eyes and prayed God to help her.



Unexpectedly, in the middle of the service, and not in the usual

order Natasha knew so well, the deacon brought out a small stool,

the one he knelt on when praying on Trinity Sunday, and placed it

before the doors of the sanctuary screen. The priest came out with his

purple velvet biretta on his head, adjusted his hair, and knelt down

with an effort. Everybody followed his example and they looked at

one another in surprise. Then came the prayer just received from the

Synod--a prayer for the deliverance of Russia from hostile invasion.



"Lord God of might, God of our salvation!" began the priest in

that voice, clear, not grandiloquent but mild, in which only the

Slav clergy read and which acts so irresistibly on a Russian heart.



"Lord God of might, God of our salvation! Look this day in mercy and

blessing on Thy humble people, and graciously hear us, spare us, and

have mercy upon us! This foe confounding Thy land, desiring to lay

waste the whole world, rises against us; these lawless men are

gathered together to overthrow Thy kingdom, to destroy Thy dear

Jerusalem, Thy beloved Russia; to defile Thy temples, to overthrow

Thine altars, and to desecrate our holy shrines. How long, O Lord, how

long shall the wicked triumph? How long shall they wield unlawful

power?



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"Lord God! Hear us when we pray to Thee; strengthen with Thy might

our most gracious sovereign lord, the Emperor Alexander Pavlovich;

be mindful of his uprightness and meekness, reward him according to

his righteousness, and let it preserve us, Thy chosen Israel! Bless

his counsels, his undertakings, and his work; strengthen his kingdom

by Thine almighty hand, and give him victory over his enemy, even as

Thou gavest Moses the victory over Amalek, Gideon over Midian, and

David over Goliath. Preserve his army, put a bow of brass in the hands

of those who have armed themselves in Thy Name, and gird their loins

with strength for the fight. Take up the spear and shield and arise to

help us; confound and put to shame those who have devised evil against

us, may they be before the faces of Thy faithful warriors as dust

before the wind, and may Thy mighty Angel confound them and put them

to flight; may they be ensnared when they know it not, and may the

plots they have laid in secret be turned against them; let them fall

before Thy servants' feet and be laid low by our hosts! Lord, Thou art

able to save both great and small; Thou art God, and man cannot

prevail against Thee!



"God of our fathers! Remember Thy bounteous mercy and

loving-kindness which are from of old; turn not Thy face from us,

but be gracious to our unworthiness, and in Thy great goodness and Thy

many mercies regard not our transgressions and iniquities! Create in

us a clean heart and renew a right spirit within us, strengthen us all

in Thy faith, fortify our hope, inspire us with true love one for

another, arm us with unity of spirit in the righteous defense of the

heritage Thou gavest to us and to our fathers, and let not the scepter

of the wicked be exalted against the destiny of those Thou hast

sanctified.



"O Lord our God, in whom we believe and in whom we put our trust,

let us not be confounded in our hope of Thy mercy, and give us a token

of Thy blessing, that those who hate us and our Orthodox faith may see

it and be put to shame and perish, and may all the nations know that

Thou art the Lord and we are Thy people. Show Thy mercy upon us this

day, O Lord, and grant us Thy salvation; make the hearts of Thy

servants to rejoice in Thy mercy; smite down our enemies and destroy

them swiftly beneath the feet of Thy faithful servants! For Thou art

the defense, the succor, and the victory of them that put their

trust in Thee, and to Thee be all glory, to Father, Son, and Holy

Ghost, now and forever, world without end. Amen."



In Natasha's receptive condition of soul this prayer affected her

strongly. She listened to every word about the victory of Moses over

Amalek, of Gideon over Midian, and of David over Goliath, and about

the destruction of "Thy Jerusalem," and she prayed to God with the

tenderness and emotion with which her heart was overflowing, but

without fully understanding what she was asking of God in that prayer.

She shared with all her heart in the prayer for the spirit of

righteousness, for the strengthening of the heart by faith and hope,

and its animation by love. But she could not pray that her enemies

might be trampled under foot when but a few minutes before she had

been wishing she had more of them that she might pray for them. But

neither could she doubt the righteousness of the prayer that was being

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read on bended knees. She felt in her heart a devout and tremulous awe

at the thought of the punishment that overtakes men for their sins,

and especially of her own sins, and she prayed to God to forgive

them all, and her too, and to give them all, and her too, peace and

happiness. And it seemed to her that God heard her prayer.









CHAPTER XIX





From the day when Pierre, after leaving the Rostovs' with

Natasha's grateful look fresh in his mind, had gazed at the comet that

seemed to be fixed in the sky and felt that something new was

appearing on his own horizon--from that day the problem of the

vanity and uselessness of all earthly things, that had incessantly

tormented him, no longer presented itself. That terrible question

"Why?" "Wherefore?" which had come to him amid every occupation, was

now replaced, not by another question or by a reply to the former

question, but by her image. When he listened to, or himself took

part in, trivial conversations, when he read or heard of human

baseness or folly, he was not horrified as formerly, and did not ask

himself why men struggled so about these things when all is so

transient and incomprehensible--but he remembered her as he had last

seen her, and all his doubts vanished--not because she had answered

the questions that had haunted him, but because his conception of

her transferred him instantly to another, a brighter, realm of

spiritual activity in which no one could be justified or guilty--a

realm of beauty and love which it was worth living for. Whatever

worldly baseness presented itself to him, he said to himself:



"Well, supposing N. N. swindled the country and the Tsar, and the

country and the Tsar confer honors upon him, what does that matter?

She smiled at me yesterday and asked me to come again, and I love her,

and no one will ever know it." And his soul felt calm and peaceful.



Pierre still went into society, drank as much and led the same

idle and dissipated life, because besides the hours he spent at the

Rostovs' there were other hours he had to spend somehow, and the

habits and acquaintances he had made in Moscow formed a current that

bore him along irresistibly. But latterly, when more and more

disquieting reports came from the seat of war and Natasha's health

began to improve and she no longer aroused in him the former feeling

of careful pity, an ever-increasing restlessness, which he could not

explain, took possession of him. He felt that the condition he was

in could not continue long, that a catastrophe was coming which

would change his whole life, and he impatiently sought everywhere

for signs of that approaching catastrophe. One of his brother Masons

had revealed to Pierre the following prophecy concerning Napoleon,

drawn from the Revelation of St. John.



In chapter 13, verse 18, of the Apocalypse, it is said:

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Here is wisdom. Let him that hath understanding count the number

of the beast: for it is the number of a man; and his number is Six

hundred threescore and six.



And in the fifth verse of the same chapter:





And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and

blasphemies; and power was given unto him to continue forty and two

months.





The French alphabet, written out with the same numerical values as

the Hebrew, in which the first nine letters denote units and the

others tens, will have the following significance:



a b c d e f g h i k

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

l m n o p q r s

20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90

t u v w x y

100 110 120 130 140 150

z

160





Writing the words L'Empereur Napoleon in numbers, it appears that

the sum of them is 666, and that Napoleon therefore the beast foretold

in the Apocalypse. Moreover, by applying the same system to the

words quarante-deux,* which was the term allowed to the beast that

"spoke great things and blasphemies," the same number 666 was

obtained; from which it followed that the limit fixed for Napoleon's

power had come in the year 1812 when the French emperor was forty-two.

This prophecy pleased Pierre very much and he often asked himself what

would put an end to the power of the beast, that is, of Napoleon,

and tried by the same system of using letters as numbers and adding

them up, to find an answer to the question that engrossed him. He

wrote the words L'Empereur Alexandre, La nation russe and added up

their numbers, but the sums were either more or less than 666. Once

when making such calculations he wrote down his own name in French,

Comte Pierre Besouhoff, but the sum of the numbers did not come right.

Then he changed the spelling, substituting a z for the s and adding de

and the article le, still without obtaining the desired result. Then

it occurred to him: if the answer to the question were contained in

his name, his nationality would also be given in the answer. So he

wrote Le russe Besuhof and adding up the numbers got 671. This was

only five too much, and five was represented by e, the very letter

elided from the article le before the word Empereur. By omitting the

e, though incorrectly, Pierre got the answer he sought. L'russe

Besuhof made 666. This discovery excited him. How, or by what means,

he was connected with the great event foretold in the Apocalypse he

did not know, but he did not doubt that connection for a moment. His

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love for Natasha, Antichrist, Napoleon, the invasion, the comet,

666, L'Empereur Napoleon, and L'russe Besuhof--all this had to

mature and culminate, to lift him out of that spellbound, petty sphere

of Moscow habits in which he felt himself held captive and lead him to

a great achievement and great happiness.





*Forty-two.







On the eve of the Sunday when the special prayer was read, Pierre

had promised the Rostovs to bring them, from Count Rostopchin whom

he knew well, both the appeal to the people and the news from the

army. In the morning, when he went to call at Rostopchin's he met

there a courier fresh from the army, an acquaintance of his own, who

often danced at Moscow balls.



"Do, please, for heaven's sake, relieve me of something!" said the

courier. "I have a sackful of letters to parents."



Among these letters was one from Nicholas Rostov to his father.

Pierre took that letter, and Rostopchin also gave him the Emperor's

appeal to Moscow, which had just been printed, the last army orders,

and his own most recent bulletin. Glancing through the army orders,

Pierre found in one of them, in the lists of killed, wounded, and

rewarded, the name of Nicholas Rostov, awarded a St. George's Cross of

the Fourth Class for courage shown in the Ostrovna affair, and in

the same order the name of Prince Andrew Bolkonski, appointed to the

command of a regiment of Chasseurs. Though he did not want to remind

the Rostovs of Bolkonski, Pierre could not refrain from making them

happy by the news of their son's having received a decoration, so he

sent that printed army order and Nicholas' letter to the Rostovs,

keeping the appeal, the bulletin, and the other orders to take with

him when he went to dinner.



His conversation with Count Rostopchin and the latter's tone of

anxious hurry, the meeting with the courier who talked casually of how

badly things were going in the army, the rumors of the discovery of

spies in Moscow and of a leaflet in circulation stating that

Napoleon promised to be in both the Russian capitals by the autumn,

and the talk of the Emperor's being expected to arrive next day--all

aroused with fresh force that feeling of agitation and expectation

in Pierre which he had been conscious of ever since the appearance

of the comet, and especially since the beginning of the war.



He had long been thinking of entering the army and would have done

so had he not been hindered, first, by his membership of the Society

of Freemasons to which he was bound by oath and which preached

perpetual peace and the abolition of war, and secondly, by the fact

that when he saw the great mass of Muscovites who had donned uniform

and were talking patriotism, he somehow felt ashamed to take the step.

But the chief reason for not carrying out his intention to enter the

army lay in the vague idea that he was L'russe Besuhof who had the

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number of the beast, 666; that his part in the great affair of setting

a limit to the power of the beast that spoke great and blasphemous

things had been predestined from eternity, and that therefore he ought

not to undertake anything, but wait for what was bound to come to

pass.









CHAPTER XX





A few intimate friends were dining with the Rostovs that day, as

usual on Sundays.



Pierre came early so as to find them alone.



He had grown so stout this year that he would have been abnormal had

he not been so tall, so broad of limb, and so strong that he carried

his bulk with evident ease.



He went up the stairs, puffing and muttering something. His coachman

did not even ask whether he was to wait. He knew that when his

master was at the Rostovs' he stayed till midnight. The Rostovs'

footman rushed eagerly forward to help him off with his cloak and take

his hat and stick. Pierre, from club habit, always left both hat and

stick in the anteroom.



The first person he saw in the house was Natasha. Even before he saw

her, while taking off his cloak, he heard her. She was practicing

solfa exercises in the music room. He knew that she had not sung since

her illness, and so the sound of her voice surprised and delighted

him. He opened the door softly and saw her, in the lilac dress she had

worn at church, walking about the room singing. She had her back to

him when he opened the door, but when, turning quickly, she saw his

broad, surprised face, she blushed and came rapidly up to him.



"I want to try to sing again," she said, adding as if by way of

excuse, "it is, at least, something to do."



"That's capital!"



"How glad I am you've come! I am so happy today," she said, with the

old animation Pierre had not seen in her for along time. "You know

Nicholas has received a St. George's Cross? I am so proud of him."



"Oh yes, I sent that announcement. But I don't want to interrupt

you," he added, and was about to go to the drawing room.



Natasha stopped him.



"Count, is it wrong of me to sing?" she said blushing, and fixing

her eyes inquiringly on him.

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"No... Why should it be? On the contrary... But why do you ask me?"



"I don't know myself," Natasha answered quickly, "but I should not

like to do anything you disapproved of. I believe in you completely.

You don't know how important you are to me, how much you've done for

me...." She spoke rapidly and did not notice how Pierre flushed at her

words. "I saw in that same army order that he, Bolkonski" (she

whispered the name hastily), "is in Russia, and in the army again.

What do you think?"--she was speaking hurriedly, evidently afraid

her strength might fail her--"Will he ever forgive me? Will he not

always have a bitter feeling toward me? What do you think? What do you

think?"



"I think..." Pierre replied, "that he has nothing to forgive....

If I were in his place..."



By association of ideas, Pierre was at once carried back to the

day when, trying to comfort her, he had said that if he were not

himself but the best man in the world and free, he would ask on his

knees for her hand; and the same feeling of pity, tenderness, and love

took possession of him and the same words rose to his lips. But she

did not give him time to say them.



"Yes, you... you..." she said, uttering the word you rapturously-

"that's a different thing. I know no one kinder, more generous, or

better than you; nobody could be! Had you not been there then, and now

too, I don't know what would have become of me, because..."



Tears suddenly rose in her eyes, she turned away, lifted her music

before her eyes, began singing again, and again began walking up and

down the room.



Just then Petya came running in from the drawing room.



Petya was now a handsome rosy lad of fifteen with full red lips

and resembled Natasha. He was preparing to enter the university, but

he and his friend Obolenski had lately, in secret, agreed to join

the hussars.



Petya had come rushing out to talk to his namesake about this

affair. He had asked Pierre to find out whether he would be accepted

in the hussars.



Pierre walked up and down the drawing room, not listening to what

Petya was saying.



Petya pulled him by the arm to attract his attention.



"Well, what about my plan? Peter Kirilych, for heaven's sake! You

are my only hope," said Petya.



"Oh yes, your plan. To join the hussars? I'll mention it, I'll bring

it all up today."

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"Well, mon cher, have you got the manifesto?" asked the old count.

"The countess has been to Mass at the Razumovskis' and heard the new

prayer. She says it's very fine."



"Yes, I've got it," said Pierre. "The Emperor is to be here

tomorrow... there's to be an Extraordinary Meeting of the nobility,

and they are talking of a levy of ten men per thousand. Oh yes, let me

congratulate you!"



"Yes, yes, thank God! Well, and what news from the army?"



"We are again retreating. They say we're already near Smolensk,"

replied Pierre.



"O Lord, O Lord!" exclaimed the count. "Where is the manifesto?"



"The Emperor's appeal? Oh yes!"



Pierre began feeling in his pockets for the papers, but could not

find them. Still slapping his pockets, he kissed the hand of the

countess who entered the room and glanced uneasily around, evidently

expecting Natasha, who had left off singing but had not yet come

into the drawing room.



"On my word, I don't know what I've done with it," he said.



"There he is, always losing everything!" remarked the countess.



Natasha entered with a softened and agitated expression of face

and sat down looking silently at Pierre. As soon as she entered,

Pierre's features, which had been gloomy, suddenly lighted up, and

while still searching for the papers he glanced at her several times.



"No, really! I'll drive home, I must have left them there. I'll

certainly..."



"But you'll be late for dinner."



"Oh! And my coachman has gone."



But Sonya, who had gone to look for the papers in the anteroom,

had found them in Pierre's hat, where he had carefully tucked them

under the lining. Pierre was about to begin reading.



"No, after dinner," said the old count, evidently expecting much

enjoyment from that reading.



At dinner, at which champagne was drunk to the health of the new

chevalier of St. George, Shinshin told them the town news, of the

illness of the old Georgian princess, of Metivier's disappearance from

Moscow, and of how some German fellow had been brought to Rostopchin

and accused of being a French "spyer" (so Count Rostopchin had told

the story), and how Rostopchin let him go and assured the people

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that he was "not a spire at all, but only an old German ruin."



"People are being arrested..." said the count. "I've told the

countess she should not speak French so much. It's not the time for it

now."



"And have you heard?" Shinshin asked. "Prince Golitsyn has engaged a

master to teach him Russian. It is becoming dangerous to speak

French in the streets."



"And how about you, Count Peter Kirilych? If they call up the

militia, you too will have to mount a horse," remarked the old

count, addressing Pierre.



Pierre had been silent and preoccupied all through dinner, seeming

not to grasp what was said. He looked at the count.



"Oh yes, the war," he said. "No! What sort of warrior should I make?

And yet everything is so strange, so strange! I can't make it out. I

don't know, I am very far from having military tastes, but in these

times no one can answer for himself."



After dinner the count settled himself comfortably in an easy

chair and with a serious face asked Sonya, who was considered an

excellent reader, to read the appeal.





"To Moscow, our ancient Capital!



"The enemy has entered the borders of Russia with immense forces. He

comes to despoil our beloved country,"





Sonya read painstakingly in her high-pitched voice. The count

listened with closed eyes, heaving abrupt sighs at certain passages.



Natasha sat erect, gazing with a searching look now at her father

and now at Pierre.



Pierre felt her eyes on him and tried not to look round. The

countess shook her head disapprovingly and angrily at every solemn

expression in the manifesto. In all these words she saw only that

the danger threatening her son would not soon be over. Shinshin,

with a sarcastic smile on his lips, was evidently preparing to make

fun of anything that gave him the opportunity: Sonya's reading, any

remark of the count's, or even the manifesto itself should no better

pretext present itself.



After reading about the dangers that threatened Russia, the hopes

the Emperor placed on Moscow and especially on its illustrious

nobility, Sonya, with a quiver in her voice due chiefly to the

attention that was being paid to her, read the last words:





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"We ourselves will not delay to appear among our people in that

Capital and in others parts of our realm for consultation, and for the

direction of all our levies, both those now barring the enemy's path

and those freshly formed to defeat him wherever he may appear. May the

ruin he hopes to bring upon us recoil on his own head, and may

Europe delivered from bondage glorify the name of Russia!"





"Yes, that's it!" cried the count, opening his moist eyes and

sniffing repeatedly, as if a strong vinaigrette had been held to his

nose; and he added, "Let the Emperor but say the word and we'll

sacrifice everything and begrudge nothing."



Before Shinshin had time to utter the joke he was ready to make on

the count's patriotism, Natasha jumped up from her place and ran to

her father.



"What a darling our Papa is!" she cried, kissing him, and she

again looked at Pierre with the unconscious coquetry that had returned

to her with her better spirits.



"There! Here's a patriot for you!" said Shinshin.



"Not a patriot at all, but simply..." Natasha replied in an

injured tone. "Everything seems funny to you, but this isn't at all

a joke...."



"A joke indeed!" put in the count. "Let him but say the word and

we'll all go.... We're not Germans!"



"But did you notice, it says, 'for consultation'?" said Pierre.



"Never mind what it's for...."



At this moment, Petya, to whom nobody was paying any attention, came

up to his father with a very flushed face and said in his breaking

voice that was now deep and now shrill:



"Well, Papa, I tell you definitely, and Mamma too, it's as you

please, but I say definitely that you must let me enter the army,

because I can't... that's all...."



The countess, in dismay, looked up to heaven, clasped her hands, and

turned angrily to her husband.



"That comes of your talking!" said she.



But the count had already recovered from his excitement.



"Come, come!" said he. "Here's a fine warrior! No! Nonsense! You

must study."



"It's not nonsense, Papa. Fedya Obolenski is younger than I, and

he's going too. Besides, all the same I can't study now when..." Petya

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stopped short, flushed till he perspired, but still got out the words,

"when our Fatherland is in danger."



"That'll do, that'll do--nonsense...."



"But you said yourself that we would sacrifice everything."



"Petya! Be quiet, I tell you!" cried the count, with a glance at his

wife, who had turned pale and was staring fixedly at her son.



"And I tell you--Peter Kirilych here will also tell you..."



"Nonsense, I tell you. Your mother's milk has hardly dried on your

lips and you want to go into the army! There, there, I tell you,"

and the count moved to go out of the room, taking the papers, probably

to reread them in his study before having a nap.



"Well, Peter Kirilych, let's go and have a smoke," he said.



Pierre was agitated and undecided. Natasha's unwontedly brilliant

eyes, continually glancing at him with a more than cordial look, had

reduced him to this condition.



"No, I think I'll go home."



"Home? Why, you meant to spend the evening with us.... You don't

often come nowadays as it is, and this girl of mine," said the count

good-naturedly, pointing to Natasha, "only brightens up when you're

here."



"Yes, I had forgotten... I really must go home... business..."

said Pierre hurriedly.



"Well, then, au revoir!" said the count, and went out of the room.



"Why are you going? Why are you upset?" asked Natasha, and she

looked challengingly into Pierre's eyes.



"Because I love you!" was what he wanted to say, but he did not

say it, and only blushed till the tears came, and lowered his eyes.



"Because it is better for me to come less often... because... No,

simply I have business...."



"Why? No, tell me!" Natasha began resolutely and suddenly stopped.



They looked at each other with dismayed and embarrassed faces. He

tried to smile but could not: his smile expressed suffering, and he

silently kissed her hand and went out.



Pierre made up his mind not to go to the Rostovs' any more.









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CHAPTER XXI





After the definite refusal he had received, Petya went to his room

and there locked himself in and wept bitterly. When he came in to tea,

silent, morose, and with tear-stained face, everybody pretended not to

notice anything.



Next day the Emperor arrived in Moscow, and several of the

Rostovs' domestic serfs begged permission to go to have a look at him.

That morning Petya was a long time dressing and arranging his hair and

collar to look like a grown-up man. He frowned before his looking

glass, gesticulated, shrugged his shoulders, and finally, without

saying a word to anyone, took his cap and left the house by the back

door, trying to avoid notice. Petya decided to go straight to where

the Emperor was and to explain frankly to some gentleman-in-waiting

(he imagined the Emperor to be always surrounded by

gentlemen-in-waiting) that he, Count Rostov, in spite of his youth

wished to serve his country; that youth could be no hindrance to

loyalty, and that he was ready to... While dressing, Petya had

prepared many fine things he meant to say to the gentleman-in-waiting.



It was on the very fact of being so young that Petya counted for

success in reaching the Emperor--he even thought how surprised

everyone would be at his youthfulness--and yet in the arrangement of

his collar and hair and by his sedate deliberate walk he wished to

appear a grown-up man. But the farther he went and the more his

attention was diverted by the ever-increasing crowds moving toward the

Kremlin, the less he remembered to walk with the sedateness and

deliberation of a man. As he approached the Kremlin he even began to

avoid being crushed and resolutely stuck out his elbows in a

menacing way. But within the Trinity Gateway he was so pressed to

the wall by people who probably were unaware of the patriotic

intentions with which he had come that in spite of all his

determination he had to give in, and stop while carriages passed in,

rumbling beneath the archway. Beside Petya stood a peasant woman, a

footman, two tradesmen, and a discharged soldier. After standing

some time in the gateway, Petya tried to move forward in front of

the others without waiting for all the carriages to pass, and he began

resolutely working his way with his elbows, but the woman just in

front of him, who was the first against whom he directed his

efforts, angrily shouted at him:



"What are you shoving for, young lordling? Don't you see we're all

standing still? Then why push?"



"Anybody can shove," said the footman, and also began working his

elbows to such effect that he pushed Petya into a very filthy corner

of the gateway.



Petya wiped his perspiring face with his hands and pulled up the

damp collar which he had arranged so well at home to seem like a

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man's.



He felt that he no longer looked presentable, and feared that if

he were now to approach the gentlemen-in-waiting in that plight he

would not be admitted to the Emperor. But it was impossible to smarten

oneself up or move to another place, because of the crowd. One of

the generals who drove past was an acquaintance of the Rostovs', and

Petya thought of asking his help, but came to the conclusion that that

would not be a manly thing to do. When the carriages had all passed

in, the crowd, carrying Petya with it, streamed forward into the

Kremlin Square which was already full of people. There were people not

only in the square, but everywhere--on the slopes and on the roofs. As

soon as Petya found himself in the square he clearly heard the sound

of bells and the joyous voices of the crowd that filled the whole

Kremlin.



For a while the crowd was less dense, but suddenly all heads were

bared, and everyone rushed forward in one direction. Petya was being

pressed so that he could scarcely breathe, and everybody shouted,

"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" Petya stood on tiptoe and pushed and

pinched, but could see nothing except the people about him.



All the faces bore the same expression of excitement and enthusiasm.

A tradesman's wife standing beside Petya sobbed, and the tears ran

down her cheeks.



"Father! Angel! Dear one!" she kept repeating, wiping away her tears

with her fingers.



"Hurrah!" was heard on all sides.



For a moment the crowd stood still, but then it made another rush

forward.



Quite beside himself, Petya, clinching his teeth and rolling his

eyes ferociously, pushed forward, elbowing his way and shouting

"hurrah!" as if he were prepared that instant to kill himself and

everyone else, but on both sides of him other people with similarly

ferocious faces pushed forward and everybody shouted "hurrah!"



"So this is what the Emperor is!" thought Petya. "No, I can't

petition him myself--that would be too bold." But in spite of this

he continued to struggle desperately forward, and from between the

backs of those in front he caught glimpses of an open space with a

strip of red cloth spread out on it; but just then the crowd swayed

back--the police in front were pushing back those who had pressed

too close to the procession: the Emperor was passing from the palace

to the Cathedral of the Assumption--and Petya unexpectedly received

such a blow on his side and ribs and was squeezed so hard that

suddenly everything grew dim before his eyes and he lost

consciousness. When he came to himself, a man of clerical appearance

with a tuft of gray hair at the back of his head and wearing a

shabby blue cassock--probably a church clerk and chanter--was

holding him under the arm with one hand while warding off the pressure

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of the crowd with the other.



"You've crushed the young gentleman!" said the clerk. "What are

you up to? Gently!... They've crushed him, crushed him!"



The Emperor entered the Cathedral of the Assumption. The crowd

spread out again more evenly, and the clerk led Petya--pale and

breathless--to the Tsar-cannon. Several people were sorry for Petya,

and suddenly a crowd turned toward him and pressed round him. Those

who stood nearest him attended to him, unbuttoned his coat, seated him

on the raised platform of the cannon, and reproached those others

(whoever they might be) who had crushed him.



"One might easily get killed that way! What do they mean by it?

Killing people! Poor dear, he's as white as a sheet!"--various

voices were heard saying.



Petya soon came to himself, the color returned to his face, the pain

had passed, and at the cost of that temporary unpleasantness he had

obtained a place by the cannon from where he hoped to see the

Emperor who would be returning that way. Petya no longer thought of

presenting his petition. If he could only see the Emperor he would

be happy!



While the service was proceeding in the Cathedral of the Assumption-

it was a combined service of prayer on the occasion of the Emperor's

arrival and of thanksgiving for the conclusion of peace with the

Turks--the crowd outside spread out and hawkers appeared, selling

kvas, gingerbread, and poppyseed sweets (of which Petya was

particularly fond), and ordinary conversation could again be heard.

A tradesman's wife was showing a rent in her shawl and telling how

much the shawl had cost; another was saying that all silk goods had

now got dear. The clerk who had rescued Petya was talking to a

functionary about the priests who were officiating that day with the

bishop. The clerk several times used the word "plenary" (of the

service), a word Petya did not understand. Two young citizens were

joking with some serf girls who were cracking nuts. All these

conversations, especially the joking with the girls, were such as

might have had a particular charm for Petya at his age, but they did

not interest him now. He sat on his elevation--the pedestal of the

cannon--still agitated as before by the thought of the Emperor and

by his love for him. The feeling of pain and fear he had experienced

when he was being crushed, together with that of rapture, still

further intensified his sense of the importance of the occasion.



Suddenly the sound of a firing of cannon was heard from the

embankment, to celebrate the signing of peace with the Turks, and

the crowd rushed impetuously toward the embankment to watch the

firing. Petya too would have run there, but the clerk who had taken

the young gentleman under his protection stopped him. The firing was

still proceeding when officers, generals, and gentlemen-in-waiting

came running out of the cathedral, and after them others in a more

leisurely manner: caps were again raised, and those who had run to

look at the cannon ran back again. At last four men in uniforms and

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sashes emerged from the cathedral doors. "Hurrah! hurrah!" shouted the

crowd again.



"Which is he? Which?" asked Petya in a tearful voice, of those

around him, but no one answered him, everybody was too excited; and

Petya, fixing on one of those four men, whom he could not clearly

see for the tears of joy that filled his eyes, concentrated all his

enthusiasm on him--though it happened not to be the Emperor-

frantically shouted "Hurrah!" and resolved that tomorrow, come what

might, he would join the army.



The crowd ran after the Emperor, followed him to the palace, and

began to disperse. It was already late, and Petya had not eaten

anything and was drenched with perspiration, yet he did not go home

but stood with that diminishing, but still considerable, crowd

before the palace while the Emperor dined--looking in at the palace

windows, expecting he knew not what, and envying alike the notables he

saw arriving at the entrance to dine with the Emperor and the court

footmen who served at table, glimpses of whom could be seen through

the windows.



While the Emperor was dining, Valuev, looking out of the window,

said:



"The people are still hoping to see Your Majesty again."



The dinner was nearly over, and the Emperor, munching a biscuit,

rose and went out onto the balcony. The people, with Petya among them,

rushed toward the balcony.



"Angel! Dear one! Hurrah! Father!..." cried the crowd, and Petya

with it, and again the women and men of weaker mold, Petya among them,

wept with joy.



A largish piece of the biscuit the Emperor was holding in his hand

broke off, fell on the balcony parapet, and then to the ground. A

coachman in a jerkin, who stood nearest, sprang forward and snatched

it up. Several people in the crowd rushed at the coachman. Seeing this

the Emperor had a plateful of biscuits brought him and began

throwing them down from the balcony. Petya's eyes grew bloodshot,

and still more excited by the danger of being crushed, he rushed at

the biscuits. He did not know why, but he had to have a biscuit from

the Tsar's hand and he felt that he must not give way. He sprang

forward and upset an old woman who was catching at a biscuit; the

old woman did not consider herself defeated though she was lying on

the ground--she grabbed at some biscuits but her hand did not reach

them. Petya pushed her hand away with his knee, seized a biscuit,

and as if fearing to be too late, again shouted "Hurrah!" with a voice

already hoarse.



The Emperor went in, and after that the greater part of the crowd

began to disperse.



"There! I said if only we waited--and so it was!" was being joyfully

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said by various people.



Happy as Petya was, he felt sad at having to go home knowing that

all the enjoyment of that day was over. He did not go straight home

from the Kremlin, but called on his friend Obolenski, who was

fifteen and was also entering the regiment. On returning home Petya

announced resolutely and firmly that if he was not allowed to enter

the service he would run away. And next day, Count Ilya Rostov--though

he had not yet quite yielded--went to inquire how he could arrange for

Petya to serve where there would be least danger.









CHAPTER XXII





Two days later, on the fifteenth of July, an immense number of

carriages were standing outside the Sloboda Palace.



The great halls were full. In the first were the nobility and gentry

in their uniforms, in the second bearded merchants in full-skirted

coats of blue cloth and wearing medals. In the noblemen's hall there

was an incessant movement and buzz of voices. The chief magnates sat

on high-backed chairs at a large table under the portrait of the

Emperor, but most of the gentry were strolling about the room.



All these nobles, whom Pierre met every day at the Club or in

their own houses, were in uniform--some in that of Catherine's day,

others in that of Emperor Paul, others again in the new uniforms of

Alexander's time or the ordinary uniform of the nobility, and the

general characteristic of being in uniform imparted something

strange and fantastic to these diverse and familiar personalities,

both old and young. The old men, dim-eyed, toothless, bald, sallow,

and bloated, or gaunt and wrinkled, were especially striking. For

the most part they sat quietly in their places and were silent, or, if

they walked about and talked, attached themselves to someone

younger. On all these faces, as on the faces of the crowd Petya had

seen in the Square, there was a striking contradiction: the general

expectation of a solemn event, and at the same time the everyday

interests in a boston card party, Peter the cook, Zinaida Dmitrievna's

health, and so on.



Pierre was there too, buttoned up since early morning in a

nobleman's uniform that had become too tight for him. He was agitated;

this extraordinary gathering not only of nobles but also of the

merchant-class--les etats generaux (States-General)--evoked in him a

whole series of ideas he had long laid aside but which were deeply

graven in his soul: thoughts of the Contrat social and the French

Revolution. The words that had struck him in the Emperor's appeal-

that the sovereign was coming to the capital for consultation with his

people--strengthened this idea. And imagining that in this direction

something important which he had long awaited was drawing near, he

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strolled about watching and listening to conversations, but nowhere

finding any confirmation of the ideas that occupied him.



The Emperor's manifesto was read, evoking enthusiasm, and then all

moved about discussing it. Besides the ordinary topics of

conversation, Pierre heard questions of where the marshals of the

nobility were to stand when the Emperor entered, when a ball should be

given in the Emperor's honor, whether they should group themselves

by districts or by whole provinces... and so on; but as soon as the

war was touched on, or what the nobility had been convened for, the

talk became undecided and indefinite. Then all preferred listening

to speaking.



A middle-aged man, handsome and virile, in the uniform of a

retired naval officer, was speaking in one of the rooms, and a small

crowd was pressing round him. Pierre went up to the circle that had

formed round the speaker and listened. Count Ilya Rostov, in a

military uniform of Catherine's time, was sauntering with a pleasant

smile among the crowd, with all of whom he was acquainted. He too

approached that group and listened with a kindly smile and nods of

approval, as he always did, to what the speaker was saying. The

retired naval man was speaking very boldly, as was evident from the

expression on the faces of the listeners and from the fact that some

people Pierre knew as the meekest and quietest of men walked away

disapprovingly or expressed disagreement with him. Pierre pushed his

way into the middle of the group, listened, and convinced himself that

the man was indeed a liberal, but of views quite different from his

own. The naval officer spoke in a particularly sonorous, musical,

and aristocratic baritone voice, pleasantly swallowing his r's and

generally slurring his consonants: the voice of a man calling out to

his servant, "Heah! Bwing me my pipe!" It was indicative of

dissipation and the exercise of authority.



"What if the Smolensk people have offahd to waise militia for the

Empewah? Ah we to take Smolensk as our patte'n? If the noble

awistocwacy of the pwovince of Moscow thinks fit, it can show its

loyalty to our sov'weign the Empewah in other ways. Have we

fo'gotten the waising of the militia in the yeah 'seven? All that

did was to enwich the pwiests' sons and thieves and wobbahs...."



Count Ilya Rostov smiled blandly and nodded approval.



"And was our militia of any use to the Empia? Not at all! It only

wuined our farming! Bettah have another conscwiption... o' ou' men

will wetu'n neithah soldiers no' peasants, and we'll get only

depwavity fwom them. The nobility don't gwudge theah lives--evewy

one of us will go and bwing in more wecwuits, and the sov'weign" (that

was the way he referred to the Emperor) "need only say the word and

we'll all die fo' him!" added the orator with animation.



Count Rostov's mouth watered with pleasure and he nudged Pierre, but

Pierre wanted to speak himself. He pushed forward, feeling stirred,

but not yet sure what stirred him or what he would say. Scarcely had

he opened his mouth when one of the senators, a man without a tooth in

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his head, with a shrewd though angry expression, standing near the

first speaker, interrupted him. Evidently accustomed to managing

debates and to maintaining an argument, he began in low but distinct

tones:



"I imagine, sir," said he, mumbling with his toothless mouth,

"that we have been summoned here not to discuss whether it's best

for the empire at the present moment to adopt conscription or to

call out the militia. We have been summoned to reply to the appeal

with which our sovereign the Emperor has honored us. But to judge what

is best--conscription or the militia--we can leave to the supreme

authority...."



Pierre suddenly saw an outlet for his excitement. He hardened his

heart against the senator who was introducing this set and narrow

attitude into the deliberations of the nobility. Pierre stepped

forward and interrupted him. He himself did not yet know what he would

say, but he began to speak eagerly, occasionally lapsing into French

or expressing himself in bookish Russian.



"Excuse me, your excellency," he began. (He was well acquainted with

the senator, but thought it necessary on this occasion to address

him formally.) "Though I don't agree with the gentleman..." (he

hesitated: he wished to say, "Mon tres honorable preopinant"--"My very

honorable opponent") "with the gentleman... whom I have not the

honor of knowing, I suppose that the nobility have been summoned not

merely to express their sympathy and enthusiasm but also to consider

the means by which we can assist our Fatherland! I imagine," he went

on, warming to his subject, "that the Emperor himself would not be

satisfied to find in us merely owners of serfs whom we are willing

to devote to his service, and chair a canon* we are ready to make of

ourselves--and not to obtain from us any co-co-counsel."





*"Food for cannon."





Many persons withdrew from the circle, noticing the senator's

sarcastic smile and the freedom of Pierre's remarks. Only Count Rostov

was pleased with them as he had been pleased with those of the naval

officer, the senator, and in general with whatever speech he had

last heard.



"I think that before discussing these questions," Pierre

continued, "we should ask the Emperor--most respectfully ask His

Majesty--to let us know the number of our troops and the position in

which our army and our forces now are, and then..."



But scarcely had Pierre uttered these words before he was attacked

from three sides. The most vigorous attack came from an old

acquaintance, a boston player who had always been well disposed toward

him, Stepan Stepanovich Adraksin. Adraksin was in uniform, and whether

as a result of the uniform or from some other cause Pierre saw

before him quite a different man. With a sudden expression of

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malevolence on his aged face, Adraksin shouted at Pierre:



"In the first place, I tell you we have no right to question the

Emperor about that, and secondly, if the Russian nobility had that

right, the Emperor could not answer such a question. The troops are

moved according to the enemy's movements and the number of men

increases and decreases..."



Another voice, that of a nobleman of medium height and about forty

years of age, whom Pierre had formerly met at the gypsies' and knew as

a bad cardplayer, and who, also transformed by his uniform, came up to

Pierre, interrupted Adraksin.



"Yes, and this is not a time for discussing," he continued, "but for

acting: there is war in Russia! The enemy is advancing to destroy

Russia, to desecrate the tombs of our fathers, to carry off our

wives and children." The nobleman smote his breast. "We will all

arise, every one of us will go, for our father the Tsar!" he

shouted, rolling his bloodshot eyes. Several approving voices were

heard in the crowd. "We are Russians and will not grudge our blood

in defense of our faith, the throne, and the Fatherland! We must cease

raving if we are sons of our Fatherland! We will show Europe how

Russia rises to the defense of Russia!"



Pierre wished to reply, but could not get in a word. He felt that

his words, apart from what meaning they conveyed, were less audible

than the sound of his opponent's voice.



Count Rostov at the back of the crowd was expressing approval;

several persons, briskly turning a shoulder to the orator at the end

of a phrase, said:



"That's right, quite right! Just so!"



Pierre wished to say that he was ready to sacrifice his money, his

serfs, or himself, only one ought to know the state of affairs in

order to be able to improve it, but he was unable to speak. Many

voices shouted and talked at the same time, so that Count Rostov had

not time to signify his approval of them all, and the group increased,

dispersed, re-formed, and then moved with a hum of talk into the

largest hall and to the big table. Not only was Pierre's attempt to

speak unsuccessful, but he was rudely interrupted, pushed aside, and

people turned away from him as from a common enemy. This happened

not because they were displeased by the substance of his speech, which

had even been forgotten after the many subsequent speeches, but to

animate it the crowd needed a tangible object to love and a tangible

object to hate. Pierre became the latter. Many other orators spoke

after the excited nobleman, and all in the same tone. Many spoke

eloquently and with originality.



Glinka, the editor of the Russian Messenger, who was recognized

(cries of "author! author!" were heard in the crowd), said that

"hell must be repulsed by hell," and that he had seen a child

smiling at lightning flashes and thunderclaps, but "we will not be

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that child."



"Yes, yes, at thunderclaps!" was repeated approvingly in the back

rows of the crowd.



The crowd drew up to the large table, at which sat gray-haired or

bald seventy-year-old magnates, uniformed and besashed almost all of

whom Pierre had seen in their own homes with their buffoons, or

playing boston at the clubs. With an incessant hum of voices the crowd

advanced to the table. Pressed by the throng against the high backs of

the chairs, the orators spoke one after another and sometimes two

together. Those standing behind noticed what a speaker omitted to

say and hastened to supply it. Others in that heat and crush racked

their brains to find some thought and hastened to utter it. The old

magnates, whom Pierre knew, sat and turned to look first at one and

then at another, and their faces for the most part only expressed

the fact that they found it very hot. Pierre, however, felt excited,

and the general desire to show that they were ready to go to all

lengths--which found expression in the tones and looks more than in

the substance of the speeches--infected him too. He did not renounce

his opinions, but felt himself in some way to blame and wished to

justify himself.



"I only said that it would be more to the purpose to make sacrifices

when we know what is needed!" said he, trying to be heard above the

other voices.



One of the old men nearest to him looked round, but his attention

was immediately diverted by an exclamation at the other side of the

table.



"Yes, Moscow will be surrendered! She will be our expiation!"

shouted one man.



"He is the enemy of mankind!" cried another. "Allow me to speak...."

"Gentlemen, you are crushing me!..."









CHAPTER XXIII





At that moment Count Rostopchin with his protruding chin and alert

eyes, wearing the uniform of a general with sash over his shoulder,

entered the room, stepping briskly to the front of the crowd of

gentry.



"Our sovereign the Emperor will be here in a moment," said

Rostopchin. "I am straight from the palace. Seeing the position we are

in, I think there is little need for discussion. The Emperor has

deigned to summon us and the merchants. Millions will pour forth

from there"--he pointed to the merchants' hall--"but our business is

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to supply men and not spare ourselves... That is the least we can do!"



A conference took place confined to the magnates sitting at the

table. The whole consultation passed more than quietly. After all

the preceding noise the sound of their old voices saying one after

another, "I agree," or for variety, "I too am of that opinion," and so

on had even a mournful effect.



The secretary was told to write down the resolution of the Moscow

nobility and gentry, that they would furnish ten men, fully

equipped, out of every thousand serfs, as the Smolensk gentry had

done. Their chairs made a scraping noise as the gentlemen who had

conferred rose with apparent relief, and began walking up and down,

arm in arm, to stretch their legs and converse in couples.



"The Emperor! The Emperor!" a sudden cry resounded through the halls

and the whole throng hurried to the entrance.



The Emperor entered the hall through a broad path between two

lines of nobles. Every face expressed respectful, awe-struck

curiosity. Pierre stood rather far off and could not hear all that the

Emperor said. From what he did hear he understood that the Emperor

spoke of the danger threatening the empire and of the hopes he

placed on the Moscow nobility. He was answered by a voice which

informed him of the resolution just arrived at.



"Gentlemen!" said the Emperor with a quivering voice.



There was a rustling among the crowd and it again subsided, so

that Pierre distinctly heard the pleasantly human voice of the Emperor

saying with emotion:



"I never doubted the devotion of the Russian nobles, but today it

has surpassed my expectations. I thank you in the name of the

Fatherland! Gentlemen, let us act! Time is most precious..."



The Emperor ceased speaking, the crowd began pressing round him, and

rapturous exclamations were heard from all sides.



"Yes, most precious... a royal word," said Count Rostov, with a sob.

He stood at the back, and, though he had heard hardly anything,

understood everything in his own way.



From the hall of the nobility the Emperor went to that of the

merchants. There he remained about ten minutes. Pierre was among those

who saw him come out from the merchants' hall with tears of emotion in

his eyes. As became known later, he had scarcely begun to address

the merchants before tears gushed from his eyes and he concluded in

a trembling voice. When Pierre saw the Emperor he was coming out

accompanied by two merchants, one of whom Pierre knew, a fat

otkupshchik. The other was the mayor, a man with a thin sallow face

and narrow beard. Both were weeping. Tears filled the thin man's eyes,

and the fat otkupshchik sobbed outright like a child and kept

repeating:

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"Our lives and property--take them, Your Majesty!"



Pierre's one feeling at the moment was a desire to show that he

was ready to go all lengths and was prepared to sacrifice

everything. He now felt ashamed of his speech with its

constitutional tendency and sought an opportunity of effacing it.

Having heard that Count Mamonov was furnishing a regiment, Bezukhov at

once informed Rostopchin that he would give a thousand men and their

maintenance.



Old Rostov could not tell his wife of what had passed without tears,

and at once consented to Petya's request and went himself to enter his

name.



Next day the Emperor left Moscow. The assembled nobles all took

off their uniforms and settled down again in their homes and clubs,

and not without some groans gave orders to their stewards about the

enrollment, feeling amazed themselves at what they had done.









BOOK TEN: 1812









CHAPTER I





Napoleon began the war with Russia because he could not resist going

to Dresden, could not help having his head turned by the homage he

received, could not help donning a Polish uniform and yielding to

the stimulating influence of a June morning, and could not refrain

from bursts of anger in the presence of Kurakin and then of Balashev.



Alexander refused negotiations because he felt himself to be

personally insulted. Barclay de Tolly tried to command the army in the

best way, because he wished to fulfill his duty and earn fame as a

great commander. Rostov charged the French because he could not

restrain his wish for a gallop across a level field; and in the same

way the innumerable people who took part in the war acted in accord

with their personal characteristics, habits, circumstances, and

aims. They were moved by fear or vanity, rejoiced or were indignant,

reasoned, imagining that they knew what they were doing and did it

of their own free will, but they all were involuntary tools of

history, carrying on a work concealed from them but comprehensible

to us. Such is the inevitable fate of men of action, and the higher

they stand in the social hierarchy the less are they free.



The actors of 1812 have long since left the stage, their personal

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interests have vanished leaving no trace, and nothing remains of

that time but its historic results.



Providence compelled all these men, striving to attain personal

aims, to further the accomplishment of a stupendous result no one of

them at all expected--neither Napoleon, nor Alexander, nor still

less any of those who did the actual fighting.



The cause of the destruction of the French army in 1812 is clear

to us now. No one will deny that that cause was, on the one hand,

its advance into the heart of Russia late in the season without any

preparation for a winter campaign and, on the other, the character

given to the war by the burning of Russian towns and the hatred of the

foe this aroused among the Russian people. But no one at the time

foresaw (what now seems so evident) that this was the only way an army

of eight hundred thousand men--the best in the world and led by the

best general--could be destroyed in conflict with a raw army of half

its numerical strength, and led by inexperienced commanders as the

Russian army was. Not only did no one see this, but on the Russian

side every effort was made to hinder the only thing that could save

Russia, while on the French side, despite Napoleon's experience and

so-called military genius, every effort was directed to pushing on

to Moscow at the end of the summer, that is, to doing the very thing

that was bound to lead to destruction.



In historical works on the year 1812 French writers are very fond of

saying that Napoleon felt the danger of extending his line, that he

sought a battle and that his marshals advised him to stop at Smolensk,

and of making similar statements to show that the danger of the

campaign was even then understood. Russian authors are still fonder of

telling us that from the commencement of the campaign a Scythian war

plan was adopted to lure Napoleon into the depths of Russia, and

this plan some of them attribute to Pfuel, others to a certain

Frenchman, others to Toll, and others again to Alexander himself-

pointing to notes, projects, and letters which contain hints of such a

line of action. But all these hints at what happened, both from the

French side and the Russian, are advanced only because they fit in

with the event. Had that event not occurred these hints would have

been forgotten, as we have forgotten the thousands and millions of

hints and expectations to the contrary which were current then but

have now been forgotten because the event falsified them. There are

always so many conjectures as to the issue of any event that however

it may end there will always be people to say: "I said then that it

would be so," quite forgetting that amid their innumerable conjectures

many were to quite the contrary effect.



Conjectures as to Napoleon's awareness of the danger of extending

his line, and (on the Russian side) as to luring the enemy into the

depths of Russia, are evidently of that kind, and only by much

straining can historians attribute such conceptions to Napoleon and

his marshals, or such plans to the Russian commanders. All the facts

are in flat contradiction to such conjectures. During the whole period

of the war not only was there no wish on the Russian side to draw

the French into the heart of the country, but from their first entry

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into Russia everything was done to stop them. And not only was

Napoleon not afraid to extend his line, but he welcomed every step

forward as a triumph and did not seek battle as eagerly as in former

campaigns, but very lazily.



At the very beginning of the war our armies were divided, and our

sole aim was to unite them, though uniting the armies was no advantage

if we meant to retire and lure the enemy into the depths of the

country. Our Emperor joined the army to encourage it to defend every

inch of Russian soil and not to retreat. The enormous Drissa camp

was formed on Pfuel's plan, and there was no intention of retiring

farther. The Emperor reproached the commanders in chief for every step

they retired. He could not bear the idea of letting the enemy even

reach Smolensk, still less could he contemplate the burning of Moscow,

and when our armies did unite he was displeased that Smolensk was

abandoned and burned without a general engagement having been fought

under its walls.



So thought the Emperor, and the Russian commanders and people were

still more provoked at the thought that our forces were retreating

into the depths of the country.



Napoleon having cut our armies apart advanced far into the country

and missed several chances of forcing an engagement. In August he

was at Smolensk and thought only of how to advance farther, though

as we now see that advance was evidently ruinous to him.



The facts clearly show that Napoleon did not foresee the danger of

the advance on Moscow, nor did Alexander and the Russian commanders

then think of luring Napoleon on, but quite the contrary. The luring

of Napoleon into the depths of the country was not the result of any

plan, for no one believed it to be possible; it resulted from a most

complex interplay of intrigues, aims, and wishes among those who

took part in the war and had no perception whatever of the inevitable,

or of the one way of saving Russia. Everything came about

fortuitously. The armies were divided at the commencement of the

campaign. We tried to unite them, with the evident intention of giving

battle and checking the enemy's advance, and by this effort to unite

them while avoiding battle with a much stronger enemy, and necessarily

withdrawing the armies at an acute angle--we led the French on to

Smolensk. But we withdrew at an acute angle not only because the

French advanced between our two armies; the angle became still more

acute and we withdrew still farther, because Barclay de Tolly was an

unpopular foreigner disliked by Bagration (who would come his

command), and Bagration--being in command of the second army--tried to

postpone joining up and coming under Barclay's command as long as he

could. Bagration was slow in effecting the junction--though that was

the chief aim of all at headquarters--because, as he alleged, he

exposed his army to danger on this march, and it was best for him to

retire more to the left and more to the south, worrying the enemy from

flank and rear and securing from the Ukraine recruits for his army;

and it looks as if he planned this in order not to come under the

command of the detested foreigner Barclay, whose rank was inferior

to his own.

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The Emperor was with the army to encourage it, but his presence

and ignorance of what steps to take, and the enormous number of

advisers and plans, destroyed the first army's energy and it retired.



The intention was to make a stand at the Drissa camp, but

Paulucci, aiming at becoming commander in chief, unexpectedly employed

his energy to influence Alexander, and Pfuel's whole plan was

abandoned and the command entrusted to Barclay. But as Barclay did not

inspire confidence his power was limited. The armies were divided,

there was no unity of command, and Barclay was unpopular; but from

this confusion, division, and the unpopularity of the foreign

commander in chief, there resulted on the one hand indecision and

the avoidance of a battle (which we could not have refrained from

had the armies been united and had someone else, instead of Barclay,

been in command) and on the other an ever-increasing indignation

against the foreigners and an increase in patriotic zeal.



At last the Emperor left the army, and as the most convenient and

indeed the only pretext for his departure it was decided that it was

necessary for him to inspire the people in the capitals and arouse the

nation in general to a patriotic war. And by this visit of the Emperor

to Moscow the strength of the Russian army was trebled.



He left in order not to obstruct the commander in chief's

undivided control of the army, and hoping that more decisive action

would then be taken, but the command of the armies became still more

confused and enfeebled. Bennigsen, the Tsarevich, and a swarm of

adjutants general remained with the army to keep the commander in

chief under observation and arouse his energy, and Barclay, feeling

less free than ever under the observation of all these "eyes of the

Emperor," became still more cautious of undertaking any decisive

action and avoided giving battle.



Barclay stood for caution. The Tsarevich hinted at treachery and

demanded a general engagement. Lubomirski, Bronnitski, Wlocki, and the

others of that group stirred up so much trouble that Barclay, under

pretext of sending papers to the Emperor, dispatched these Polish

adjutants general to Petersburg and plunged into an open struggle with

Bennigsen and the Tsarevich.



At Smolensk the armies at last reunited, much as Bagration

disliked it.



Bagration drove up in a carriage to to the house occupied by

Barclay. Barclay donned his sash and came out to meet and report to

his senior officer Bagration.



Despite his seniority in rank Bagration, in this contest of

magnanimity, took his orders from Barclay, but, having submitted,

agreed with him less than ever. By the Emperor's orders Bagration

reported direct to him. He wrote to Arakcheev, the Emperor's

confidant: "It must be as my sovereign pleases, but I cannot work with

the Minister (meaning Barclay). For God's sake send me somewhere

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else if only in command of a regiment. I cannot stand it here.

Headquarters are so full of Germans that a Russian cannot exist and

there is no sense in anything. I thought I was really serving my

sovereign and the Fatherland, but it turns out that I am serving

Barclay. I confess I do not want to."



The swarm of Bronnitskis and Wintzingerodes and their like still

further embittered the relations between the commanders in chief,

and even less unity resulted. Preparations were made to fight the

French before Smolensk. A general was sent to survey the position.

This general, hating Barclay, rode to visit a friend of his own, a

corps commander, and, having spent the day with him, returned to

Barclay and condemned, as unsuitable from every point of view, the

battleground he had not seen.



While disputes and intrigues were going on about the future field of

battle, and while we were looking for the French--having lost touch

with them--the French stumbled upon Neverovski's division and

reached the walls of Smolensk.



It was necessary to fight an unexpected battle at Smolensk to save

our lines of communication. The battle was fought and thousands were

killed on both sides.



Smolensk was abandoned contrary to the wishes of the Emperor and

of the whole people. But Smolensk was burned by its own

inhabitants-who had been misled by their governor. And these ruined

inhabitants, setting an example to other Russians, went to Moscow

thinking only of their own losses but kindling hatred of the foe.

Napoleon advanced farther and we retired, thus arriving at the very

result which caused his destruction.









CHAPTER II





The day after his son had left, Prince Nicholas sent for Princess

Mary to come to his study.



"Well? Are you satisfied now?" said he. "You've made me quarrel with

my son! Satisfied, are you? That's all you wanted! Satisfied?... It

hurts me, it hurts. I'm old and weak and this is what you wanted. Well

then, gloat over it! Gloat over it!"



After that Princess Mary did not see her father for a whole week. He

was ill and did not leave his study.



Princess Mary noticed to her surprise that during this illness the

old prince not only excluded her from his room, but did not admit

Mademoiselle Bourienne either. Tikhon alone attended him.



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At the end of the week the prince reappeared and resumed his

former way of life, devoting himself with special activity to building

operations and the arrangement of the gardens and completely

breaking off his relations with Mademoiselle Bourienne. His looks

and cold tone to his daughter seemed to say: "There, you see? You

plotted against me, you lied to Prince Andrew about my relations

with that Frenchwoman and made me quarrel with him, but you see I need

neither her nor you!"



Princess Mary spent half of every day with little Nicholas, watching

his lessons, teaching him Russian and music herself, and talking to

Dessalles; the rest of the day she spent over her books, with her

old nurse, or with "God's folk" who sometimes came by the back door to

see her.



Of the war Princess Mary thought as women do think about wars. She

feared for her brother who was in it, was horrified by and amazed at

the strange cruelty that impels men to kill one another, but she did

not understand the significance of this war, which seemed to her

like all previous wars. She did not realize the significance of this

war, though Dessalles with whom she constantly conversed was

passionately interested in its progress and tried to explain his own

conception of it to her, and though the "God's folk" who came to see

her reported, in their own way, the rumors current among the people of

an invasion by Antichrist, and though Julie (now Princess

Drubetskaya), who had resumed correspondence with her, wrote patriotic

letters from Moscow.



"I write you in Russian, my good friend," wrote Julie in her

Frenchified Russian, "because I have a detestation for all the French,

and the same for their language which I cannot support to hear

spoken.... We in Moscow are elated by enthusiasm for our adored

Emperor.



"My poor husband is enduring pains and hunger in Jewish taverns, but

the news which I have inspires me yet more.



"You heard probably of the heroic exploit of Raevski, embracing

his two sons and saying: 'I will perish with them but we will not be

shaken!' And truly though the enemy was twice stronger than we, we

were unshakable. We pass the time as we can, but in war as in war! The

princesses Aline and Sophie sit whole days with me, and we, unhappy

widows of live men, make beautiful conversations over our charpie,

only you, my friend, are missing..." and so on.



The chief reason Princess Mary did not realize the full significance

of this war was that the old prince never spoke of it, did not

recognize it, and laughed at Dessalles when he mentioned it at dinner.

The prince's tone was so calm and confident that Princess Mary

unhesitatingly believed him.



All that July the old prince was exceedingly active and even

animated. He planned another garden and began a new building for the

domestic serfs. The only thing that made Princess Mary anxious about

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him was that he slept very little and, instead of sleeping in his

study as usual, changed his sleeping place every day. One day he would

order his camp bed to be set up in the glass gallery, another day he

remained on the couch or on the lounge chair in the drawing room and

dozed there without undressing, while--instead of Mademoiselle

Bourienne--a serf boy read to him. Then again he would spend a night

in the dining room.



On August 1, a second letter was received from Prince Andrew. In his

first letter which came soon after he had left home, Prince Andrew had

dutifully asked his father's forgiveness for what he had allowed

himself to say and begged to be restored to his favor. To this

letter the old prince had replied affectionately, and from that time

had kept the Frenchwoman at a distance. Prince Andrew's second letter,

written near Vitebsk after the French had occupied that town, gave a

brief account of the whole campaign, enclosed for them a plan he had

drawn and forecasts as to the further progress of the war. In this

letter Prince Andrew pointed out to his father the danger of staying

at Bald Hills, so near the theater of war and on the army's direct

line of march, and advised him to move to Moscow.



At dinner that day, on Dessalles' mentioning that the French were

said to have already entered Vitebsk, the old prince remembered his

son's letter.



"There was a letter from Prince Andrew today," he said to Princess

Mary--"Haven't you read it?"



"No, Father," she replied in a frightened voice.



She could not have read the letter as she did not even know it had

arrived.



"He writes about this war," said the prince, with the ironic smile

that had become habitual to him in speaking of the present war.



"That must be very interesting," said Dessalles. "Prince Andrew is

in a position to know..."



"Oh, very interesting!" said Mademoiselle Bourienne.



"Go and get it for me," said the old prince to Mademoiselle

Bourienne. "You know--under the paperweight on the little table."



Mademoiselle Bourienne jumped up eagerly.



"No, don't!" he exclaimed with a frown. "You go, Michael Ivanovich."



Michael Ivanovich rose and went to the study. But as soon as he

had left the room the old prince, looking uneasily round, threw down

his napkin and went himself.



"They can't do anything... always make some muddle," he muttered.



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While he was away Princess Mary, Dessalles, Mademoiselle

Bourienne, and even little Nicholas exchanged looks in silence. The

old prince returned with quick steps, accompanied by Michael

Ivanovich, bringing the letter and a plan. These he put down beside

him--not letting anyone read them at dinner.



On moving to the drawing room he handed the letter to Princess

Mary and, spreading out before him the plan of the new building and

fixing his eyes upon it, told her to read the letter aloud. When she

had done so Princess Mary looked inquiringly at her father. He was

examining the plan, evidently engrossed in his own ideas.



"What do you think of it, Prince?" Dessalles ventured to ask.



"I? I?..." said the prince as if unpleasantly awakened, and not

taking his eyes from the plan of the building.



"Very possibly the theater of war will move so near to us that..."



"Ha ha ha! The theater of war!" said the prince. "I have said and

still say that the theater of war is Poland and the enemy will never

get beyond the Niemen."



Dessalles looked in amazement at the prince, who was talking of

the Niemen when the enemy was already at the Dnieper, but Princess

Mary, forgetting the geographical position of the Niemen, thought that

what her father was saying was correct.



"When the snow melts they'll sink in the Polish swamps. Only they

could fail to see it," the prince continued, evidently thinking of the

campaign of 1807 which seemed to him so recent. "Bennigsen should have

advanced into Prussia sooner, then things would have taken a different

turn..."



"But, Prince," Dessalles began timidly, "the letter mentions

Vitebsk...."



"Ah, the letter? Yes..." replied the prince peevishly. "Yes...

yes..." His face suddenly took on a morose expression. He paused.

"Yes, he writes that the French were beaten at... at... what river

is it?"



Dessalles dropped his eyes.



"The prince says nothing about that," he remarked gently.



"Doesn't he? But I didn't invent it myself."



No one spoke for a long time.



"Yes... yes... Well, Michael Ivanovich," he suddenly went on,

raising his head and pointing to the plan of the building, "tell me

how you mean to alter it...."



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Michael Ivanovich went up to the plan, and the prince after speaking

to him about the building looked angrily at Princess Mary and

Dessalles and went to his own room.



Princess Mary saw Dessalles' embarrassed and astonished look fixed

on her father, noticed his silence, and was struck by the fact that

her father had forgotten his son's letter on the drawing-room table;

but she was not only afraid to speak of it and ask Dessalles the

reason of his confusion and silence, but was afraid even to think

about it.



In the evening Michael Ivanovich, sent by the prince, came to

Princess Mary for Prince Andrew's letter which had been forgotten in

the drawing room. She gave it to him and, unpleasant as it was to

her to do so, ventured to ask him what her father was doing.



"Always busy," replied Michael Ivanovich with a respectfully

ironic smile which caused Princess Mary to turn pale. "He's worrying

very much about the new building. He has been reading a little, but

now"--Michael Ivanovich went on, lowering his voice--"now he's at

his desk, busy with his will, I expect." (One of the prince's favorite

occupations of late had been the preparation of some papers he meant

to leave at his death and which he called his "will.")



"And Alpatych is being sent to Smolensk?" asked Princess Mary.



"Oh, yes, he has been waiting to start for some time."









CHAPTER III





When Michael Ivanovich returned to the study with the letter, the

old prince, with spectacles on and a shade over his eyes, was

sitting at his open bureau with screened candles, holding a paper in

his outstretched hand, and in a somewhat dramatic attitude was reading

his manuscript--his "Remarks" as he termed it--which was to be

transmitted to the Emperor after his death.



When Michael Ivanovich went in there were tears in the prince's eyes

evoked by the memory of the time when the paper he was now reading had

been written. He took the letter from Michael Ivanovich's hand, put it

in his pocket, folded up his papers, and called in Alpatych who had

long been waiting.



The prince had a list of things to be bought in Smolensk and,

walking up and down the room past Alpatych who stood by the door, he

gave his instructions.



"First, notepaper--do you hear? Eight quires, like this sample,

gilt-edged... it must be exactly like the sample. Varnish, sealing

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wax, as in Michael Ivanovich's list."



He paced up and down for a while and glanced at his notes.



"Then hand to the governor in person a letter about the deed."



Next, bolts for the doors of the new building were wanted and had to

be of a special shape the prince had himself designed, and a leather

case had to be ordered to keep the "will" in.



The instructions to Alpatych took over two hours and still the

prince did not let him go. He sat down, sank into thought, closed

his eyes, and dozed off. Alpatych made a slight movement.



"Well, go, go! If anything more is wanted I'll send after you."



Alpatych went out. The prince again went to his bureau, glanced into

it, fingered his papers, closed the bureau again, and sat down at

the table to write to the governor.



It was already late when he rose after sealing the letter. He wished

to sleep, but he knew he would not be able to and that most depressing

thoughts came to him in bed. So he called Tikhon and went through

the rooms with him to show him where to set up the bed for that night.



He went about looking at every corner. Every place seemed

unsatisfactory, but worst of all was his customary couch in the study.

That couch was dreadful to him, probably because of the oppressive

thoughts he had had when lying there. It was unsatisfactory

everywhere, but the corner behind the piano in the sitting room was

better than other places: he had never slept there yet.



With the help of a footman Tikhon brought in the bedstead and

began putting it up.



"That's not right! That's not right!" cried the prince, and

himself pushed it a few inches from the corner and then closer in

again.



"Well, at last I've finished, now I'll rest," thought the prince,

and let Tikhon undress him.



Frowning with vexation at the effort necessary to divest himself

of his coat and trousers, the prince undressed, sat down heavily on

the bed, and appeared to be meditating as he looked contemptuously

at his withered yellow legs. He was not meditating, but only deferring

the moment of making the effort to lift those legs up and turn over on

the bed. "Ugh, how hard it is! Oh, that this toil might end and you

would release me!" thought he. Pressing his lips together he made that

effort for the twenty-thousandth time and lay down. But hardly had

he done so before he felt the bed rocking backwards and forwards

beneath him as if it were breathing heavily and jolting. This happened

to him almost every night. He opened his eyes as they were closing.



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"No peace, damn them!" he muttered, angry he knew not with whom. "Ah

yes, there was something else important, very important, that I was

keeping till I should be in bed. The bolts? No, I told him about them.

No, it was something, something in the drawing room. Princess Mary

talked some nonsense. Dessalles, that fool, said something.

Something in my pocket--can't remember..."



"Tikhon, what did we talk about at dinner?"



"About Prince Michael..."



"Be quiet, quiet!" The prince slapped his hand on the table. "Yes, I

know, Prince Andrew's letter! Princess Mary read it. Dessalles said

something about Vitebsk. Now I'll read it."



He had the letter taken from his pocket and the table--on which

stood a glass of lemonade and a spiral wax candle--moved close to

the bed, and putting on his spectacles he began reading. Only now in

the stillness of the night, reading it by the faint light under the

green shade, did he grasp its meaning for a moment.



"The French at Vitebsk, in four days' march they may be at Smolensk;

perhaps are already there! Tikhon!" Tikhon jumped up. "No, no, I don't

want anything!" he shouted.



He put the letter under the candlestick and closed his eyes. And

there rose before him the Danube at bright noonday: reeds, the Russian

camp, and himself a young general without a wrinkle on his ruddy face,

vigorous and alert, entering Potemkin's gaily colored tent, and a

burning sense of jealousy of "the favorite" agitated him now as

strongly as it had done then. He recalled all the words spoken at that

first meeting with Potemkin. And he saw before him a plump, rather

sallow-faced, short, stout woman, the Empress Mother, with her smile

and her words at her first gracious reception of him, and then that

same face on the catafalque, and the encounter he had with Zubov

over her coffin about his right to kiss her hand.



"Oh, quicker, quicker! To get back to that time and have done with

all the present! Quicker, quicker--and that they should leave me in

peace!"









CHAPTER IV





Bald Hills, Prince Nicholas Bolkonski's estate, lay forty miles east

from Smolensk and two miles from the main road to Moscow.



The same evening that the prince gave his instructions to

Alpatych, Dessalles, having asked to see Princess Mary, told her that,

as the prince was not very well and was taking no steps to secure

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his safety, though from Prince Andrew's letter it was evident that

to remain at Bald Hills might be dangerous, he respectfully advised

her to send a letter by Alpatych to the Provincial Governor at

Smolensk, asking him to let her know the state of affairs and the

extent of the danger to which Bald Hills was exposed. Dessalles

wrote this letter to the Governor for Princess Mary, she signed it,

and it was given to Alpatych with instructions to hand it to the

Governor and to come back as quickly as possible if there was danger.



Having received all his orders Alpatych, wearing a white beaver hat-

a present from the prince--and carrying a stick as the prince did,

went out accompanied by his family. Three well-fed roans stood ready

harnessed to a small conveyance with a leather hood.



The larger bell was muffled and the little bells on the harness

stuffed with paper. The prince allowed no one at Bald Hills to drive

with ringing bells; but on a long journey Alpatych liked to have them.

His satellites--the senior clerk, a countinghouse clerk, a scullery

maid, a cook, two old women, a little pageboy, the coachman, and

various domestic serfs--were seeing him off.



His daughter placed chintz-covered down cushions for him to sit on

and behind his back. His old sister-in-law popped in a small bundle,

and one of the coachmen helped him into the vehicle.



"There! There! Women's fuss! Women, women!" said Alpatych, puffing

and speaking rapidly just as the prince did, and he climbed into the

trap.



After giving the clerk orders about the work to be done, Alpatych,

not trying to imitate the prince now, lifted the hat from his bald

head and crossed himself three times.



"If there is anything... come back, Yakov Alpatych! For Christ's

sake think of us!" cried his wife, referring to the rumors of war

and the enemy.



"Women, women! Women's fuss!" muttered Alpatych to himself and

started on his journey, looking round at the fields of yellow rye

and the still-green, thickly growing oats, and at other quite black

fields just being plowed a second time.



As he went along he looked with pleasure at the year's splendid crop

of corn, scrutinized the strips of ryefield which here and there

were already being reaped, made his calculations as to the sowing

and the harvest, and asked himself whether he had not forgotten any of

the prince's orders.



Having baited the horses twice on the way, he arrived at the town

toward evening on the fourth of August.



Alpatych kept meeting and overtaking baggage trains and troops on

the road. As he approached Smolensk he heard the sounds of distant

firing, but these did not impress him. What struck him most was the

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sight of a splendid field of oats in which a camp had been pitched and

which was being mown down by the soldiers, evidently for fodder.

This fact impressed Alpatych, but in thinking about his own business

he soon forgot it.



All the interests of his life for more than thirty years had been

bounded by the will of the prince, and he never went beyond that

limit. Everything not connected with the execution of the prince's

orders did not interest and did not even exist for Alpatych.



On reaching Smolensk on the evening of the fourth of August he put

up in the Gachina suburb across the Dnieper, at the inn kept by

Ferapontov, where he had been in the habit of putting up for the

last thirty years. Some thirty years ago Ferapontov, by Alpatych's

advice, had bought a wood from the prince, had begun to trade, and now

had a house, an inn, and a corn dealer's shop in that province. He was

a stout, dark, red-faced peasant in the forties, with thick lips, a

broad knob of a nose, similar knobs over his black frowning brows, and

a round belly.



Wearing a waistcoat over his cotton shirt, Ferapontov was standing

before his shop which opened onto the street. On seeing Alpatych he

went up to him.



"You're welcome, Yakov Alpatych. Folks are leaving the town, but you

have come to it," said he.



"Why are they leaving the town?" asked Alpatych.



"That's what I say. Folks are foolish! Always afraid of the French."



"Women's fuss, women's fuss!" said Alpatych.



"Just what I think, Yakov Alpatych. What I say is: orders have

been given not to let them in, so that must be right. And the peasants

are asking three rubles for carting--it isn't Christian!"



Yakov Alpatych heard without heeding. He asked for a samovar and for

hay for his horses, and when he had had his tea he went to bed.



All night long troops were moving past the inn. Next morning

Alpatych donned a jacket he wore only in town and went out on

business. It was a sunny morning and by eight o'clock it was already

hot. "A good day for harvesting," thought Alpatych.



From beyond the town firing had been heard since early morning. At

eight o'clock the booming of cannon was added to the sound of

musketry. Many people were hurrying through the streets and there were

many soldiers, but cabs were still driving about, tradesmen stood at

their shops, and service was being held in the churches as usual.

Alpatych went to the shops, to government offices, to the post office,

and to the Governor's. In the offices and shops and at the post office

everyone was talking about the army and about the enemy who was

already attacking the town, everybody was asking what should be

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done, and all were trying to calm one another.



In front of the Governor's house Alpatych found a large number of

people, Cossacks, and a traveling carriage of the Governor's. At the

porch he met two of the landed gentry, one of whom he knew. This

man, an ex-captain of police, was saying angrily:



"It's no joke, you know! It's all very well if you're single. 'One

man though undone is but one,' as the proverb says, but with

thirteen in your family and all the property... They've brought us

to utter ruin! What sort of governors are they to do that? They

ought to be hanged--the brigands!..."



"Oh come, that's enough!" said the other.



"What do I care? Let him hear! We're not dogs," said the

ex-captain of police, and looking round he noticed Alpatych.



"Oh, Yakov Alpatych! What have you come for?"



"To see the Governor by his excellency's order," answered

Alpatych, lifting his head and proudly thrusting his hand into the

bosom of his coat as he always did when he mentioned the prince....

"He has ordered me to inquire into the position of affairs," he added.



"Yes, go and find out!" shouted the angry gentleman. "They've

brought things to such a pass that there are no carts or

anything!... There it is again, do you hear?" said he, pointing

in the direction whence came the sounds of firing.



"They've brought us all to ruin... the brigands!" he repeated, and

descended the porch steps.



Alpatych swayed his head and went upstairs. In the waiting room were

tradesmen, women, and officials, looking silently at one another.

The door of the Governor's room opened and they all rose and moved

forward. An official ran out, said some words to a merchant, called

a stout official with a cross hanging on his neck to follow him, and

vanished again, evidently wishing to avoid the inquiring looks and

questions addressed to him. Alpatych moved forward and next time the

official came out addressed him, one hand placed in the breast of

his buttoned coat, and handed him two letters.



"To his Honor Baron Asch, from General-in-Chief Prince Bolkonski,"

he announced with such solemnity and significance that the official

turned to him and took the letters.



A few minutes later the Governor received Alpatych and hurriedly

said to him:



"Inform the prince and princess that I knew nothing: I acted on

the highest instructions--here..." and he handed a paper to

Alpatych. "Still, as the prince is unwell my advice is that they

should go to Moscow. I am just starting myself. Inform them..."

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But the Governor did not finish: a dusty perspiring officer ran into

the room and began to say something in French. The Governor's face

expressed terror.



"Go," he said, nodding his head to Alpatych, and began questioning

the officer.



Eager, frightened, helpless glances were turned on Alpatych when

he came out of the Governor's room. Involuntarily listening now to the

firing, which had drawn nearer and was increasing in strength,

Alpatych hurried to his inn. The paper handed to him by the Governor

said this:





"I assure you that the town of Smolensk is not in the slightest

danger as yet and it is unlikely that it will be threatened with

any. I from the one side and Prince Bagration from the other are

marching to unite our forces before Smolensk, which junction will be

effected on the 22nd instant, and both armies with their united forces

will defend our compatriots of the province entrusted to your care

till our efforts shall have beaten back the enemies of our Fatherland,

or till the last warrior in our valiant ranks has perished. From

this you will see that you have a perfect right to reassure the

inhabitants of Smolensk, for those defended by two such brave armies

may feel assured of victory." (Instructions from Barclay de Tolly to

Baron Asch, the civil governor of Smolensk, 1812.)





People were anxiously roaming about the streets.



Carts piled high with household utensils, chairs, and cupboards kept

emerging from the gates of the yards and moving along the streets.

Loaded carts stood at the house next to Ferapontov's and women were

wailing and lamenting as they said good-by. A small watchdog ran round

barking in front of the harnessed horses.



Alpatych entered the innyard at a quicker pace than usual and went

straight to the shed where his horses and trap were. The coachman

was asleep. He woke him up, told him to harness, and went into the

passage. From the host's room came the sounds of a child crying, the

despairing sobs of a woman, and the hoarse angry shouting of

Ferapontov. The cook began running hither and thither in the passage

like a frightened hen, just as Alpatych entered.



"He's done her to death. Killed the mistress!... Beat her... dragged

her about so!..."



"What for?" asked Alpatych.



"She kept begging to go away. She's a woman! 'Take me away,' says

she, 'don't let me perish with my little children! Folks,' she says,

'are all gone, so why,' she says, 'don't we go?' And he began

beating and pulling her about so!"

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At these words Alpatych nodded as if in approval, and not wishing to

hear more went to the door of the room opposite the innkeeper's, where

he had left his purchases.



"You brute, you murderer!" screamed a thin, pale woman who, with a

baby in her arms and her kerchief torn from her head, burst through

the door at that moment and down the steps into the yard.



Ferapontov came out after her, but on seeing Alpatych adjusted his

waistcoat, smoothed his hair, yawned, and followed Alpatych into the

opposite room.



"Going already?" said he.



Alpatych, without answering or looking at his host, sorted his

packages and asked how much he owed.



"We'll reckon up! Well, have you been to the Governor's?" asked

Ferapontov. "What has been decided?"



Alpatych replied that the Governor had not told him anything

definite.



"With our business, how can we get away?" said Ferapontov. "We'd

have to pay seven rubles a cartload to Dorogobuzh and I tell them

they're not Christians to ask it! Selivanov, now, did a good stroke

last Thursday--sold flour to the army at nine rubles a sack. Will

you have some tea?" he added.



While the horses were being harnessed Alpatych and Ferapontov over

their tea talked of the price of corn, the crops, and the good weather

for harvesting.



"Well, it seems to be getting quieter," remarked Ferapontov,

finishing his third cup of tea and getting up. "Ours must have got the

best of it. The orders were not to let them in. So we're in force,

it seems.... They say the other day Matthew Ivanych Platov drove

them into the river Marina and drowned some eighteen thousand in one

day."



Alpatych collected his parcels, handed them to the coachman who

had come in, and settled up with the innkeeper. The noise of wheels,

hoofs, and bells was heard from the gateway as a little trap passed

out.



It was by now late in the afternoon. Half the street was in

shadow, the other half brightly lit by the sun. Alpatych looked out of

the window and went to the door. Suddenly the strange sound of a

far-off whistling and thud was heard, followed by a boom of cannon

blending into a dull roar that set the windows rattling.



He went out into the street: two men were running past toward the

bridge. From different sides came whistling sounds and the thud of

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cannon balls and bursting shells falling on the town. But these sounds

were hardly heard in comparison with the noise of the firing outside

the town and attracted little attention from the inhabitants. The town

was being bombarded by a hundred and thirty guns which Napoleon had

ordered up after four o'clock. The people did not at once realize

the meaning of this bombardment.



At first the noise of the falling bombs and shells only aroused

curiosity. Ferapontov's wife, who till then had not ceased wailing

under the shed, became quiet and with the baby in her arms went to the

gate, listening to the sounds and looking in silence at the people.



The cook and a shop assistant came to the gate. With lively

curiosity everyone tried to get a glimpse of the projectiles as they

flew over their heads. Several people came round the corner talking

eagerly.



"What force!" remarked one. "Knocked the roof and ceiling all to

splinters!"



"Routed up the earth like a pig," said another.



"That's grand, it bucks one up!" laughed the first. "Lucky you

jumped aside, or it would have wiped you out!"



Others joined those men and stopped and told how cannon balls had

fallen on a house close to them. Meanwhile still more projectiles, now

with the swift sinister whistle of a cannon ball, now with the

agreeable intermittent whistle of a shell, flew over people's heads

incessantly, but not one fell close by, they all flew over. Alpatych

was getting into his trap. The innkeeper stood at the gate.



"What are you staring at?" he shouted to the cook, who in her red

skirt, with sleeves rolled up, swinging her bare elbows, had stepped

to the corner to listen to what was being said.



"What marvels!" she exclaimed, but hearing her master's voice she

turned back, pulling down her tucked-up skirt.



Once more something whistled, but this time quite close, swooping

downwards like a little bird; a flame flashed in the middle of the

street, something exploded, and the street was shrouded in smoke.



"Scoundrel, what are you doing?" shouted the innkeeper, rushing to

the cook.



At that moment the pitiful wailing of women was heard from different

sides, the frightened baby began to cry, and people crowded silently

with pale faces round the cook. The loudest sound in that crowd was

her wailing.



"Oh-h-h! Dear souls, dear kind souls! Don't let me die! My good

souls!..."



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Five minutes later no one remained in the street. The cook, with her

thigh broken by a shell splinter, had been carried into the kitchen.

Alpatych, his coachman, Ferapontov's wife and children and the house

porter were all sitting in the cellar, listening. The roar of guns,

the whistling of projectiles, and the piteous moaning of the cook,

which rose above the other sounds, did not cease for a moment. The

mistress rocked and hushed her baby and when anyone came into the

cellar asked in a pathetic whisper what had become of her husband

who had remained in the street. A shopman who entered told her that

her husband had gone with others to the cathedral, whence they were

fetching the wonder-working icon of Smolensk.



Toward dusk the cannonade began to subside. Alpatych left the cellar

and stopped in the doorway. The evening sky that had been so clear was

clouded with smoke, through which, high up, the sickle of the new moon

shone strangely. Now that the terrible din of the guns had ceased a

hush seemed to reign over the town, broken only by the rustle of

footsteps, the moaning, the distant cries, and the crackle of fires

which seemed widespread everywhere. The cook's moans had now subsided.

On two sides black curling clouds of smoke rose and spread from the

fires. Through the streets soldiers in various uniforms walked or

ran confusedly in different directions like ants from a ruined

ant-hill. Several of them ran into Ferapontov's yard before Alpatych's

eyes. Alpatych went out to the gate. A retreating regiment,

thronging and hurrying, blocked the street.



Noticing him, an officer said: "The town is being abandoned. Get

away, get away!" and then, turning to the soldiers, shouted:



"I'll teach you to run into the yards!"



Alpatych went back to the house, called the coachman, and told him

to set off. Ferapontov's whole household came out too, following

Alpatych and the coachman. The women, who had been silent till then,

suddenly began to wail as they looked at the fires--the smoke and even

the flames of which could be seen in the failing twilight--and as if

in reply the same kind of lamentation was heard from other parts of

the street. Inside the shed Alpatych and the coachman arranged the

tangled reins and traces of their horses with trembling hands.



As Alpatych was driving out of the gate he saw some ten soldiers

in Ferapontov's open shop, talking loudly and filling their bags and

knapsacks with flour and sunflower seeds. Just then Ferapontov

returned and entered his shop. On seeing the soldiers he was about

to shout at them, but suddenly stopped and, clutching at his hair,

burst into sobs and laughter:



"Loot everything, lads! Don't let those devils get it!" he cried,

taking some bags of flour himself and throwing them into the street.



Some of the soldiers were frightened and ran away, others went on

filling their bags. On seeing Alpatych, Ferapontov turned to him:



"Russia is done for!" he cried. "Alpatych, I'll set the place on

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fire myself. We're done for!..." and Ferapontov ran into the yard.



Soldiers were passing in a constant stream along the street blocking

it completely, so that Alpatych could not pass out and had to wait.

Ferapontov's wife and children were also sitting in a cart waiting

till it was possible to drive out.



Night had come. There were stars in the sky and the new moon shone

out amid the smoke that screened it. On the sloping descent to the

Dnieper Alpatych's cart and that of the innkeeper's wife, which were

slowly moving amid the rows of soldiers and of other vehicles, had

to stop. In a side street near the crossroads where the vehicles had

stopped, a house and some shops were on fire. This fire was already

burning itself out. The flames now died down and were lost in the

black smoke, now suddenly flared up again brightly, lighting up with

strange distinctness the faces of the people crowding at the

crossroads. Black figures flitted about before the fire, and through

the incessant crackling of the flames talking and shouting could be

heard. Seeing that his trap would not be able to move on for some

time, Alpatych got down and turned into the side street to look at the

fire. Soldiers were continually rushing backwards and forwards near

it, and he saw two of them and a man in a frieze coat dragging burning

beams into another yard across the street, while others carried

bundles of hay.



Alpatych went up to a large crowd standing before a high barn

which was blazing briskly. The walls were all on fire and the back

wall had fallen in, the wooden roof was collapsing, and the rafters

were alight. The crowd was evidently watching for the roof to fall in,

and Alpatych watched for it too.



"Alpatych!" a familiar voice suddenly hailed the old man.



"Mercy on us! Your excellency!" answered Alpatych, immediately

recognizing the voice of his young prince.



Prince Andrew in his riding cloak, mounted on a black horse, was

looking at Alpatych from the back of the crowd.



"Why are you here?" he asked.



"Your... your excellency," stammered Alpatych and broke into sobs.

"Are we really lost? Master!..."



"Why are you here?" Prince Andrew repeated.



At that moment the flames flared up and showed his young master's

pale worn face. Alpatych told how he had been sent there and how

difficult it was to get away.



"Are we really quite lost, your excellency?" he asked again.



Prince Andrew without replying took out a notebook and raising his

knee began writing in pencil on a page he tore out. He wrote to his

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sister:





"Smolensk is being abandoned. Bald Hills will be occupied by the

enemy within a week. Set off immediately for Moscow. Let me know at

once when you will start. Send by special messenger to Usvyazh."





Having written this and given the paper to Alpatych, he told him how

to arrange for departure of the prince, the princess, his son, and the

boy's tutor, and how and where to let him know immediately. Before

he had had time to finish giving these instructions, a chief of

staff followed by a suite galloped up to him.



"You are a colonel?" shouted the chief of staff with a German

accent, in a voice familiar to Prince Andrew. "Houses are set on

fire in your presence and you stand by! What does this mean? You

will answer for it!" shouted Berg, who was now assistant to the

chief of staff of the commander of the left flank of the infantry of

the first army, a place, as Berg said, "very agreeable and well en

evidence."



Prince Andrew looked at him and without replying went on speaking to

Alpatych.



"So tell them that I shall await a reply till the tenth, and if by

the tenth I don't receive news that they have all got away I shall

have to throw up everything and come myself to Bald Hills."



"Prince," said Berg, recognizing Prince Andrew, "I only spoke

because I have to obey orders, because I always do obey exactly....

You must please excuse me," he went on apologetically.



Something cracked in the flames. The fire died down for a moment and

wreaths of black smoke rolled from under the roof. There was another

terrible crash and something huge collapsed.



"Ou-rou-rou!" yelled the crowd, echoing the crash of the

collapsing roof of the barn, the burning grain in which diffused a

cakelike aroma all around. The flames flared up again, lighting the

animated, delighted, exhausted faces of the spectators.



The man in the frieze coat raised his arms and shouted:



"It's fine, lads! Now it's raging... It's fine!"



"That's the owner himself," cried several voices.



"Well then," continued Prince Andrew to Alpatych, "report to them as

I have told you"; and not replying a word to Berg who was now mute

beside him, he touched his horse and rode down the side street.









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CHAPTER V





From Smolensk the troops continued to retreat, followed by the

enemy. On the tenth of August the regiment Prince Andrew commanded was

marching along the highroad past the avenue leading to Bald Hills.

Heat and drought had continued for more than three weeks. Each day

fleecy clouds floated across the sky and occasionally veiled the

sun, but toward evening the sky cleared again and the sun set in

reddish-brown mist. Heavy night dews alone refreshed the earth. The

unreaped corn was scorched and shed its grain. The marshes dried up.

The cattle lowed from hunger, finding no food on the sun-parched

meadows. Only at night and in the forests while the dew lasted was

there any freshness. But on the road, the highroad along which the

troops marched, there was no such freshness even at night or when

the road passed through the forest; the dew was imperceptible on the

sandy dust churned up more than six inches deep. As soon as day dawned

the march began. The artillery and baggage wagons moved noiselessly

through the deep dust that rose to the very hubs of the wheels, and

the infantry sank ankle-deep in that soft, choking, hot dust that

never cooled even at night. Some of this dust was kneaded by the

feet and wheels, while the rest rose and hung like a cloud over the

troops, settling in eyes, ears, hair, and nostrils, and worst of all

in the lungs of the men and beasts as they moved along that road.

The higher the sun rose the higher rose that cloud of dust, and

through the screen of its hot fine particles one could look with naked

eye at the sun, which showed like a huge crimson ball in the unclouded

sky. There was no wind, and the men choked in that motionless

atmosphere. They marched with handkerchiefs tied over their noses

and mouths. When they passed through a village they all rushed to

the wells and fought for the water and drank it down to the mud.



Prince Andrew was in command of a regiment, and the management of

that regiment, the welfare of the men and the necessity of receiving

and giving orders, engrossed him. The burning of Smolensk and its

abandonment made an epoch in his life. A novel feeling of anger

against the foe made him forget his own sorrow. He was entirely

devoted to the affairs of his regiment and was considerate and kind to

his men and officers. In the regiment they called him "our prince,"

were proud of him and loved him. But he was kind and gentle only to

those of his regiment, to Timokhin and the like--people quite new to

him, belonging to a different world and who could not know and

understand his past. As soon as he came across a former acquaintance

or anyone from the staff, he bristled up immediately and grew

spiteful, ironical, and contemptuous. Everything that reminded him

of his past was repugnant to him, and so in his relations with that

former circle he confined himself to trying to do his duty and not

to be unfair.



In truth everything presented itself in a dark and gloomy light to

Prince Andrew, especially after the abandonment of Smolensk on the

sixth of August (he considered that it could and should have been

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defended) and after his sick father had had to flee to Moscow,

abandoning to pillage his dearly beloved Bald Hills which he had built

and peopled. But despite this, thanks to his regiment, Prince Andrew

had something to think about entirely apart from general questions.

Two days previously he had received news that his father, son, and

sister had left for Moscow; and though there was nothing for him to do

at Bald Hills, Prince Andrew with a characteristic desire to foment

his own grief decided that he must ride there.



He ordered his horse to be saddled and, leaving his regiment on

the march, rode to his father's estate where he had been born and

spent his childhood. Riding past the pond where there used always to

be dozens of women chattering as they rinsed their linen or beat it

with wooden beetles, Prince Andrew noticed that there was not a soul

about and that the little washing wharf, torn from its place and

half submerged, was floating on its side in the middle of the pond. He

rode to the keeper's lodge. No one at the stone entrance gates of

the drive and the door stood open. Grass had already begun to grow

on the garden paths, and horses and calves were straying in the

English park. Prince Andrew rode up to the hothouse; some of the glass

panes were broken, and of the trees in tubs some were overturned and

others dried up. He called for Taras the gardener, but no one replied.

Having gone round the corner of the hothouse to the ornamental garden,

he saw that the carved garden fence was broken and branches of the

plum trees had been torn off with the fruit. An old peasant whom

Prince Andrew in his childhood had often seen at the gate was

sitting on a green garden seat, plaiting a bast shoe.



He was deaf and did not hear Prince Andrew ride up. He was sitting

on the seat the old prince used to like to sit on, and beside him

strips of bast were hanging on the broken and withered branch of a

magnolia.



Prince Andrew rode up to the house. Several limes in the old

garden had been cut down and a piebald mare and her foal were

wandering in front of the house among the rosebushes. The shutters

were all closed, except at one window which was open. A little serf

boy, seeing Prince Andrew, ran into the house. Alpatych, having sent

his family away, was alone at Bald Hills and was sitting indoors

reading the Lives of the Saints. On hearing that Prince Andrew had

come, he went out with his spectacles on his nose, buttoning his coat,

and, hastily stepping up, without a word began weeping and kissing

Prince Andrew's knee.



Then, vexed at his own weakness, he turned away and began to

report on the position of affairs. Everything precious and valuable

had been removed to Bogucharovo. Seventy quarters of grain had also

been carted away. The hay and the spring corn, of which Alpatych

said there had been a remarkable crop that year, had been commandeered

by the troops and mown down while still green. The peasants were

ruined; some of them too had gone to Bogucharovo, only a few remained.



Without waiting to hear him out, Prince Andrew asked:



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"When did my father and sister leave?" meaning when did they leave

for Moscow.



Alpatych, understanding the question to refer to their departure for

Bogucharovo, replied that they had left on the seventh and again

went into details concerning the estate management, asking for

instructions.



"Am I to let the troops have the oats, and to take a receipt for

them? We have still six hundred quarters left," he inquired.



"What am I to say to him?" thought Prince Andrew, looking down on

the old man's bald head shining in the sun and seeing by the

expression on his face that the old man himself understood how

untimely such questions were and only asked them to allay his grief.



"Yes, let them have it," replied Prince Andrew.



"If you noticed some disorder in the garden," said Alpatych, "it was

impossible to prevent it. Three regiments have been here and spent the

night, dragoons mostly. I took down the name and rank of their

commanding officer, to hand in a complaint about it."



"Well, and what are you going to do? Will you stay here if the enemy

occupies the place?" asked Prince Andrew.



Alpatych turned his face to Prince Andrew, looked at him, and

suddenly with a solemn gesture raised his arm.



"He is my refuge! His will be done!" he exclaimed.



A group of bareheaded peasants was approaching across the meadow

toward the prince.



"Well, good-by!" said Prince Andrew, bending over to Alpatych.

"You must go away too, take away what you can and tell the serfs to go

to the Ryazan estate or to the one near Moscow."



Alpatych clung to Prince Andrew's leg and burst into sobs. Gently

disengaging himself, the prince spurred his horse and rode down the

avenue at a gallop.



The old man was still sitting in the ornamental garden, like a fly

impassive on the face of a loved one who is dead, tapping the last

on which he was making the bast shoe, and two little girls, running

out from the hot house carrying in their skirts plums they had plucked

from the trees there, came upon Prince Andrew. On seeing the young

master, the elder one frightened look clutched her younger companion

by the hand and hid with her behind a birch tree, not stopping to pick

up some green plums they had dropped.



Prince Andrew turned away with startled haste, unwilling to let them

see that they had been observed. He was sorry for the pretty

frightened little girl, was afraid of looking at her, and yet felt

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an irresistible desire to do so. A new sensation of comfort and relief

came over him when, seeing these girls, he realized the existence of

other human interests entirely aloof from his own and just as

legitimate as those that occupied him. Evidently these girls

passionately desired one thing--to carry away and eat those green

plums without being caught--and Prince Andrew shared their wish for

the success of their enterprise. He could not resist looking at them

once more. Believing their danger past, they sprang from their

ambush and, chirruping something in their shrill little voices and

holding up their skirts, their bare little sunburned feet scampered

merrily and quickly across the meadow grass.



Prince Andrew was somewhat refreshed by having ridden off the

dusty highroad along which the troops were moving. But not far from

Bald Hills he again came out on the road and overtook his regiment

at its halting place by the dam of a small pond. It was past one

o'clock. The sun, a red ball through the dust, burned and scorched his

back intolerably through his black coat. The dust always hung

motionless above the buzz of talk that came from the resting troops.

There was no wind. As he crossed the dam Prince Andrew smelled the

ooze and freshness of the pond. He longed to get into that water,

however dirty it might be, and he glanced round at the pool from

whence came sounds of shrieks and laughter. The small, muddy, green

pond had risen visibly more than a foot, flooding the dam, because

it was full of the naked white bodies of soldiers with brick-red

hands, necks, and faces, who were splashing about in it. All this

naked white human flesh, laughing and shrieking, floundered about in

that dirty pool like carp stuffed into a watering can, and the

suggestion of merriment in that floundering mass rendered it specially

pathetic.



One fair-haired young soldier of the third company, whom Prince

Andrew knew and who had a strap round the calf of one leg, crossed

himself, stepped back to get a good run, and plunged into the water;

another, a dark noncommissioned officer who was always shaggy, stood

up to his waist in the water joyfully wriggling his muscular figure

and snorted with satisfaction as he poured the water over his head

with hands blackened to the wrists. There were sounds of men

slapping one another, yelling, and puffing.



Everywhere on the bank, on the dam, and in the pond, there was

healthy, white, muscular flesh. The officer, Timokhin, with his red

little nose, standing on the dam wiping himself with a towel, felt

confused at seeing the prince, but made up his mind to address him

nevertheless.



"It's very nice, your excellency! Wouldn't you like to?" said he.



"It's dirty," replied Prince Andrew, making a grimace.



"We'll clear it out for you in a minute," said Timokhin, and,

still undressed, ran off to clear the men out of the pond.



"The prince wants to bathe."

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"What prince? Ours?" said many voices, and the men were in such

haste to clear out that the prince could hardly stop them. He

decided that he would rather wash himself with water in the barn.



"Flesh, bodies, cannon fodder!" he thought, and he looked at his own

naked body and shuddered, not from cold but from a sense of disgust

and horror he did not himself understand, aroused by the sight of that

immense number of bodies splashing about in the dirty pond.





On the seventh of August Prince Bagration wrote as follows from

his quarters at Mikhaylovna on the Smolensk road:





Dear Count Alexis Andreevich--(He was writing to Arakcheev but

knew that his letter would be read by the Emperor, and therefore

weighed every word in it to the best of his ability.)



I expect the Minister [Barclay de Tolly] has already reported the

abandonment of Smolensk to the enemy. It is pitiable and sad, and

the whole army is in despair that this most important place has been

wantonly abandoned. I, for my part, begged him personally most

urgently and finally wrote him, but nothing would induce him to

consent. I swear to you on my honor that Napoleon was in such a fix as

never before and might have lost half his army but could not have

taken Smolensk. Our troops fought, and are fighting, as never

before. With fifteen thousand men I held the enemy at bay for

thirty-five hours and beat him; but he would not hold out even for

fourteen hours. It is disgraceful, a stain on our army, and as for

him, he ought, it seems to me, not to live. If he reports that our

losses were great, it is not true; perhaps about four thousand, not

more, and not even that; but even were they ten thousand, that's

war! But the enemy has lost masses...



What would it have cost him to hold out for another two days? They

would have had to retire of their own accord, for they had no water

for men or horses. He gave me his word he would not retreat, but

suddenly sent instructions that he was retiring that night. We

cannot fight in this way, or we may soon bring the enemy to Moscow...



There is a rumor that you are thinking of peace. God forbid that you

should make peace after all our sacrifices and such insane retreats!

You would set all Russia against you and every one of us would feel

ashamed to wear the uniform. If it has come to this--we must fight

as long as Russia can and as long as there are men able to stand...



One man ought to be in command, and not two. Your Minister may

perhaps be good as a Minister, but as a general he is not merely bad

but execrable, yet to him is entrusted the fate of our whole

country.... I am really frantic with vexation; forgive my writing

boldly. It is clear that the man who advocates the conclusion of a

peace, and that the Minister should command the army, does not love

our sovereign and desires the ruin of us all. So I write you

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frankly: call out the militia. For the Minister is leading these

visitors after him to Moscow in a most masterly way. The whole army

feels great suspicion of the Imperial aide-de-camp Wolzogen. He is

said to be more Napoleon's man than ours, and he is always advising

the Minister. I am not merely civil to him but obey him like a

corporal, though I am his senior. This is painful, but, loving my

benefactor and sovereign, I submit. Only I am sorry for the Emperor

that he entrusts our fine army to such as he. Consider that on our

retreat we have lost by fatigue and left in the hospital more than

fifteen thousand men, and had we attacked this would not have

happened. Tell me, for God's sake, what will Russia, our mother

Russia, say to our being so frightened, and why are we abandoning

our good and gallant Fatherland to such rabble and implanting feelings

of hatred and shame in all our subjects? What are we scared at and

of whom are we afraid? I am not to blame that the Minister is

vacillating, a coward, dense, dilatory, and has all bad qualities. The

whole army bewails it and calls down curses upon him...









CHAPTER VI





Among the innumerable categories applicable to the phenomena of

human life one may discriminate between those in which substance

prevails and those in which form prevails. To the latter--as

distinguished from village, country, provincial, or even Moscow

life--we may allot Petersburg life, and especially the life of its

salons. That life of the salons is unchanging. Since the year 1805

we had made peace and had again quarreled with Bonaparte and had

made constitutions and unmade them again, but the salons of Anna

Pavlovna Helene remained just as they had been--the one seven and

the other five years before. At Anna Pavlovna's they talked with

perplexity of Bonaparte's successes just as before and saw in them and

in the subservience shown to him by the European sovereigns a

malicious conspiracy, the sole object of which was to cause

unpleasantness and anxiety to the court circle of which Anna

Pavlovna was the representative. And in Helene's salon, which

Rumyantsev himself honored with his visits, regarding Helene as a

remarkably intelligent woman, they talked with the same ecstasy in

1812 as in 1808 of the "great nation" and the "great man," and

regretted our rupture with France, a rupture which, according to them,

ought to be promptly terminated by peace.



Of late, since the Emperor's return from the army, there had been

some excitement in these conflicting salon circles and some

demonstrations of hostility to one another, but each camp retained its

own tendency. In Anna Pavlovna's circle only those Frenchmen were

admitted who were deep-rooted legitimists, and patriotic views were

expressed to the effect that one ought not to go to the French theater

and that to maintain the French troupe was costing the government as

much as a whole army corps. The progress of the war was eagerly

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followed, and only the reports most flattering to our army were

circulated. In the French circle of Helene and Rumyantsev the

reports of the cruelty of the enemy and of the war were contradicted

and all Napoleon's attempts at conciliation were discussed. In that

circle they discountenanced those who advised hurried preparations for

a removal to Kazan of the court and the girls' educational

establishments under the patronage of the Dowager Empress. In Helene's

circle the war in general was regarded as a series of formal

demonstrations which would very soon end in peace, and the view

prevailed expressed by Bilibin--who now in Petersburg was quite at

home in Helene's house, which every clever man was obliged to visit-

that not by gunpowder but by those who invented it would matters be

settled. In that circle the Moscow enthusiasm--news of which had

reached Petersburg simultaneously with the Emperor's return--was

ridiculed sarcastically and very cleverly, though with much caution.



Anna Pavlovna's circle on the contrary was enraptured by this

enthusiasm and spoke of it as Plutarch speaks of the deeds of the

ancients. Prince Vasili, who still occupied his former important

posts, formed a connecting link between these two circles. He

visited his "good friend Anna Pavlovna" as well as his daughter's

"diplomatic salon," and often in his constant comings and goings

between the two camps became confused and said at Helene's what he

should have said at Anna Pavlovna's and vice versa.



Soon after the Emperor's return Prince Vasili in a conversation

about the war at Anna Pavlovna's severely condemned Barclay de

Tolly, but was undecided as to who ought to be appointed commander

in chief. One of the visitors, usually spoken of as "a man of great

merit," having described how he had that day seen Kutuzov, the newly

chosen chief of the Petersburg militia, presiding over the

enrollment of recruits at the Treasury, cautiously ventured to suggest

that Kutuzov would be the man to satisfy all requirements.



Anna Pavlovna remarked with a melancholy smile that Kutuzov had done

nothing but cause the Emperor annoyance.



"I have talked and talked at the Assembly of the Nobility," Prince

Vasili interrupted, "but they did not listen to me. I told them his

election as chief of the militia would not please the Emperor. They

did not listen to me.



"It's all this mania for opposition," he went on. "And who for? It

is all because we want to ape the foolish enthusiasm of those

Muscovites," Prince Vasili continued, forgetting for a moment that

though at Helene's one had to ridicule the Moscow enthusiasm, at

Anna Pavlovna's one had to be ecstatic about it. But he retrieved

his mistake at once. "Now, is it suitable that Count Kutuzov, the

oldest general in Russia, should preside at that tribunal? He will get

nothing for his pains! How could they make a man commander in chief

who cannot mount a horse, who drops asleep at a council, and has the

very worst morals! A good reputation he made for himself at Bucharest!

I don't speak of his capacity as a general, but at a time like this

how they appoint a decrepit, blind old man, positively

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blind? A fine idea to have a blind general! He can't see anything.

To play blindman's bluff? He can't see at all!"



No one replied to his remarks.



This was quite correct on the twenty-fourth of July. But on the

twenty-ninth of July Kutuzov received the title of Prince. This

might indicate a wish to get rid of him, and therefore Prince Vasili's

opinion continued to be correct though he was not now in any hurry

to express it. But on the eighth of August a committee, consisting

of Field Marshal Saltykov, Arakcheev, Vyazmitinov, Lopukhin, and

Kochubey met to consider the progress of the war. This committee

came to the conclusion that our failures were due to a want of unity

in the command and though the members of the committee were aware of

the Emperor's dislike of Kutuzov, after a short deliberation they

agreed to advise his appointment as commander in chief. That same

day Kutuzov was appointed commander in chief with full powers over the

armies and over the whole region occupied by them.



On the ninth of August Prince Vasili at Anna Pavlovna's again met

the "man of great merit." The latter was very attentive to Anna

Pavlovna because he wanted to be appointed director of one of the

educational establishments for young ladies. Prince Vasili entered the

room with the air of a happy conqueror who has attained the object

of his desires.



"Well, have you heard the great news? Prince Kutuzov is field

marshal! All dissensions are at an end! I am so glad, so delighted! At

last we have a man!" said he, glancing sternly and significantly round

at everyone in the drawing room.



The "man of great merit," despite his desire to obtain the post of

director, could not refrain from reminding Prince Vasili of his former

opinion. Though this was impolite to Prince Vasili in Anna

Pavlovna's drawing room, and also to Anna Pavlovna herself who had

received the news with delight, he could not resist the temptation.



"But, Prince, they say he is blind!" said he, reminding Prince

Vasili of his own words.



"Eh? Nonsense! He sees well enough," said Prince Vasili rapidly,

in a deep voice and with a slight cough--the voice and cough with

which he was wont to dispose of all difficulties.



"He sees well enough," he added. "And what I am so pleased about,"

he went on, "is that our sovereign has given him full powers over

all the armies and the whole region--powers no commander in chief ever

had before. He is a second autocrat," he concluded with a victorious

smile.



"God grant it! God grant it!" said Anna Pavlovna.



The "man of great merit," who was still a novice in court circles,

wishing to flatter Anna Pavlovna by defending her former position on

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this question, observed:



"It is said that the Emperor was reluctant to give Kutuzov those

powers. They say he blushed like a girl to whom Joconde is read,

when he said to Kutuzov: 'Your Emperor and the Fatherland award you

this honor.'"



"Perhaps the heart took no part in that speech," said Anna Pavlovna.



"Oh, no, no!" warmly rejoined Prince Vasili, who would not now yield

Kutuzov to anyone; in his opinion Kutuzov was not only admirable

himself, but was adored by everybody. "No, that's impossible," said

he, "for our sovereign appreciated him so highly before."



"God grant only that Prince Kutuzov assumes real power and does

not allow anyone to put a spoke in his wheel," observed Anna Pavlovna.



Understanding at once to whom she alluded, Prince Vasili said in a

whisper:



"I know for a fact that Kutuzov made it an absolute condition that

the Tsarevich should not be with the army. Do you know what he said to

the Emperor?"



And Prince Vasili repeated the words supposed to have been spoken by

Kutuzov to the Emperor. "I can neither punish him if he does wrong nor

reward him if he does right."



"Oh, a very wise man is Prince Kutuzov! I have known him a long

time!"



"They even say," remarked the "man of great merit" who did not yet

possess courtly tact, "that his excellency made it an express

condition that the sovereign himself should not be with the army."



As soon as he said this both Prince Vasili and Anna Pavlovna

turned away from him and glanced sadly at one another with a sigh at

his naivete.









CHAPTER VII





While this was taking place in Petersburg the French had already

passed Smolensk and were drawing nearer and nearer to Moscow.

Napoleon's historian Thiers, like other of his historians, trying to

justify his hero says that he was drawn to the walls of Moscow against

his will. He is as right as other historians who look for the

explanation of historic events in the will of one man; he is as

right as the Russian historians who maintain that Napoleon was drawn

to Moscow by the skill of the Russian commanders. Here besides the law

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of retrospection, which regards all the past as a preparation for

events that subsequently occur, the law of reciprocity comes in,

confusing the whole matter. A good chessplayer having lost a game is

sincerely convinced that his loss resulted from a mistake he made

and looks for that mistake in the opening, but forgets that at each

stage of the game there were similar mistakes and that none of his

moves were perfect. He only notices the mistake to which he pays

attention, because his opponent took advantage of it. How much more

complex than this is the game of war, which occurs under certain

limits of time, and where it is not one will that manipulates lifeless

objects, but everything results from innumerable conflicts of

various wills!



After Smolensk Napoleon sought a battle beyond Dorogobuzh at Vyazma,

and then at Tsarevo-Zaymishche, but it happened that owing to a

conjunction of innumerable circumstances the Russians could not give

battle till they reached Borodino, seventy miles from Moscow. From

Vyazma Napoleon ordered a direct advance on Moscow.



Moscou, la capitale asiatique de ce grand empire, la ville sacree

des peuples d'Alexandre, Moscou avec ses innombrables eglises en forme

de pagodes chinoises,* this Moscow gave Napoleon's imagination no

rest. On the march from Vyazma to Tsarevo-Zaymishche he rode his light

bay bobtailed ambler accompanied by his Guards, his bodyguard, his

pages, and aides-de-camp. Berthier, his chief of staff, dropped behind

to question a Russian prisoner captured by the cavalry. Followed by

Lelorgne d'Ideville, an interpreter, he overtook Napoleon at a

gallop and reined in his horse with an amused expression.





*"Moscow, the Asiatic capital of this great empire, the sacred

city of Alexander's people, Moscow with its innumerable churches

shaped like Chinese pagodas."





"Well?" asked Napoleon.



"One of Platov's Cossacks says that Platov's corps is joining up

with the main army and that Kutuzov has been appointed commander in

chief. He is a very shrewd and garrulous fellow."



Napoleon smiled and told them to give the Cossack a horse and

bring the man to him. He wished to talk to him himself. Several

adjutants galloped off, and an hour later, Lavrushka, the serf Denisov

had handed over to Rostov, rode up to Napoleon in an orderly's

jacket and on a French cavalry saddle, with a merry, and tipsy face.

Napoleon told him to ride by his side and began questioning him.



"You are a Cossack?"



"Yes, a Cossack, your Honor."



"The Cossack, not knowing in what company he was, for Napoleon's

plain appearance had nothing about it that would reveal to an Oriental

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mind the presence of a monarch, talked with extreme familiarity of the

incidents of the war," says Thiers, narrating this episode. In reality

Lavrushka, having got drunk the day before and left his master

dinnerless, had been whipped and sent to the village in quest of

chickens, where he engaged in looting till the French took him

prisoner. Lavrushka was one of those coarse, bare-faced lackeys who

have seen all sorts of things, consider it necessary to do

everything in a mean and cunning way, are ready to render any sort

of service to their master, and are keen at guessing their master's

baser impulses, especially those prompted by vanity and pettiness.



Finding himself in the company of Napoleon, whose identity he had

easily and surely recognized, Lavrushka was not in the least abashed

but merely did his utmost to gain his new master's favor.



He knew very well that this was Napoleon, but Napoleon's presence

could no more intimidate him than Rostov's, or a sergeant major's with

the rods, would have done, for he had nothing that either the sergeant

major or Napoleon could deprive him of.



So he rattled on, telling all the gossip he had heard among the

orderlies. Much of it true. But when Napoleon asked him whether the

Russians thought they would beat Bonaparte or not, Lavrushka screwed

up his eyes and considered.



In this question he saw subtle cunning, as men of his type see

cunning in everything, so he frowned and did not answer immediately.



"It's like this," he said thoughtfully, "if there's a battle soon,

yours will win. That's right. But if three days pass, then after that,

well, then that same battle will not soon be over."



Lelorgne d'Ideville smilingly interpreted this speech to Napoleon

thus: "If a battle takes place within the next three days the French

will win, but if later, God knows what will happen." Napoleon did

not smile, though he was evidently in high good humor, and he

ordered these words to be repeated.



Lavrushka noticed this and to entertain him further, pretending

not to know who Napoleon was, added:



"We know that you have Bonaparte and that he has beaten everybody in

the world, but we are a different matter..."--without knowing why or

how this bit of boastful patriotism slipped out at the end.



The interpreter translated these words without the last phrase,

and Bonaparte smiled. "The young Cossack made his mighty

interlocutor smile," says Thiers. After riding a few paces in silence,

Napoleon turned to Berthier and said he wished to see how the news

that he was talking to the Emperor himself, to that very Emperor who

had written his immortally victorious name on the Pyramids, would

affect this enfant du Don.*





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*"Child of the Don."





The fact was accordingly conveyed to Lavrushka.



Lavrushka, understanding that this was done to perplex him and

that Napoleon expected him to be frightened, to gratify his new

masters promptly pretended to be astonished and awe-struck, opened his

eyes wide, and assumed the expression he usually put on when taken

to be whipped. "As soon as Napoleon's interpreter had spoken," says

Thiers, "the Cossack, seized by amazement, did not utter another word,

but rode on, his eyes fixed on the conqueror whose fame had reached

him across the steppes of the East. All his loquacity was suddenly

arrested and replaced by a naive and silent feeling of admiration.

Napoleon, after making the Cossack a present, had him set free like

a bird restored to its native fields."



Napoleon rode on, dreaming of the Moscow that so appealed to his

imagination, and "the bird restored to its native fields" galloped

to our outposts, inventing on the way all that had not taken place but

that he meant to relate to his comrades. What had really taken place

he did not wish to relate because it seemed to him not worth

telling. He found the Cossacks, inquired for the regiment operating

with Platov's detachment and by evening found his master, Nicholas

Rostov, quartered at Yankovo. Rostov was just mounting to go for a

ride round the neighboring villages with Ilyin; he let Lavrushka

have another horse and took him along with him.









CHAPTER VIII





Princess Mary was not in Moscow and out of danger as Prince Andrew

supposed.



After the return of Alpatych from Smolensk the old prince suddenly

seemed to awake as from a dream. He ordered the militiamen to be

called up from the villages and armed, and wrote a letter to the

commander in chief informing him that he had resolved to remain at

Bald Hills to the last extremity and to defend it, leaving to the

commander in chief's discretion to take measures or not for the

defense of Bald Hills, where one of Russia's oldest generals would

be captured or killed, and he announced to his household that he would

remain at Bald Hills.



But while himself remaining, he gave instructions for the

departure of the princess and Dessalles with the little prince to

Bogucharovo and thence to Moscow. Princess Mary, alarmed by her

father's feverish and sleepless activity after his previous apathy,

could not bring herself to leave him alone and for the first time in

her life ventured to disobey him. She refused to go away and her

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father's fury broke over her in a terrible storm. He repeated every

injustice he had ever inflicted on her. Trying to convict her, he told

her she had worn him out, had caused his quarrel with his son, had

harbored nasty suspicions of him, making it the object of her life

to poison his existence, and he drove her from his study telling her

that if she did not go away it was all the same to him. He declared

that he did not wish to remember her existence and warned her not to

dare to let him see her. The fact that he did not, as she had

feared, order her to be carried away by force but only told her not to

let him see her cheered Princess Mary. She knew it was a proof that in

the depth of his soul he was glad she was remaining at home and had

not gone away.



The morning after little Nicholas had left, the old prince donned

his full uniform and prepared to visit the commander in chief. His

caleche was already at the door. Princess Mary saw him walk out of the

house in his uniform wearing all his orders and go down the garden

to review his armed peasants and domestic serfs. She sat by the window

listening to his voice which reached her from the garden. Suddenly

several men came running up the avenue with frightened faces.



Princess Mary ran out to the porch, down the flower-bordered path,

and into the avenue. A large crowd of militiamen and domestics were

moving toward her, and in their midst several men were supporting by

the armpits and dragging along a little old man in a uniform and

decorations. She ran up to him and, in the play of the sunlight that

fell in small round spots through the shade of the lime-tree avenue,

could not be sure what change there was in his face. All she could see

was that his former stern and determined expression had altered to one

of timidity and submission. On seeing his daughter he moved his

helpless lips and made a hoarse sound. It was impossible to make out

what he wanted. He was lifted up, carried to his study, and laid on

the very couch he had so feared of late.



The doctor, who was fetched that same night, bled him and said

that the prince had had a seizure paralyzing his right side.



It was becoming more and more dangerous to remain at Bald Hills, and

next day they moved the prince to Bogucharovo, the doctor accompanying

him.



By the time they reached Bogucharovo, Dessalles and the little

prince had already left for Moscow.



For three weeks the old prince lay stricken by paralysis in the

new house Prince Andrew had built at Bogucharovo, ever in the same

state, getting neither better nor worse. He was unconscious and lay

like a distorted corpse. He muttered unceasingly, his eyebrows and

lips twitching, and it was impossible to tell whether he understood

what was going on around him or not. One thing was certain--that he

was suffering and wished to say something. But what it was, no one

could tell: it might be some caprice of a sick and half-crazy man,

or it might relate to public affairs, or possibly to family concerns.



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The doctor said this restlessness did not mean anything and was

due to physical causes; but Princess Mary thought he wished to tell

her something, and the fact that her presence always increased his

restlessness confirmed her opinion.



He was evidently suffering both physically and mentally. There was

no hope of recovery. It was impossible for him to travel, it would not

do to let him die on the road. "Would it not be better if the end

did come, the very end?" Princess Mary sometimes thought. Night and

day, hardly sleeping at all, she watched him and, terrible to say,

often watched him not with hope of finding signs of improvement but

wishing to find symptoms of the approach of the end.



Strange as it was to her to acknowledge this feeling in herself, yet

there it was. And what seemed still more terrible to her was that

since her father's illness began (perhaps even sooner, when she stayed

with him expecting something to happen), all the personal desires

and hopes that had been forgotten or sleeping within her had awakened.

Thoughts that had not entered her mind for years--thoughts of a life

free from the fear of her father, and even the possibility of love and

of family happiness--floated continually in her imagination like

temptations of the devil. Thrust them aside as she would, questions

continually recurred to her as to how she would order her life now,

after that. These were temptations of the devil and Princess Mary knew

it. She knew that the sole weapon against him was prayer, and she

tried to pray. She assumed an attitude of prayer, looked at the icons,

repeated the words of a prayer, but she could not pray. She felt

that a different world had now taken possession of her--the life of

a world of strenuous and free activity, quite opposed to the spiritual

world in which till now she had been confined and in which her

greatest comfort had been prayer. She could not pray, could not

weep, and worldly cares took possession of her.



It was becoming dangerous to remain in Bogucharovo. News of the

approach of the French came from all sides, and in one village, ten

miles from Bogucharovo, a homestead had been looted by French

marauders.



The doctor insisted on the necessity of moving the prince; the

provincial Marshal of the Nobility sent an official to Princess Mary

to persuade her to get away as quickly as possible, and the head of

the rural police having come to Bogucharovo urged the same thing,

saying that the French were only some twenty-five miles away, that

French proclamations were circulating in the villages, and that if the

princess did not take her father away before the fifteenth, he could

not answer for the consequences.



The princess decided to leave on the fifteenth. The cares of

preparation and giving orders, for which everyone came to her,

occupied her all day. She spent the night of the fourteenth as

usual, without undressing, in the room next to the one where the

prince lay. Several times, waking up, she heard his groans and

muttering, the creak of his bed, and the steps of Tikhon and the

doctor when they turned him over. Several times she listened at the

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door, and it seemed to her that his mutterings were louder than

usual and that they turned him over oftener. She could not sleep and

several times went to the door and listened, wishing to enter but

not deciding to do so. Though he did not speak, Princess Mary saw

and knew how unpleasant every sign of anxiety on his account was to

him. She had noticed with what dissatisfaction he turned from the look

she sometimes involuntarily fixed on him. She knew that her going in

during the night at an unusual hour would irritate him.



But never had she felt so grieved for him or so much afraid of

losing him. She recalled all her life with him and in every word and

act of his found an expression of his love of her. Occasionally amid

these memories temptations of the devil would surge into her

imagination: thoughts of how things would be after his death, and

how her new, liberated life would be ordered. But she drove these

thoughts away with disgust. Toward morning he became quiet and she

fell asleep.



She woke late. That sincerity which often comes with waking showed

her clearly what chiefly concerned her about her father's illness.

On waking she listened to what was going on behind the door and,

hearing him groan, said to herself with a sigh that things were

still the same.



"But what could have happened? What did I want? I want his death!"

she cried with a feeling of loathing for herself.



She washed, dressed, said her prayers, and went out to the porch. In

front of it stood carriages without horses and things were being

packed into the vehicles.



It was a warm, gray morning. Princess Mary stopped at the porch,

still horrified by her spiritual baseness and trying to arrange her

thoughts before going to her father. The doctor came downstairs and

went out to her.



"He is a little better today," said he. "I was looking for you.

One can make out something of what he is saying. His head is

clearer. Come in, he is asking for you..."



Princess Mary's heart beat so violently at this news that she grew

pale and leaned against the wall to keep from falling. To see him,

talk to him, feel his eyes on her now that her whole soul was

overflowing with those dreadful, wicked temptations, was a torment

of joy and terror.



"Come," said the doctor.



Princess Mary entered her father's room and went up to his bed. He

was lying on his back propped up high, and his small bony hands with

their knotted purple veins were lying on the quilt; his left eye gazed

straight before him, his right eye was awry, and his brows and lips

motionless. He seemed altogether so thin, small, and pathetic. His

face seemed to have shriveled or melted; his features had grown

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smaller. Princess Mary went up and kissed his hand. His left hand

pressed hers so that she understood that he had long been waiting

for her to come. He twitched her hand, and his brows and lips quivered

angrily.



She looked at him in dismay trying to guess what he wanted of her.

When she changed her position so that his left eye could see her

face he calmed down, not taking his eyes off her for some seconds.

Then his lips and tongue moved, sounds came, and he began to speak,

gazing timidly and imploringly at her, evidently afraid that she might

not understand.



Straining all her faculties Princess Mary looked at him. The comic

efforts with which he moved his tongue made her drop her eyes and with

difficulty repress the sobs that rose to her throat. He said

something, repeating the same words several times. She could not

understand them, but tried to guess what he was saying and inquiringly

repeated the words he uttered.



"Mmm...ar...ate...ate..." he repeated several times.



It was quite impossible to understand these sounds. The doctor

thought he had guessed them, and inquiringly repeated: "Mary, are

you afraid?" The prince shook his head, again repeated the same

sounds.



"My mind, my mind aches?" questioned Princess Mary.



He made a mumbling sound in confirmation of this, took her hand, and

began pressing it to different parts of his breast as if trying to

find the right place for it.



"Always thoughts... about you... thoughts..." he then uttered much

more clearly than he had done before, now that he was sure of being

understood.



Princess Mary pressed her head against his hand, trying to hide

her sobs and tears.



He moved his hand over her hair.



"I have been calling you all night..." he brought out.



"If only I had known..." she said through her tears. "I was afraid

to come in."



He pressed her hand.



"Weren't you asleep?"



"No, I did not sleep," said Princess Mary, shaking her head.



Unconsciously imitating her father, she now tried to express herself

as he did, as much as possible by signs, and her tongue too seemed

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to move with difficulty.



"Dear one... Dearest..." Princess Mary could not quite make out what

he had said, but from his look it was clear that he had uttered a

tender caressing word such as he had never used to her before. "Why

didn't you come in?"



"And I was wishing for his death!" thought Princess Mary.



He was silent awhile.



"Thank you... daughter dear!... for all, for all... forgive!...

thank you!... forgive!... thank you!..." and tears began to flow

from his eyes. "Call Andrew!" he said suddenly, and a childish,

timid expression of doubt showed itself on his face as he spoke.



He himself seemed aware that his demand was meaningless. So at least

it seemed to Princess Mary.



"I have a letter from him," she replied.



He glanced at her with timid surprise.



"Where is he?"



"He's with the army, Father, at Smolensk."



He closed his eyes and remained silent a long time. Then as if in

answer to his doubts and to confirm the fact that now he understood

and remembered everything, he nodded his head and reopened his eyes.



"Yes," he said, softly and distinctly. "Russia has perished. They've

destroyed her."



And he began to sob, and again tears flowed from his eyes.

Princess Mary could no longer restrain herself and wept while she

gazed at his face.



Again he closed his eyes. His sobs ceased, he pointed to his eyes,

and Tikhon, understanding him, wiped away the tears.



Then he again opened his eyes and said something none of them

could understand for a long time, till at last Tikhon understood and

repeated it. Princess Mary had sought the meaning of his words in

the mood in which he had just been speaking. She thought he was

speaking of Russia, or Prince Andrew, of herself, of his grandson,

or of his own death, and so she could not guess his words.



"Put on your white dress. I like it," was what he said.



Having understood this Princess Mary sobbed still louder, and the

doctor taking her arm led her out to the veranda, soothing her and

trying to persuade her to prepare for her journey. When she had left

the room the prince again began speaking about his son, about the war,

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and about the Emperor, angrily twitching his brows and raising his

hoarse voice, and then he had a second and final stroke.



Princess Mary stayed on the veranda. The day had cleared, it was hot

and sunny. She could understand nothing, think of nothing and feel

nothing, except passionate love for her father, love such as she

thought she had never felt till that moment. She ran out sobbing

into the garden and as far as the pond, along the avenues of young

lime trees Prince Andrew had planted.



"Yes... I... I... I wished for his death! Yes, I wanted it to end

quicker.... I wished to be at peace.... And what will become of me?

What use will peace be when he is no longer here?" Princess Mary

murmured, pacing the garden with hurried steps and pressing her

hands to her bosom which heaved with convulsive sobs.



When she had completed the tour of the garden, which brought her

again to the house, she saw Mademoiselle Bourienne--who had remained

at Bogucharovo and did not wish to leave it--coming toward her with

a stranger. This was the Marshal of the Nobility of the district,

who had come personally to point out to the princess the necessity for

her prompt departure. Princess Mary listened without understanding

him; she led him to the house, offered him lunch, and sat down with

him. Then, excusing herself, she went to the door of the old

prince's room. The doctor came out with an agitated face and said

she could not enter.



"Go away, Princess! Go away... go away!"



She returned to the garden and sat down on the grass at the foot

of the slope by the pond, where no one could see her. She did not know

how long she had been there when she was aroused by the sound of a

woman's footsteps running along the path. She rose and saw Dunyasha

her maid, who was evidently looking for her, and who stopped

suddenly as if in alarm on seeing her mistress.



"Please come, Princess... The Prince," said Dunyasha in a breaking

voice.



"Immediately, I'm coming, I'm coming!" replied the princess

hurriedly, not giving Dunyasha time to finish what she was saying, and

trying to avoid seeing the girl she ran toward the house.



"Princess, it's God's will! You must be prepared for everything,"

said the Marshal, meeting her at the house door.



"Let me alone; it's not true!" she cried angrily to him.



The doctor tried to stop her. She pushed him aside and ran to her

father's door. "Why are these people with frightened faces stopping

me? I don't want any of them! And what are they doing here?" she

thought. She opened the door and the bright daylight in that

previously darkened room startled her. In the room were her nurse

and other women. They all drew back from the bed, making way for

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her. He was still lying on the bed as before, but the stern expression

of his quiet face made Princess Mary stop short on the threshold.



"No, he's not dead--it's impossible!" she told herself and

approached him, and repressing the terror that seized her, she pressed

her lips to his cheek. But she stepped back immediately. All the force

of the tenderness she had been feeling for him vanished instantly

and was replaced by a feeling of horror at what lay there before

her. "No, he is no more! He is not, but here where he was is something

unfamiliar and hostile, some dreadful, terrifying, and repellent

mystery!" And hiding her face in her hands, Princess Mary sank into

the arms of the doctor, who held her up.





In the presence of Tikhon and the doctor the women washed what had

been the prince, tied his head up with a handkerchief that the mouth

should not stiffen while open, and with another handkerchief tied

together the legs that were already spreading apart. Then they dressed

him in uniform with his decorations and placed his shriveled little

body on a table. Heaven only knows who arranged all this and when, but

it all got done as if of its own accord. Toward night candles were

burning round his coffin, a pall was spread over it, the floor was

strewn with sprays of juniper, a printed band was tucked in under

his shriveled head, and in a corner of the room sat a chanter

reading the psalms.



Just as horses shy and snort and gather about a dead horse, so the

inmates of the house and strangers crowded into the drawing room round

the coffin--the Marshal, the village Elder, peasant women--and all

with fixed and frightened eyes, crossing themselves, bowed and

kissed the old prince's cold and stiffened hand.









CHAPTER IX





Until Prince Andrew settled in Bogucharovo its owners had always

been absentees, and its peasants were of quite a different character

from those of Bald Hills. They differed from them in speech, dress,

and disposition. They were called steppe peasants. The old prince used

to approve of them for their endurance at work when they came to

Bald Hills to help with the harvest or to dig ponds, and ditches,

but he disliked them for their boorishness.



Prince Andrew's last stay at Bogucharovo, when he introduced

hospitals and schools and reduced the quitrent the peasants had to

pay, had not softened their disposition but had on the contrary

strengthened in them the traits of character the old prince called

boorishness. Various obscure rumors were always current among them: at

one time a rumor that they would all be enrolled as Cossacks; at

another of a new religion to which they were all to be converted; then

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of some proclamation of the Tsar's and of an oath to the Tsar Paul

in 1797 (in connection with which it was rumored that freedom had been

granted them but the landowners had stopped it), then of Peter

Fedorovich's return to the throne in seven years' time, when

everything would be made free and so "simple" that there would be no

restrictions. Rumors of the war with Bonaparte and his invasion were

connected in their minds with the same sort of vague notions of

Antichrist, the end of the world, and "pure freedom."



In the vicinity of Bogucharovo were large villages belonging to

the crown or to owners whose serfs paid quitrent and could work

where they pleased. There were very few resident landlords in the

neighborhood and also very few domestic or literate serfs, and in

the lives of the peasantry of those parts the mysterious undercurrents

in the life of the Russian people, the causes and meaning of which are

so baffling to contemporaries, were more clearly and strongly

noticeable than among others. One instance, which had occurred some

twenty years before, was a movement among the peasants to emigrate

to some unknown "warm rivers." Hundreds of peasants, among them the

Bogucharovo folk, suddenly began selling their cattle and moving in

whole families toward the southeast. As birds migrate to somewhere

beyond the sea, so these men with their wives and children streamed to

the southeast, to parts where none of them had ever been. They set off

in caravans, bought their freedom one by one or ran away, and drove or

walked toward the "warm rivers." Many of them were punished, some sent

to Siberia, many died of cold and hunger on the road, many returned of

their own accord, and the movement died down of itself just as it

had sprung up, without apparent reason. But such undercurrents still

existed among the people and gathered new forces ready to manifest

themselves just as strangely, unexpectedly, and at the same time

simply, naturally, and forcibly. Now in 1812, to anyone living in

close touch with these people it was apparent that these undercurrents

were acting strongly and nearing an eruption.



Alpatych, who had reached Bogucharovo shortly before the old

prince's death, noticed an agitation among the peasants, and that

contrary to what was happening in the Bald Hills district, where

over a radius of forty miles all the peasants were moving away and

leaving their villages to be devastated by the Cossacks, the

peasants in the steppe region round Bogucharovo were, it was

rumored, in touch with the French, received leaflets from them that

passed from hand to hand, and did not migrate. He learned from

domestic serfs loyal to him that the peasant Karp, who possessed great

influence in the village commune and had recently been away driving

a government transport, had returned with news that the Cossacks

were destroying deserted villages, but that the French did not harm

them. Alpatych also knew that on the previous day another peasant

had even brought from the village of Visloukhovo, which was occupied

by the French, a proclamation by a French general that no harm would

be done to the inhabitants, and if they remained they would be paid

for anything taken from them. As proof of this the peasant had brought

from Visloukhovo a hundred rubles in notes (he did not know that

they were false) paid to him in advance for hay.



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More important still, Alpatych learned that on the morning of the

very day he gave the village Elder orders to collect carts to move the

princess' luggage from Bogucharovo, there had been a village meeting

at which it had been decided not to move but to wait. Yet there was no

time to waste. On the fifteenth, the day of the old prince's death,

the Marshal had insisted on Princess Mary's leaving at once, as it was

becoming dangerous. He had told her that after the sixteenth he

could not be responsible for what might happen. On the evening of

the day the old prince died the Marshal went away, promising to return

next day for the funeral. But this he was unable to do, for he

received tidings that the French had unexpectedly advanced, and had

barely time to remove his own family and valuables from his estate.



For some thirty years Bogucharovo had been managed by the village

Elder, Dron, whom the old prince called by the diminutive "Dronushka."



Dron was one of those physically and mentally vigorous peasants

who grow big beards as soon as they are of age and go on unchanged

till they are sixty or seventy, without a gray hair or the loss of a

tooth, as straight and strong at sixty as at thirty.



Soon after the migration to the "warm rivers," in which he had taken

part like the rest, Dron was made village Elder and overseer of

Bogucharovo, and had since filled that post irreproachably for

twenty-three years. The peasants feared him more than they did their

master. The masters, both the old prince and the young, and the

steward respected him and jestingly called him "the Minister."

During the whole time of his service Dron had never been drunk or ill,

never after sleepless nights or the hardest tasks had he shown the

least fatigue, and though he could not read he had never forgotten a

single money account or the number of quarters of flour in any of

the endless cartloads he sold for the prince, nor a single shock of

the whole corn crop on any single acre of the Bogucharovo fields.



Alpatych, arriving from the devastated Bald Hills estate, sent for

his Dron on the day of the prince's funeral and told him to have

twelve horses got ready for the princess' carriages and eighteen carts

for the things to be removed from Bogucharovo. Though the peasants

paid quitrent, Alpatych thought no difficulty would be made about

complying with this order, for there were two hundred and thirty

households at work in Bogucharovo and the peasants were well to do.

But on hearing the order Dron lowered his eyes and remained silent.

Alpatych named certain peasants he knew, from whom he told him to take

the carts.



Dron replied that the horses of these peasants were away carting.

Alpatych named others, but they too, according to Dron, had no

horses available: some horses were carting for the government,

others were too weak, and others had died for want of fodder. It

seemed that no horses could be had even for the carriages, much less

for the carting.



Alpatych looked intently at Dron and frowned. Just as Dron was a

model village Elder, so Alpatych had not managed the prince's

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estates for twenty years in vain. He a model steward, possessing in

the highest degree the faculty of divining the needs and instincts

of those he dealt with. Having glanced at Dron he at once understood

that his answers did not express his personal views but the general

mood of the Bogucharovo commune, by which the Elder had already been

carried away. But he also knew that Dron, who had acquired property

and was hated by the commune, must be hesitating between the two

camps: the masters' and the serfs'. He noticed this hesitation in

Dron's look and therefore frowned and moved closer up to him.



"Now just listen, Dronushka," said he. "Don't talk nonsense to me.

His excellency Prince Andrew himself gave me orders to move all the

people away and not leave them with the enemy, and there is an order

from the Tsar about it too. Anyone who stays is a traitor to the Tsar.

Do you hear?"



"I hear," Dron answered without lifting his eyes.



Alpatych was not satisfied with this reply.



"Eh, Dron, it will turn out badly!" he said, shaking his head.



"The power is in your hands," Dron rejoined sadly.



"Eh, Dron, drop it!" Alpatych repeated, withdrawing his hand from

his bosom and solemnly pointing to the floor at Dron's feet. "I can

see through you and three yards into the ground under you," he

continued, gazing at the floor in front of Dron.



Dron was disconcerted, glanced furtively at Alpatych and again

lowered his eyes.



"You drop this nonsense and tell the people to get ready to leave

their homes and go to Moscow and to get carts ready for tomorrow

morning for the princess' things. And don't go to any meeting

yourself, do you hear?"



Dron suddenly fell on his knees.



"Yakov Alpatych, discharge me! Take the keys from me and discharge

me, for Christ's sake!"



"Stop that!" cried Alpatych sternly. "I see through you and three

yards under you," he repeated, knowing that his skill in beekeeping,

his knowledge of the right time to sow the oats, and the fact that

he had been able to retain the old prince's favor for twenty years had

long since gained him the reputation of being a wizard, and that the

power of seeing three yards under a man is considered an attribute

of wizards.



Dron got up and was about to say something, but Alpatych interrupted

him.



"What is it you have got into your heads, eh?... What are you

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thinking of, eh?"



"What am I to do with the people?" said Dron. "They're quite

beside themselves; I have already told them..."



"'Told them,' I dare say!" said Alpatych. "Are they drinking?" he

asked abruptly.



"Quite beside themselves, Yakov Alpatych; they've fetched another

barrel."



"Well, then, listen! I'll go to the police officer, and you tell

them so, and that they must stop this and the carts must be got

ready."



"I understand."



Alpatych did not insist further. He had managed people for a long

time and knew that the chief way to make them obey is to show no

suspicion that they can possibly disobey. Having wrung a submissive "I

understand" from Dron, Alpatych contented himself with that, though he

not only doubted but felt almost certain that without the help of

troops the carts would not be forthcoming.



And so it was, for when evening came no carts had been provided.

In the village, outside the drink shop, another meeting was being

held, which decided that the horses should be driven out into the

woods and the carts should not be provided. Without saying anything of

this to the princess, Alpatych had his own belongings taken out of the

carts which had arrived from Bald Hills and had those horses got ready

for the princess' carriages. Meanwhile he went himself to the police

authorities.









CHAPTER X





After her father's funeral Princess Mary shut herself up in her room

and did not admit anyone. A maid came to the door to say that Alpatych

was asking for orders about their departure. (This was before his talk

with Dron.) Princess Mary raised herself on the sofa on which she

had been lying and replied through the closed door that she did not

mean to go away and begged to be left in peace.



The windows of the room in which she was lying looked westward.

She lay on the sofa with her face to the wall, fingering the buttons

of the leather cushion and seeing nothing but that cushion, and her

confused thoughts were centered on one subject--the irrevocability

of death and her own spiritual baseness, which she had not

suspected, but which had shown itself during her father's illness. She

wished to pray but did not dare to, dared not in her present state

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of mind address herself to God. She lay for a long time in that

position.



The sun had reached the other side of the house, and its slanting

rays shone into the open window, lighting up the room and part of

the morocco cushion at which Princess Mary was looking. The flow of

her thoughts suddenly stopped. Unconsciously she sat up, smoothed

her hair, got up, and went to the window, involuntarily inhaling the

freshness of the clear but windy evening.



"Yes, you can well enjoy the evening now! He is gone and no one will

hinder you," she said to herself, and sinking into a chair she let her

head fall on the window sill.



Someone spoke her name in a soft and tender voice from the garden

and kissed her head. She looked up. It was Mademoiselle Bourienne in a

black dress and weepers. She softly approached Princess Mary,

sighed, kissed her, and immediately began to cry. The princess

looked up at her. All their former disharmony and her own jealousy

recurred to her mind. But she remembered too how he had changed of

late toward Mademoiselle Bourienne and could not bear to see her,

thereby showing how unjust were the reproaches Princess Mary had

mentally addressed to her. "Besides, is it for me, for me who

desired his death, to condemn anyone?" she thought.



Princess Mary vividly pictured to herself the position of

Mademoiselle Bourienne, whom she had of late kept at a distance, but

who yet was dependent on her and living in her house. She felt sorry

for her and held out her hand with a glance of gentle inquiry.

Mademoiselle Bourienne at once began crying again and kissed that

hand, speaking of the princess' sorrow and making herself a partner in

it. She said her only consolation was the fact that the princess

allowed her to share her sorrow, that all the old misunderstandings

should sink into nothing but this great grief; that she felt herself

blameless in regard to everyone, and that he, from above, saw her

affection and gratitude. The princess heard her, not heeding her words

but occasionally looking up at her and listening to the sound of her

voice.



"Your position is doubly terrible, dear princess," said Mademoiselle

Bourienne after a pause. "I understand that you could not, and cannot,

think of yourself, but with my love for you I must do so.... Has

Alpatych been to you? Has he spoken to you of going away?" she asked.



Princess Mary did not answer. She did not understand who was to go

or where to. "Is it possible to plan or think of anything now? Is it

not all the same?" she thought, and did not reply.



"You know, chere Marie," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, "that we are

in danger--are surrounded by the French. It would be dangerous to move

now. If we go we are almost sure to be taken prisoners, and God

knows..."



Princess Mary looked at her companion without understanding what she

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was talking about.



"Oh, if anyone knew how little anything matters to me now," she

said. "Of course I would on no account wish to go away from him....

Alpatych did say something about going.... Speak to him; I can do

nothing, nothing, and don't want to...."



"I've spoken to him. He hopes we should be in time to get away

tomorrow, but I think it would now be better to stay here," said

Mademoiselle Bourienne. "Because, you will agree, chere Marie, to fall

into the hands of the soldiers or of riotous peasants would be

terrible."



Mademoiselle Bourienne took from her reticule a proclamation (not

printed on ordinary Russian paper) of General Rameau's, telling people

not to leave their homes and that the French authorities would

afford them proper protection. She handed this to the princess.



"I think it would be best to appeal to that general," she continued,

"and and am sure that all due respect would be shown you."



Princess Mary read the paper, and her face began to quiver with

stifled sobs.



"From whom did you get this?" she asked.



"They probably recognized that I am French, by my name," replied

Mademoiselle Bourienne blushing.



Princess Mary, with the paper in her hand, rose from the window

and with a pale face went out of the room and into what had been

Prince Andrew's study.



"Dunyasha, send Alpatych, or Dronushka, or somebody to me!" she

said, "and tell Mademoiselle Bourienne not to come to me," she

added, hearing Mademoiselle Bourienne's voice. "We must go at once, at

once!" she said, appalled at the thought of being left in the hands of

the French.



"If Prince Andrew heard that I was in the power of the French!

That I, the daughter of Prince Nicholas Bolkonski, asked General

Rameau for protection and accepted his favor!" This idea horrified

her, made her shudder, blush, and feel such a rush of anger and

pride as she had never experienced before. All that was distressing,

and especially all that was humiliating, in her position rose

vividly to her mind. "They, the French, would settle in this house: M.

le General Rameau would occupy Prince Andrew's study and amuse himself

by looking through and reading his letters and papers. Mademoiselle

Bourienne would do the honors of Bogucharovo for him. I should be

given a small room as a favor, the soldiers would violate my

father's newly dug grave to steal his crosses and stars, they would

tell me of their victories over the Russians, and would pretend to

sympathize with my sorrow..." thought Princess Mary, not thinking

her own thoughts but feeling bound to think like her father and her

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brother. For herself she did not care where she remained or what

happened to her, but she felt herself the representative of her dead

father and of Prince Andrew. Involuntarily she thought their

thoughts and felt their feelings. What they would have said and what

they would have done she felt bound to say and do. She went into

Prince Andrew's study, trying to enter completely into his ideas,

and considered her position.



The demands of life, which had seemed to her annihilated by her

father's death, all at once rose before her with a new, previously

unknown force and took possession of her.



Agitated and flushed she paced the room, sending now for Michael

Ivanovich and now for Tikhon or Dron. Dunyasha, the nurse, and the

other maids could not say in how far Mademoiselle Bourienne's

statement was correct. Alpatych was not at home, he had gone to the

police. Neither could the architect Michael Ivanovich, who on being

sent for came in with sleepy eyes, tell Princess Mary anything. With

just the same smile of agreement with which for fifteen years he had

been accustomed to answer the old prince without expressing views of

his own, he now replied to Princess Mary, so that nothing definite

could be got from his answers. The old valet Tikhon, with sunken,

emaciated face that bore the stamp of inconsolable grief, replied:

"Yes, Princess" to all Princess Mary's questions and hardly

refrained from sobbing as he looked at her.



At length Dron, the village Elder, entered the room and with a

deep bow to Princess Mary came to a halt by the doorpost.



Princess Mary walked up and down the room and stopped in front of

him.



"Dronushka," she said, regarding as a sure friend this Dronushka who

always used to bring a special kind of gingerbread from his visit to

the fair at Vyazma every year and smilingly offer it to her,

"Dronushka, now since our misfortune..." she began, but could not go

on.



"We are all in God's hands," said he, with a sigh.



They were silent for a while.



"Dronushka, Alpatych has gone off somewhere and I have no one to

turn to. Is true, as they tell me, that I can't even go away?"



"Why shouldn't you go away, your excellency? You can go," said Dron.



"I was told it would be dangerous because of the enemy. Dear friend,

I can do nothing. I understand nothing. I have nobody! I want to go

away tonight or early tomorrow morning."



Dron paused. He looked askance at Princess Mary and said: "There are

no horses; I told Yakov Alpatych so."



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"Why are there none?" asked the princess.



"It's all God's scourge," said Dron. "What horses we had have been

taken for the army or have died--this is such a year! It's not a

case of feeding horses--we may die of hunger ourselves! As it is, some

go three days without eating. We've nothing, we've been ruined."



Princess Mary listened attentively to what he told her.



"The peasants are ruined? They have no bread?" she asked.



"They're dying of hunger," said Dron. "It's not a case of carting."



"But why didn't you tell me, Dronushka? Isn't it possible to help

them? I'll do all I can...."



To Princess Mary it was strange that now, at a moment when such

sorrow was filling her soul, there could be rich people and poor,

and the rich could refrain from helping the poor. She had heard

vaguely that there was such a thing as "landlord's corn" which was

sometimes given to the peasants. She also knew that neither her father

nor her brother would refuse to help the peasants in need, she only

feared to make some mistake in speaking about the distribution of

the grain she wished to give. She was glad such cares presented

themselves, enabling her without scruple to forget her own grief.

She began asking Dron about the peasants' needs and what there was

in Bogucharovo that belonged to the landlord.



"But we have grain belonging to my brother?" she said.



"The landlord's grain is all safe," replied Dron proudly. "Our

prince did not order it to be sold."



"Give it to the peasants, let them have all they need; I give you

leave in my brother's name," said she.



Dron made no answer but sighed deeply.



"Give them that corn if there is enough of it. Distribute it all.

I give this order in my brother's name; and tell them that what is

ours is theirs. We do not grudge them anything. Tell them so."



Dron looked intently at the princess while she was speaking.



"Discharge me, little mother, for God's sake! Order the keys to be

taken from me," said he. "I have served twenty-three years and have

done no wrong. Discharge me, for God's sake!"



Princess Mary did not understand what he wanted of her or why he was

asking to be discharged. She replied that she had never doubted his

devotion and that she was ready to do anything for him and for the

peasants.





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CHAPTER XI





An hour later Dunyasha came to tell the princess that Dron had come,

and all the peasants had assembled at the barn by the princess'

order and wished to have word with their mistress.



"But I never told them to come," said Princess Mary. "I only told

Dron to let them have the grain."



"Only, for God's sake, Princess dear, have them sent away and

don't go out to them. It's all a trick," said Dunyasha, "and when

Yakov Alpatych returns let us get away... and please don't..."



"What is a trick?" asked Princess Mary in surprise.



"I know it is, only listen to me for God's sake! Ask nurse too. They

say they don't agree to leave Bogucharovo as you ordered."



"You're making some mistake. I never ordered them to go away,"

said Princess Mary. "Call Dronushka."



Dron came and confirmed Dunyasha's words; the peasants had come by

the princess' order.



"But I never sent for them," declared the princess. "You must have

given my message wrong. I only said that you were to give them the

grain."



Dron only sighed in reply.



"If you order it they will go away," said he.



"No, no. I'll go out to them," said Princess Mary, and in spite of

the nurse's and Dunyasha's protests she went out into the porch; Dron,

Dunyasha, the nurse, and Michael Ivanovich following her.



"They probably think I am offering them the grain to bribe them to

remain here, while I myself go away leaving them to the mercy of the

French," thought Princess Mary. "I will offer them monthly rations and

housing at our Moscow estate. I am sure Andrew would do even more in

my place," she thought as she went out in the twilight toward the

crowd standing on the pasture by the barn.



The men crowded closer together, stirred, and rapidly took off their

hats. Princess Mary lowered her eyes and, tripping over her skirt,

came close up to them. So many different eyes, old and young, were

fixed on her, and there were so many different faces, that she could

not distinguish any of them and, feeling that she must speak to them

all at once, did not know how to do it. But again the sense that she

represented her father and her brother gave her courage, and she

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boldly began her speech.



"I am very glad you have come," she said without raising her eyes,

and feeling her heart beating quickly and violently. "Dronushka

tells me that the war has ruined you. That is our common misfortune,

and I shall grudge nothing to help you. I am myself going away because

it is dangerous here... the enemy is near... because... I am giving

you everything, my friends, and I beg you to take everything, all

our grain, so that you may not suffer want! And if you have been

told that I am giving you the grain to keep you here--that is not

true. On the contrary, I ask you to go with all your belongings to our

estate near Moscow, and I promise you I will see to it that there

you shall want for nothing. You shall be given food and lodging."



The princess stopped. Sighs were the only sound heard in the crowd.



"I am not doing this on my own account," she continued, "I do it

in the name of my dead father, who was a good master to you, and of my

brother and his son."



Again she paused. No one broke the silence.



"Ours is a common misfortune and we will share it together. All that

is mine is yours," she concluded, scanning the faces before her.



All eyes were gazing at her with one and the same expression. She

could not fathom whether it was curiosity, devotion, gratitude, or

apprehension and distrust--but the expression on all the faces was

identical.



"We are all very thankful for your bounty, but it won't do for us to

take the landlord's grain," said a voice at the back of the crowd.



"But why not?" asked the princess.



No one replied and Princess Mary, looking round at the crowd,

found that every eye she met now was immediately dropped.



"But why don't you want to take it?" she asked again.



No one answered.



The silence began to oppress the princess and she tried to catch

someone's eye.



"Why don't you speak?" she inquired of a very old man who stood just

in front of her leaning on his stick. "If you think something more

is wanted, tell me! I will do anything," said she, catching his eye.



But as if this angered him, he bent his head quite low and muttered:



"Why should we agree? We don't want the grain."



"Why should we give up everything? We don't agree. Don't agree....

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We are sorry for you, but we're not willing. Go away yourself,

alone..." came from various sides of the crowd.



And again all the faces in that crowd bore an identical

expression, though now it was certainly not an expression of curiosity

or gratitude, but of angry resolve.



"But you can't have understood me," said Princess Mary with a sad

smile. "Why don't you want to go? I promise to house and feed you,

while here the enemy would ruin you..."



But her voice was drowned by the voices of the crowd.



"We're not willing. Let them ruin us! We won't take your grain. We

don't agree."



Again Princess Mary tried to catch someone's eye, but not a single

eye in the crowd was turned to her; evidently they were all trying

to avoid her look. She felt strange and awkward.



"Oh yes, an artful tale! Follow her into slavery! Pull down your

houses and go into bondage! I dare say! 'I'll give you grain, indeed!'

she says," voices in the crowd were heard saying.



With drooping head Princess Mary left the crowd and went back to the

house. Having repeated her order to Dron to have horses ready for

her departure next morning, she went to her room and remained alone

with her own thoughts.









CHAPTER XII





For a long time that night Princess Mary sat by the open window of

her room hearing the sound of the peasants' voices that reached her

from the village, but it was not of them she was thinking. She felt

that she could not understand them however much she might think

about them. She thought only of one thing, her sorrow, which, after

the break caused by cares for the present, seemed already to belong to

the past. Now she could remember it and weep or pray.



After sunset the wind had dropped. The night was calm and fresh.

Toward midnight the voices began to subside, a cock crowed, the full

moon began to show from behind the lime trees, a fresh white dewy mist

began to rise, and stillness reigned over the village and the house.



Pictures of the near past--her father's illness and last moments-

rose one after another to her memory. With mournful pleasure she now

lingered over these images, repelling with horror only the last one,

the picture of his death, which she felt she could not contemplate

even in imagination at this still and mystic hour of night. And

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these pictures presented themselves to her so clearly and in such

detail that they seemed now present, now past, and now future.



She vividly recalled the moment when he had his first stroke and was

being dragged along by his armpits through the garden at Bald Hills,

muttering something with his helpless tongue, twitching his gray

eyebrows and looking uneasily and timidly at her.



"Even then he wanted to tell me what he told me the day he died,"

she thought. "He had always thought what he said then." And she

recalled in all its detail the night at Bald Hills before he had the

last stroke, when with a foreboding of disaster she had remained at

home against his will. She had not slept and had stolen downstairs

on tiptoe, and going to the door of the conservatory where he slept

that night had listened at the door. In a suffering and weary voice he

was saying something to Tikhon, speaking of the Crimea and its warm

nights and of the Empress. Evidently he had wanted to talk. "And why

didn't he call me? Why didn't he let me be there instead of Tikhon?"

Princess Mary had thought and thought again now. "Now he will never

tell anyone what he had in his soul. Never will that moment return for

him or for me when he might have said all he longed to say, and not

Tikhon but I might have heard and understood him. Why didn't I enter

the room?" she thought. "Perhaps he would then have said to me what he

said the day he died. While talking to Tikhon he asked about me twice.

He wanted to see me, and I was standing close by, outside the door. It

was sad and painful for him to talk to Tikhon who did not understand

him. I remember how he began speaking to him about Lise as if she were

alive--he had forgotten she was dead--and Tikhon reminded him that she

was no more, and he shouted, 'Fool!' He was greatly depressed. From

behind the door I heard how he lay down on his bed groaning and loudly

exclaimed, 'My God!' Why didn't I go in then? What could he have

done to me? What could I have lost? And perhaps he would then have

been comforted and would have said that word to me." And Princess Mary

uttered aloud the caressing word he had said to her on the day of

his death. "Dear-est!" she repeated, and began sobbing, with tears

that relieved her soul. She now saw his face before her. And not the

face she had known ever since she could remember and had always seen

at a distance, but the timid, feeble face she had seen for the first

time quite closely, with all its wrinkles and details, when she

stooped near to his mouth to catch what he said.



"Dear-est!" she repeated again.



"What was he thinking when he uttered that word? What is he thinking

now?" This question suddenly presented itself to her, and in answer

she saw him before her with the expression that was on his face as

he lay in his coffin with his chin bound up with a white handkerchief.

And the horror that had seized her when she touched him and

convinced herself that that was not he, but something mysterious and

horrible, seized her again. She tried to think of something else and

to pray, but could do neither. With wide-open eyes she gazed at the

moonlight and the shadows, expecting every moment to see his dead

face, and she felt that the silence brooding over the house and within

it held her fast.

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"Dunyasha," she whispered. "Dunyasha!" she screamed wildly, and

tearing herself out of this silence she ran to the servants'

quarters to meet her old nurse and the maidservants who came running

toward her.









CHAPTER XIII





On the seventeenth of August Rostov and Ilyin, accompanied by

Lavrushka who had just returned from captivity and by an hussar

orderly, left their quarters at Yankovo, ten miles from Bogucharovo,

and went for a ride--to try a new horse Ilyin had bought and to find

out whether there was any hay to be had in the villages.



For the last three days Bogucharovo had lain between the two hostile

armies, so that it was as easy for the Russian rearguard to get to

it as for the French vanguard; Rostov, as a careful squadron

commander, wished to take such provisions as remained at Bogucharovo

before the French could get them.



Rostov and Ilyin were in the merriest of moods. On the way to

Bogucharovo, a princely estate with a dwelling house and farm where

they hoped to find many domestic serfs and pretty girls, they

questioned Lavrushka about Napoleon and laughed at his stories, and

raced one another to try Ilyin's horse.



Rostov had no idea that the village he was entering was the property

of that very Bolkonski who had been engaged to his sister.



Rostov and Ilyin gave rein to their horses for a last race along the

incline before reaching Bogucharovo, and Rostov, outstripping Ilyin,

was the first to gallop into the village street.



"You're first!" cried Ilyin, flushed.



"Yes, always first both on the grassland and here," answered Rostov,

stroking his heated Donets horse.



"And I'd have won on my Frenchy, your excellency," said Lavrushka

from behind, alluding to his shabby cart horse, "only I didn't wish to

mortify you."



They rode at a footpace to the barn, where a large crowd of peasants

was standing.



Some of the men bared their heads, others stared at the new arrivals

without doffing their caps. Two tall old peasants with wrinkled

faces and scanty beards emerged from the tavern, smiling,

staggering, and singing some incoherent song, and approached the

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officers.



"Fine fellows!" said Rostov laughing. "Is there any hay here?"



"And how like one another," said Ilyin.



"A mo-o-st me-r-r-y co-o-m-pa...!" sang one of the peasants with a

blissful smile.



One of the men came out of the crowd and went up to Rostov.



"Who do you belong to?" he asked.



"The French," replied Ilyin jestingly, "and here is Napoleon

himself"--and he pointed to Lavrushka.



"Then you are Russians?" the peasant asked again.



"And is there a large force of you here?" said another, a short man,

coming up.



"Very large," answered Rostov. "But why have you collected here?" he

added. "Is it a holiday?"



"The old men have met to talk over the business of the commune,"

replied the peasant, moving away.



At that moment, on the road leading from the big house, two women

and a man in a white hat were seen coming toward the officers.



"The one in pink is mine, so keep off!" said Ilyin on seeing

Dunyasha running resolutely toward him.



"She'll be ours!" said Lavrushka to Ilyin, winking.



"What do you want, my pretty?" said Ilyin with a smile.



"The princess ordered me to ask your regiment and your name."



"This is Count Rostov, squadron commander, and I am your humble

servant."



"Co-o-om-pa-ny!" roared the tipsy peasant with a beatific smile as

he looked at Ilyin talking to the girl. Following Dunyasha, Alpatych

advanced to Rostov, having bared his head while still at a distance.



"May I make bold to trouble your honor?" said he respectfully, but

with a shade of contempt for the youthfulness of this officer and with

a hand thrust into his bosom. "My mistress, daughter of General in

Chief Prince Nicholas Bolkonski who died on the fifteenth of this

month, finding herself in difficulties owing to the boorishness of

these people"--he pointed to the peasants--"asks you to come up to the

house.... Won't you, please, ride on a little farther," said

Alpatych with a melancholy smile, "as it is not convenient in the

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presence of...?" He pointed to the two peasants who kept as close to

him as horseflies to a horse.



"Ah!... Alpatych... Ah, Yakov Alpatych... Grand! Forgive us for

Christ's sake, eh?" said the peasants, smiling joyfully at him.



Rostov looked at the tipsy peasants and smiled.



"Or perhaps they amuse your honor?" remarked Alpatych with a staid

air, as he pointed at the old men with his free hand.



"No, there's not much to be amused at here," said Rostov, and rode

on a little way. "What's the matter?" he asked.



"I make bold to inform your honor that the rude peasants here

don't wish to let the mistress leave the estate, and threaten to

unharness her horses, so that though everything has been packed up

since morning, her excellency cannot get away."



"Impossible!" exclaimed Rostov.



"I have the honor to report to you the actual truth," said Alpatych.



Rostov dismounted, gave his horse to the orderly, and followed

Alpatych to the house, questioning him as to the state of affairs.

It appeared that the princess' offer of corn to the peasants the

previous day, and her talk with Dron and at the meeting, had

actually had so bad an effect that Dron had finally given up the

keys and joined the peasants and had not appeared when Alpatych sent

for him; and that in the morning when the princess gave orders to

harness for her journey, the peasants had come in a large crowd to the

barn and sent word that they would not let her leave the village: that

there was an order not to move, and that they would unharness the

horses. Alpatych had gone out to admonish them, but was told (it was

chiefly Karp who did the talking, Dron not showing himself in the

crowd) that they could not let the princess go, that there was an

order to the contrary, but that if she stayed they would serve her

as before and obey her in everything.



At the moment when Rostov and Ilyin were galloping along the road,

Princess Mary, despite the dissuasions of Alpatych, her nurse, and the

maids, had given orders to harness and intended to start, but when the

cavalrymen were espied they were taken for Frenchmen, the coachman ran

away, and the women in the house began to wail.



"Father! Benefactor! God has sent you!" exclaimed deeply moved

voices as Rostov passed through the anteroom.



Princess Mary was sitting helpless and bewildered in the large

sitting room, when Rostov was shown in. She could not grasp who he was

and why he had come, or what was happening to her. When she saw his

Russian face, and by his walk and the first words he uttered

recognized him as a man of her own class, she glanced at him with

her deep radiant look and began speaking in a voice that faltered

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and trembled with emotion. This meeting immediately struck Rostov as a

romantic event. "A helpless girl overwhelmed with grief, left to the

mercy of coarse, rioting peasants! And what a strange fate sent me

here! What gentleness and nobility there are in her features and

expression!" thought he as he looked at her and listened to her

timid story.



When she began to tell him that all this had happened the day

after her father's funeral, her voiced trembled. She turned away,

and then, as if fearing he might take her words as meant to move him

to pity, looked at him with an apprehensive glance of inquiry. There

were tears in Rostov's eyes. Princess Mary noticed this and glanced

gratefully at him with that radiant look which caused the plainness of

her face to be forgotten.



"I cannot express, Princess, how glad I am that I happened to ride

here and am able to show my readiness to serve you," said Rostov,

rising. "Go when you please, and I give you my word of honor that no

one shall dare to cause you annoyance if only you will allow me to act

as your escort." And bowing respectfully, as if to a lady of royal

blood, he moved toward the door.



Rostov's deferential tone seemed to indicate that though he would

consider himself happy to be acquainted with her, he did not wish to

take advantage of her misfortunes to intrude upon her.



Princess Mary understood this and appreciated his delicacy.



"I am very, very grateful to you," she said in French, "but I hope

it was all a misunderstanding and that no one is to blame for it." She

suddenly began to cry.



"Excuse me!" she said.



Rostov, knitting his brows, left the room with another low bow.









CHAPTER XIV





"Well, is she pretty? Ah, friend--my pink one is delicious; her

name is Dunyasha...."



But on glancing at Rostov's face Ilyin stopped short. He saw that

his hero and commander was following quite a different train of

thought.



Rostov glanced angrily at Ilyin and without replying strode off with

rapid steps to the village.



"I'll show them; I'll give it to them, the brigands!" said he to

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himself.



Alpatych at a gliding trot, only just managing not to run, kept up

with him with difficulty.



"What decision have you been pleased to come to?" said he.



Rostov stopped and, clenching his fists, suddenly and sternly turned

on Alpatych.



"Decision? What decision? Old dotard!..." cried he. "What have you

been about? Eh? The peasants are rioting, and you can't manage them?

You're a traitor yourself! I know you. I'll flay you all alive!..."

And as if afraid of wasting his store of anger, he left Alpatych and

went rapidly forward. Alpatych, mastering his offended feelings,

kept pace with Rostov at a gliding gait and continued to impart his

views. He said the peasants were obdurate and that at the present

moment it would be imprudent to "overresist" them without an armed

force, and would it not be better first to send for the military?



"I'll give them armed force... I'll 'overresist' them!" uttered

Rostov meaninglessly, breathless with irrational animal fury and the

need to vent it.



Without considering what he would do he moved unconciously with

quick, resolute steps toward the crowd. And the nearer he drew to it

the more Alpatych felt that this unreasonable action might produce

good results. The peasants in the crowd were similarly impressed

when they saw Rostov's rapid, firm steps and resolute, frowning face.



After the hussars had come to the village and Rostov had gone to see

the princess, a certain confusion and dissension had arisen among

the crowd. Some of the peasants said that these new arrivals were

Russians and might take it amiss that the mistress was being detained.

Dron was of this opinion, but as soon as he expressed it Karp and

others attacked their ex-Elder.



"How many years have you been fattening on the commune?" Karp

shouted at him. "It's all one to you! You'll dig up your pot of

money and take it away with you.... What does it matter to you whether

our homes are ruined or not?"



"We've been told to keep order, and that no one is to leave their

homes or take away a single grain, and that's all about it!" cried

another.



"It was your son's turn to be conscripted, but no fear! You

begrudged your lump of a son," a little old man suddenly began

attacking Dron--"and so they took my Vanka to be shaved for a soldier!

But we all have to die."



"To be sure, we all have to die. I'm not against the commune,"

said Dron.



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"That's it--not against it! You've filled your belly...."



The two tall peasants had their say. As soon as Rostov, followed

by Ilyin, Lavrushka, and Alpatych, came up to the crowd, Karp,

thrusting his fingers into his belt and smiling a little, walked to

the front. Dron on the contrary retired to the rear and the crowd drew

closer together.



"Who is your Elder here? Hey?" shouted Rostov, coming up to the

crowd with quick steps.



"The Elder? What do you want with him?..." asked Karp.



But before the words were well out of his mouth, his cap flew off

and a fierce blow jerked his head to one side.



"Caps off, traitors!" shouted Rostov in a wrathful voice. "Where's

the Elder?" he cried furiously.



"The Elder.... He wants the Elder!... Dron Zakharych, you!" meek and

flustered voices here and there were heard calling and caps began to

come off their heads.



"We don't riot, we're following the orders," declared Karp, and at

that moment several voices began speaking together.



"It's as the old men have decided--there's too many of you giving

orders."



"Arguing? Mutiny!... Brigands! Traitors!" cried Rostov unmeaningly

in a voice not his own, gripping Karp by the collar. "Bind him, bind

him!" he shouted, though there was no one to bind him but Lavrushka

and Alpatych.



Lavrushka, however, ran up to Karp and seized him by the arms from

behind.



"Shall I call up our men from beyond the hill?" he called out.



Alpatych turned to the peasants and ordered two of them by name to

come and bind Karp. The men obediently came out of the crowd and began

taking off their belts.



"Where's the Elder?" demanded Rostov in a loud voice.



With a pale and frowning face Dron stepped out of the crowd.



"Are you the Elder? Bind him, Lavrushka!" shouted Rostov, as if that

order, too, could not possibly meet with any opposition.



And in fact two more peasants began binding Dron, who took off his

own belt and handed it to them, as if to aid them.



"And you all listen to me!" said Rostov to the peasants. "Be off

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to your houses at once, and don't let one of your voices be heard!"



"Why, we've not done any harm! We did it just out of foolishness.

It's all nonsense... I said then that it was not in order," voices

were heard bickering with one another.



"There! What did I say?" said Alpatych, coming into his own again.

"It's wrong, lads!"



"All our stupidity, Yakov Alpatych," came the answers, and the

crowd began at once to disperse through the village.



The two bound men were led off to the master's house. The two

drunken peasants followed them.



"Aye, when I look at you!..." said one of them to Karp.



"How can one talk to the masters like that? What were you thinking

of, you fool?" added the other--"A real fool!"



Two hours later the carts were standing in the courtyard of the

Bogucharovo house. The peasants were briskly carrying out the

proprietor's goods and packing them on the carts, and Dron,

liberated at Princess Mary's wish from the cupboard where he had

been confined, was standing in the yard directing the men.



"Don't put it in so carelessly," said one of the peasants, a man

with a round smiling face, taking a casket from a housemaid. "You know

it has cost money! How can you chuck it in like that or shove it under

the cord where it'll get rubbed? I don't like that way of doing

things. Let it all be done properly, according to rule. Look here, put

it under the bast matting and cover it with hay--that's the way!"



"Eh, books, books!" said another peasant, bringing out Prince

Andrew's library cupboards. "Don't catch up against it! It's heavy,

lads--solid books."



"Yes, they worked all day and didn't play!" remarked the tall,

round-faced peasant gravely, pointing with a significant wink at the

dictionaries that were on the top.





Unwilling to obtrude himself on the princess, Rostov did not go back

to the house but remained in the village awaiting her departure.

When her carriage drove out of the house, he mounted and accompanied

her eight miles from Bogucharovo to where the road was occupied by our

troops. At the inn at Yankovo he respectfully took leave of her, for

the first time permitting himself to kiss her hand.



"How can you speak so!" he blushingly replied to Princess Mary's

expressions of gratitude for her deliverance, as she termed what had

occurred. "Any police officer would have done as much! If we had had

only peasants to fight, we should not have let the enemy come so far,"

said he with a sense of shame and wishing to change the subject. "I am

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only happy to have had the opportunity of making your acquaintance.

Good-by, Princess. I wish you happiness and consolation and hope to

meet you again in happier circumstances. If you don't want to make

me blush, please don't thank me!"



But the princess, if she did not again thank him in words, thanked

him with the whole expression of her face, radiant with gratitude

and tenderness. She could not believe that there was nothing to

thank him for. On the contrary, it seemed to her certain that had he

not been there she would have perished at the hands of the mutineers

and of the French, and that he had exposed himself to terrible and

obvious danger to save her, and even more certain was it that he was a

man of lofty and noble soul, able to understand her position and her

sorrow. His kind, honest eyes, with the tears rising in them when

she herself had begun to cry as she spoke of her loss, did leave her

memory.



When she had taken leave of him and remained alone she suddenly felt

her eyes filling with tears, and then not for the first time the

strange question presented itself to her: did she love him?



On the rest of the way to Moscow, though the princess' position

was not a cheerful one, Dunyasha, who went with her in the carriage,

more than once noticed that her mistress leaned out of the window

and smiled at something with an expression of mingled joy and sorrow.



"Well, supposing I do love him?" thought Princess Mary.



Ashamed as she was of acknowledging to herself that she had fallen

in love with a man who would perhaps never love her, she comforted

herself with the thought that no one would ever know it and that she

would not be to blame if, without ever speaking of it to anyone, she

continued to the end of her life to love the man with whom she had

fallen in love for the first and last time in her life.



Sometimes when she recalled his looks, his sympathy, and his

words, happiness did not appear impossible to her. It was at those

moments that Dunyasha noticed her smiling as she looked out of the

carriage window.



"Was it not fate that brought him to Bogucharovo, and at that very

moment?" thought Princess Mary. "And that caused his sister to

refuse my brother?" And in all this Princess Mary saw the hand of

Providence.



The impression the princess made on Rostov was a very agreeable one.

To remember her gave him pleasure, and when his comrades, hearing of

his adventure at Bogucharovo, rallied him on having gone to look for

hay and having picked up one of the wealthiest heiresses in Russia, he

grew angry. It made him angry just because the idea of marrying the

gentle Princess Mary, who was attractive to him and had an enormous

fortune, had against his will more than once entered his head. For

himself personally Nicholas could not wish for a better wife: by

marrying her he would make the countess his mother happy, would be

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able to put his father's affairs in order, and would even--he felt it-

ensure Princess Mary's happiness.



But Sonya? And his plighted word? That was why Rostov grew angry

when he was rallied about Princess Bolkonskaya.









CHAPTER XV





On receiving command of the armies Kutuzov remembered Prince

Andrew and sent an order for him to report at headquarters.



Prince Andrew arrived at Tsarevo-Zaymishche on the very day and at

the very hour that Kutuzov was reviewing the troops for the first

time. He stopped in the village at the priest's house in front of

which stood the commander in chief's carriage, and he sat down on

the bench at the gate awaiting his Serene Highness, as everyone now

called Kutuzov. From the field beyond the village came now sounds of

regimental music and now the roar of many voices shouting "Hurrah!" to

the new commander in chief. Two orderlies, a courier and a major-domo,

stood near by, some ten paces from Prince Andrew, availing

themselves of Kutuzov's absence and of the fine weather. A short,

swarthy lieutenant colonel of hussars with thick mustaches and

whiskers rode up to the gate and, glancing at Prince Andrew,

inquired whether his Serene Highness was putting up there and

whether he would soon be back.



Prince Andrew replied that he was not on his Serene Highness'

staff but was himself a new arrival. The lieutenant colonel turned

to a smart orderly, who, with the peculiar contempt with which a

commander in chief's orderly speaks to officers, replied:



"What? His Serene Highness? I expect he'll be here soon. What do you

want?"



The lieutenant colonel of hussars smiled beneath his mustache at the

orderly's tone, dismounted, gave his horse to a dispatch runner, and

approached Bolkonski with a slight bow. Bolkonski made room for him on

the bench and the lieutenant colonel sat down beside him.



"You're also waiting for the commander in chief?" said he. "They say

he weceives evewyone, thank God!... It's awful with those sausage

eaters! Ermolov had weason to ask to be pwomoted to be a German! Now

p'waps Wussians will get a look in. As it was, devil only knows what

was happening. We kept wetweating and wetweating. Did you take part in

the campaign?" he asked.



"I had the pleasure," replied Prince Andrew, "not only of taking

part in the retreat but of losing in that retreat all I held dear--not

to mention the estate and home of my birth--my father, who died of

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grief. I belong to the province of Smolensk."



"Ah? You're Pwince Bolkonski? Vewy glad to make your acquaintance!

I'm Lieutenant Colonel Denisov, better known as 'Vaska,'" said

Denisov, pressing Prince Andrew's hand and looking into his face

with a particularly kindly attention. "Yes, I heard," said he

sympathetically, and after a short pause added: "Yes, it's Scythian

warfare. It's all vewy well--only not for those who get it in the

neck. So you are Pwince Andwew Bolkonski?" He swayed his head. "Vewy

pleased, Pwince, to make your acquaintance!" he repeated again,

smiling sadly, and he again pressed Prince Andrew's hand.



Prince Andrew knew Denisov from what Natasha had told him of her

first suitor. This memory carried him sadly and sweetly back to

those painful feelings of which he had not thought lately, but which

still found place in his soul. Of late he had received so many new and

very serious impressions--such as the retreat from Smolensk, his visit

to Bald Hills, and the recent news of his father's death--and had

experienced so many emotions, that for a long time past those memories

had not entered his mind, and now that they did, they did not act on

him with nearly their former strength. For Denisov, too, the

memories awakened by the name of Bolkonski belonged to a distant,

romantic past, when after supper and after Natasha's singing he had

proposed to a little girl of fifteen without realizing what he was

doing. He smiled at the recollection of that time and of his love

for Natasha, and passed at once to what now interested him

passionately and exclusively. This was a plan of campaign he had

devised while serving at the outposts during the retreat. He had

proposed that plan to Barclay de Tolly and now wished to propose it to

Kutuzov. The plan was based on the fact that the French line of

operation was too extended, and it proposed that instead of, or

concurrently with, action on the front to bar the advance of the

French, we should attack their line of communication. He began

explaining his plan to Prince Andrew.



"They can't hold all that line. It's impossible. I will undertake to

bweak thwough. Give me five hundwed men and I will bweak the line,

that's certain! There's only one way--guewilla warfare!"



Denisov rose and began gesticulating as he explained his plan to

Bolkonski. In the midst of his explanation shouts were heard from

the army, growing more incoherent and more diffused, mingling with

music and songs and coming from the field where the review was held.

Sounds of hoofs and shouts were nearing the village.



"He's coming! He's coming!" shouted a Cossack standing at the gate.



Bolkonski and Denisov moved to the gate, at which a knot of soldiers

(a guard of honor) was standing, and they saw Kutuzov coming down

the street mounted on a rather small sorrel horse. A huge suite of

generals rode behind him. Barclay was riding almost beside him, and

a crowd of officers ran after and around them shouting, "Hurrah!"



His adjutants galloped into the yard before him. Kutuzov was

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impatiently urging on his horse, which ambled smoothly under his

weight, and he raised his hand to his white Horse Guard's cap with a

red band and no peak, nodding his head continually. When he came up to

the guard of honor, a fine set of Grenadiers mostly wearing

decorations, who were giving him the salute, he looked at them

silently and attentively for nearly a minute with the steady gaze of a

commander and then turned to the crowd of generals and officers

surrounding him. Suddenly his face assumed a subtle expression, he

shrugged his shoulders with an air of perplexity.



"And with such fine fellows to retreat and retreat! Well, good-by,

General," he added, and rode into the yard past Prince Andrew and

Denisov.



"Hurrah! hurrah! hurrah!" shouted those behind him.



Since Prince Andrew had last seen him Kutuzov had grown still more

corpulent, flaccid, and fat. But the bleached eyeball, the scar, and

the familiar weariness of his expression were still the same. He was

wearing the white Horse Guard's cap and a military overcoat with a

whip hanging over his shoulder by a thin strap. He sat heavily and

swayed limply on his brisk little horse.



"Whew... whew... whew!" he whistled just audibly as he rode into the

yard. His face expressed the relief of relaxed strain felt by a man

who means to rest after a ceremony. He drew his left foot out of the

stirrup and, lurching with his whole body and puckering his face

with the effort, raised it with difficulty onto the saddle, leaned

on his knee, groaned, and slipped down into the arms of the Cossacks

and adjutants who stood ready to assist him.



He pulled himself together, looked round, screwing up his eyes,

glanced at Prince Andrew, and, evidently not recognizing him, moved

with his waddling gait to the porch. "Whew... whew... whew!" he

whistled, and again glanced at Prince Andrew. As often occurs with old

men, it was only after some seconds that the impression produced by

Prince Andrew's face linked itself up with Kutuzov's remembrance of

his personality.



"Ah, how do you do, my dear prince? How do you do, my dear boy? Come

along..." said he, glancing wearily round, and he stepped onto the

porch which creaked under his weight.



He unbuttoned his coat and sat down on a bench in the porch.



"And how's your father?"



"I received news of his death, yesterday," replied Prince Andrew

abruptly.



Kutuzov looked at him with eyes wide open with dismay and then

took off his cap and crossed himself:



"May the kingdom of Heaven be his! God's will be done to us all!" He

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sighed deeply, his whole chest heaving, and was silent for a while. "I

loved him and respected him, and sympathize with you with all my

heart."



He embraced Prince Andrew, pressing him to his fat breast, and for

some time did not let him go. When he released him Prince Andrew saw

that Kutuzov's flabby lips were trembling and that tears were in his

eyes. He sighed and pressed on the bench with both hands to raise

himself.



"Come! Come with me, we'll have a talk," said he.



But at that moment Denisov, no more intimidated by his superiors

than by the enemy, came with jingling spurs up the steps of the porch,

despite the angry whispers of the adjutants who tried to stop him.

Kutuzov, his hands still pressed on the seat, glanced at him glumly.

Denisov, having given his name, announced that he had to communicate

to his Serene Highness a matter of great importance for their

country's welfare. Kutuzov looked wearily at him and, lifting his

hands with a gesture of annoyance, folded them across his stomach,

repeating the words: "For our country's welfare? Well, what is it?

Speak!" Denisov blushed like a girl (it was strange to see the color

rise in that shaggy, bibulous, time-worn face) and boldly began to

expound his plan of cutting the enemy's lines of communication between

Smolensk and Vyazma. Denisov came from those parts and knew the

country well. His plan seemed decidedly a good one, especially from

the strength of conviction with which he spoke. Kutuzov looked down at

his own legs, occasionally glancing at the door of the adjoining hut

as if expecting something unpleasant to emerge from it. And from

that hut, while Denisov was speaking, a general with a portfolio under

his arm really did appear.



"What?" said Kutuzov, in the midst of Denisov's explanations, "are

you ready so soon?"



"Ready, your Serene Highness," replied the general.



Kutuzov swayed his head, as much as to say: "How is one man to

deal with it all?" and again listened to Denisov.



"I give my word of honor as a Wussian officer," said Denisov,

"that I can bweak Napoleon's line of communication!"



"What relation are you to Intendant General Kiril Andreevich

Denisov?" asked Kutuzov, interrupting him.



"He is my uncle, your Sewene Highness."



"Ah, we were friends," said Kutuzov cheerfully. "All right, all

right, friend, stay here at the staff and tomorrow we'll have a talk."



With a nod to Denisov he turned away and put out his hand for the

papers Konovnitsyn had brought him.



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"Would not your Serene Highness like to come inside?" said the

general on duty in a discontented voice, "the plans must be examined

and several papers have to be signed."



An adjutant came out and announced that everything was in

readiness within. But Kutuzov evidently did not wish to enter that

room till he was disengaged. He made a grimace...



"No, tell them to bring a small table out here, my dear boy. I'll

look at them here," said he. "Don't go away," he added, turning to

Prince Andrew, who remained in the porch and listened to the general's

report.



While this was being given, Prince Andrew heard the whisper of a

woman's voice and the rustle of a silk dress behind the door.

Several times on glancing that way he noticed behind that door a

plump, rosy, handsome woman in a pink dress with a lilac silk kerchief

on her head, holding a dish and evidently awaiting the entrance of the

commander in chief. Kutuzov's adjutant whispered to Prince Andrew

that this was the wife of the priest whose home it was, and that she

intended to offer his Serene Highness bread and salt. "Her husband has

welcomed his Serene Highness with the cross at the church, and she

intends to welcome him in the house.... She's very pretty," added

the adjutant with a smile. At those words Kutuzov looked round. He was

listening to the general's report--which consisted chiefly of a

criticism of the position at Tsarevo-Zaymishche--as he had listened to

Denisov, and seven years previously had listened to the discussion

at the Austerlitz council of war. He evidently listened only because

he had ears which, though there was a piece of tow in one of them,

could not help hearing; but it was evident that nothing the general

could say would surprise or even interest him, that he knew all that

would be said beforehand, and heard it all only because he had to,

as one has to listen to the chanting of a service of prayer. All

that Denisov had said was clever and to the point. What the general

was saying was even more clever and to the point, but it was evident

that Kutuzov despised knowledge and cleverness, and knew of

something else that would decide the matter--something independent

of cleverness and knowledge. Prince Andrew watched the commander

in chief's face attentively, and the only expression he could see

there was one of boredom, curiosity as to the meaning of the

feminine whispering behind the door, and a desire to observe

propriety. It was evident that Kutuzov despised cleverness and

learning and even the patriotic feeling shown by Denisov, but despised

them not because of his own intellect, feelings, or knowledge--he

did not try to display any of these--but because of something else. He

despised them because of his old age and experience of life. The

only instruction Kutuzov gave of his own accord during that report

referred to looting by the Russian troops. At the end of the report

the general put before him for signature a paper relating to the

recovery of payment from army commanders for green oats mown down by

the soldiers, when landowners lodged petitions for compensation.



After hearing the matter, Kutuzov smacked his lips together and

shook his head.

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"Into the stove... into the fire with it! I tell you once for all,

my dear fellow," said he, "into the fire with all such things! Let

them cut the crops and burn wood to their hearts' content. I don't

order it or allow it, but I don't exact compensation either. One can't

get on without it. 'When wood is chopped the chips will fly.'" He

looked at the paper again. "Oh, this German precision!" he muttered,

shaking his head.









CHAPTER XVI





"Well, that's all!" said Kutuzov as he signed the last of the

documents, and rising heavily and smoothing out the folds in his fat

white neck he moved toward the door with a more cheerful expression.



The priest's wife, flushing rosy red, caught up the dish she had

after all not managed to present at the right moment, though she had

so long been preparing for it, and with a low bow offered it to

Kutuzov.



He screwed up his eyes, smiled, lifted her chin with his hand, and

said:



"Ah, what a beauty! Thank you, sweetheart!"



He took some gold pieces from his trouser pocket and put them on the

dish for her. "Well, my dear, and how are we getting on?" he asked,

moving to the door of the room assigned to him. The priest's wife

smiled, and with dimples in her rosy cheeks followed him into the

room. The adjutant came out to the porch and asked Prince Andrew to

lunch with him. Half an hour later Prince Andrew was again called to

Kutuzov. He found him reclining in an armchair, still in the same

unbuttoned overcoat. He had in his hand a French book which he

closed as Prince Andrew entered, marking the place with a knife.

Prince Andrew saw by the cover that it was Les Chevaliers du Cygne

by Madame de Genlis.



"Well, sit down, sit down here. Let's have a talk," said Kutuzov.

"It's sad, very sad. But remember, my dear fellow, that I am a

father to you, a second father...."



Prince Andrew told Kutuzov all he knew of his father's death, and

what he had seen at Bald Hills when he passed through it.



"What... what they have brought us to!" Kutuzov suddenly cried in an

agitated voice, evidently picturing vividly to himself from Prince

Andrew's story the condition Russia was in. "But give me time, give me

time!" he said with a grim look, evidently not wishing to continue

this agitating conversation, and added: "I sent for you to keep you

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with me."



"I thank your Serene Highness, but I fear I am no longer fit for the

staff," replied Prince Andrew with a smile which Kutuzov noticed.



Kutuzov glanced inquiringly at him.



"But above all," added Prince Andrew, "I have grown used to my

regiment, am fond of the officers, and I fancy the men also like me. I

should be sorry to leave the regiment. If I decline the honor of being

with you, believe me..."



A shrewd, kindly, yet subtly derisive expression lit up Kutuzov's

podgy face. He cut Bolkonski short.



"I am sorry, for I need you. But you're right, you're right! It's

not here that men are needed. Advisers are always plentiful, but men

are not. The regiments would not be what they are if the would-be

advisers served there as you do. I remember you at Austerlitz.... I

remember, yes, I remember you with the standard!" said Kutuzov, and

a flush of pleasure suffused Prince Andrew's face at this

recollection.



Taking his hand and drawing him downwards, Kutuzov offered his cheek

to be kissed, and again Prince Andrew noticed tears in the old man's

eyes. Though Prince Andrew knew that Kutuzov's tears came easily,

and that he was particularly tender to and considerate of him from a

wish to show sympathy with his loss, yet this reminder of Austerlitz

was both pleasant and flattering to him.



"Go your way and God be with you. I know your path is the path of

honor!" He paused. "I missed you at Bucharest, but I needed someone to

send." And changing the subject, Kutuzov began to speak of the Turkish

war and the peace that had been concluded. "Yes, I have been much

blamed," he said, "both for that war and the peace... but everything

came at the right time. Tout vient a point a celui qui sait attendre.*

And there were as many advisers there as here..." he went on,

returning to the subject of "advisers" which evidently occupied him.

"Ah, those advisers!" said he. "If we had listened to them all we

should not have made peace with Turkey and should not have been

through with that war. Everything in haste, but more haste, less

speed. Kamenski would have been lost if he had not died. He stormed

fortresses with thirty thousand men. It is not difficult to capture

a fortress but it is difficult to win a campaign. For that, storming

and attacking but patience and time are wanted. Kamenski sent soldiers

to Rustchuk, but I only employed these two things and took more

fortresses than Kamenski and made them but eat horseflesh!" He swayed

his head. "And the French shall too, believe me," he went on,

growing warmer and beating his chest, "I'll make them eat horseflesh!"

And tears again dimmed his eyes.





*"Everything comes in time to him who knows how to wait."



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"But shan't we have to accept battle?" remarked Prince Andrew.



"We shall if everybody wants it; it can't be helped.... But

believe me, my dear boy, there is nothing stronger than those two:

patience and time, they will do it all. But the advisers n'entendent

pas de cette oreille, voila le mal.* Some want a thing--others

don't. What's one to do?" he asked, evidently expecting an answer.

"Well, what do you want us to do?" he repeated and his eye shone

with a deep, shrewd look. "I'll tell you what to do," he continued, as

Prince Andrew still did not reply: "I will tell you what to do, and

what I do. Dans le doute, mon cher," he paused, "abstiens-toi"*[2]--he

articulated the French proverb deliberately.





*"Don't see it that way, that's the trouble."



*[2] "When in doubt, my dear fellow, do nothing."





"Well, good-by, my dear fellow; remember that with all my heart I

share your sorrow, and that for you I am not a Serene Highness, nor

a prince, nor a commander in chief, but a father! If you want anything

come straight to me. Good-by, my dear boy."



Again he embraced and kissed Prince Andrew, but before the latter

had left the room Kutuzov gave a sigh of relief and went on with his

unfinished novel, Les Chevaliers du Cygne by Madame de Genlis.



Prince Andrew could not have explained how or why it was, but

after that interview with Kutuzov he went back to his regiment

reassured as to the general course of affairs and as to the man to

whom it had been entrusted. The more he realized the absence of all

personal motive in that old man--in whom there seemed to remain only

the habit of passions, and in place of an intellect (grouping events

and drawing conclusions) only the capacity calmly to contemplate the

course of events--the more reassured he was that everything would be

as it should. "He will not bring in any plan of his own. He will not

devise or undertake anything," thought Prince Andrew, "but he will

hear everything, remember everything, and put everything in its place.

He will not hinder anything useful nor allow anything harmful. He

understands that there is something stronger and more important than

his own will--the inevitable course of events, and he can see them and

grasp their significance, and seeing that significance can refrain

from meddling and renounce his personal wish directed to something

else. And above all," thought Prince Andrew, "one believes in him

because he's Russian, despite the novel by Genlis and the French

proverbs, and because his voice shook when he said: 'What they have

brought us to!' and had a sob in it when he said he would 'make them

eat horseflesh!'"



On such feelings, more or less dimly shared by all, the unanimity

and general approval were founded with which, despite court

influences, the popular choice of Kutuzov as commander in chief was

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received.









CHAPTER XVII





After the Emperor had left Moscow, life flowed on there in its usual

course, and its course was so very usual that it was difficult to

remember the recent days of patriotic elation and ardor, hard to

believe that Russia was really in danger and that the members of the

English Club were also sons of the Fatherland ready to sacrifice

everything for it. The one thing that recalled the patriotic fervor

everyone had displayed during the Emperor's stay was the call for

contributions of men and money, a necessity that as soon as the

promises had been made assumed a legal, official form and became

unavoidable.



With the enemy's approach to Moscow, the Moscovites' view of their

situation did not grow more serious but on the contrary became even

more frivolous, as always happens with people who see a great danger

approaching. At the approach of danger there are always two voices

that speak with equal power in the human soul: one very reasonably

tells a man to consider the nature of the danger and the means of

escaping it; the other, still more reasonably, says that it is too

depressing and painful to think of the danger, since it is not in

man's power to foresee everything and avert the general course of

events, and it is therefore better to disregard what is painful till

it comes, and to think about what is pleasant. In solitude a man

generally listens to the first voice, but in society to the second. So

it was now with the inhabitants of Moscow. It was long since people

had been as gay in Moscow as that year.



Rostopchin's broadsheets, headed by woodcuts of a drink shop, a

potman, and a Moscow burgher called Karpushka Chigirin, "who--having

been a militiaman and having had rather too much at the pub--heard

that Napoleon wished to come to Moscow, grew angry, abused the

French in very bad language, came out of the drink shop, and, under

the sign of the eagle, began to address the assembled people," were

read and discussed, together with the latest of Vasili Lvovich

Pushkin's bouts rimes.



In the corner room at the Club, members gathered to read these

broadsheets, and some liked the way Karpushka jeered at the French,

saying: "They will swell up with Russian cabbage, burst with our

buckwheat porridge, and choke themselves with cabbage soup. They are

all dwarfs and one peasant woman will toss three of them with a

hayfork." Others did not like that tone and said it was stupid and

vulgar. It was said that Rostopchin had expelled all Frenchmen and

even all foreigners from Moscow, and that there had been some spies

and agents of Napoleon among them; but this was told chiefly to

introduce Rostopchin's witty remark on that occasion. The foreigners

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were deported to Nizhni by boat, and Rostopchin had said to them in

French: "Rentrez en vousmemes; entrez dans la barque, et n'en faites

pas une barque de Charon."* There was talk of all the government

offices having been already removed from Moscow, and to this

Shinshin's witticism was added--that for that alone Moscow ought to be

grateful to Napoleon. It was said that Mamonov's regiment would cost

him eight hundred thousand rubles, and that Bezukhov had spent even

more on his, but that the best thing about Bezukhov's action was

that he himself was going to don a uniform and ride at the head of his

regiment without charging anything for the show.





*"Think it over; get into the barque, and take care not to make it a

barque of Charon."





"You don't spare anyone," said Julie Drubetskaya as she collected

and pressed together a bunch of raveled lint with her thin, beringed

fingers.



Julie was preparing to leave Moscow next day and was giving a

farewell soiree.



"Bezukhov est ridicule, but he is so kind and good-natured. What

pleasure is there to be so caustique?"



"A forfeit!" cried a young man in militia uniform whom Julie

called "mon chevalier," and who was going with her to Nizhni.



In Julie's set, as in many other circles in Moscow, it had been

agreed that they would speak nothing but Russian and that those who

made a slip and spoke French should pay fines to the Committee of

Voluntary Contributions.



"Another forfeit for a Gallicism," said a Russian writer who was

present. "'What pleasure is there to be' is not Russian!"



"You spare no one," continued Julie to the young man without heeding

the author's remark.



"For caustique--I am guilty and will pay, and I am prepared to pay

again for the pleasure of telling you the truth. For Gallicisms I

won't be responsible," she remarked, turning to the author: "I have

neither the money nor the time, like Prince Galitsyn, to engage a

master to teach me Russian!"



"Ah, here he is!" she added. "Quand on... No, no," she said to the

militia officer, "you won't catch me. Speak of the sun and you see its

rays!" and she smiled amiably at Pierre. "We were just talking of

you," she said with the facility in lying natural to a society

woman. "We were saying that your regiment would be sure to be better

than Mamonov's."



"Oh, don't talk to me of my regiment," replied Pierre, kissing his

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hostess' hand and taking a seat beside her. "I am so sick of it."



"You will, of course, command it yourself?" said Julie, directing

a sly, sarcastic glance toward the militia officer.



The latter in Pierre's presence had ceased to be caustic, and his

face expressed perplexity as to what Julie's smile might mean. In

spite of his absent-mindedness and good nature, Pierre's personality

immediately checked any attempt to ridicule him to his face.



"No," said Pierre, with a laughing glance at his big, stout body. "I

should make too good a target for the French, besides I am afraid I

should hardly be able to climb onto a horse."



Among those whom Julie's guests happened to choose to gossip about

were the Rostovs.



"I hear that their affairs are in a very bad way," said Julie.

"And he is so unreasonable, the count himself I mean. The

Razumovskis wanted to buy his house and his estate near Moscow, but it

drags on and on. He asks too much."



"No, I think the sale will come off in a few days," said someone.

"Though it is madness to buy anything in Moscow now."



"Why?" asked Julie. "You don't think Moscow is in danger?"



"Then why are you leaving?"



"I? What a question! I am going because... well, because everyone is

going: and besides--I am not Joan of Arc or an Amazon."



"Well, of course, of course! Let me have some more strips of linen."



"If he manages the business properly he will be able to pay off

all his debts," said the militia officer, speaking of Rostov.



"A kindly old man but not up to much. And why do they stay on so

long in Moscow? They meant to leave for the country long ago.

Natalie is quite well again now, isn't she?" Julie asked Pierre with a

knowing smile.



"They are waiting for their younger son," Pierre replied. "He joined

Obolenski's Cossacks and went to Belaya Tserkov where the regiment

is being formed. But now they have had him transferred to my

regiment and are expecting him every day. The count wanted to leave

long ago, but the countess won't on any account leave Moscow till

her son returns."



"I met them the day before yesterday at the Arkharovs'. Natalie

has recovered her looks and is brighter. She sang a song. How easily

some people get over everything!"



"Get over what?" inquired Pierre, looking displeased.

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Julie smiled.



"You know, Count, such knights as you are only found in Madame de

Souza's novels."



"What knights? What do you mean?" demanded Pierre, blushing.



"Oh, come, my dear count! C'est la fable de tout Moscou. Je vous

admire, ma parole d'honneur!"*





*"It is the talk of all Moscow. My word, I admire you!"





"Forfeit, forfeit!" cried the militia officer.



"All right, one can't talk--how tiresome!"



"What is 'the talk of all Moscow'?" Pierre asked angrily, rising

to his feet.



"Come now, Count, you know!"



"I don't know anything about it," said Pierre.



"I know you were friendly with Natalie, and so... but I was always

more friendly with Vera--that dear Vera."



"No, madame!" Pierre continued in a tone of displeasure, "I have not

taken on myself the role of Natalie Rostova's knight at all, and

have not been their house for nearly a month. But I cannot

understand the cruelty..."



"Qui s'excuse s'accuse,"* said Julie, smiling and waving the lint

triumphantly, and to have the last word she promptly changed the

subject. "Do you know what I heard today? Poor Mary Bolkonskaya

arrived in Moscow yesterday. Do you know that she has lost her

father?"





*"Who excuses himself, accuses himself."





"Really? Where is she? I should like very much to see her," said

Pierre.



"I spent the evening with her yesterday. She is going to their

estate near Moscow either today or tomorrow morning, with her nephew."



"Well, and how is she?" asked Pierre.



"She is well, but sad. But do you know who rescued her? It is

quite a romance. Nicholas Rostov! She was surrounded, and they

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wanted to kill her and had wounded some of her people. He rushed in

and saved her...."



"Another romance," said the militia officer. "Really, this general

flight has been arranged to get all the old maids married off. Catiche

is one and Princess Bolkonskaya another."



"Do you know, I really believe she is un petit peu amoureuse du

jeune homme."*





*"A little bit in love with the young man."





"Forfeit, forfeit, forfeit!"



"But how could one say that in Russian?"









CHAPTER XVIII





When Pierre returned home he was handed two of Rostopchin's

broadsheets that had been brought that day.



The first declared that the report that Count Rostopchin had

forbidden people to leave Moscow was false; on the contrary he was

glad that ladies and tradesmen's wives were leaving the city. "There

will be less panic and less gossip," ran the broadsheet "but I will

stake my life on it that that will not enter Moscow." These words

showed Pierre clearly for the first time that the French would enter

Moscow. The second broadsheet stated that our headquarters were at

Vyazma, that Count Wittgenstein had defeated the French, but that as

many of the inhabitants of Moscow wished to be armed, weapons were

ready for them at the arsenal: sabers, pistols, and muskets which

could be had at a low price. The tone of the proclamation was not as

jocose as in the former Chigirin talks. Pierre pondered over these

broadsheets. Evidently the terrible stormcloud he had desired with the

whole strength of his soul but which yet aroused involuntary horror in

him was drawing near.



"Shall I join the army and enter the service, or wait?" he asked

himself for the hundredth time. He took a pack of cards that lay on

the table and began to lay them out for a game of patience.



"If this patience comes out," he said to himself after shuffling the

cards, holding them in his hand, and lifting his head, "if it comes

out, it means... what does it mean?"



He had not decided what it should mean when he heard the voice of

the eldest princess at the door asking whether she might come in.

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"Then it will mean that I must go to the army," said Pierre to

himself. "Come in, come in!" he added to the princess.



Only the eldest princess, the one with the stony face and long

waist, was still living in Pierre's house. The two younger ones had

both married.



"Excuse my coming to you, cousin," she said in a reproachful and

agitated voice. "You know some decision must be come to. What is going

to happen? Everyone has left Moscow and the people are rioting. How is

it that we are staying on?"



"On the contrary, things seem satisfactory, ma cousine," said Pierre

in the bantering tone he habitually adopted toward her, always feeling

uncomfortable in the role of her benefactor.



"Satisfactory, indeed! Very satisfactory! Barbara Ivanovna told me

today how our troops are distinguishing themselves. It certainly

does them credit! And the people too are quite mutinous--they no

longer obey, even my maid has taken to being rude. At this rate they

will soon begin beating us. One can't walk in the streets. But,

above all, the French will be here any day now, so what are we waiting

for? I ask just one thing of you, cousin," she went on, "arrange for

me to be taken to Petersburg. Whatever I may be, I can't live under

Bonaparte's rule."



"Oh, come, ma cousine! Where do you get your information from? On

the contrary..."



"I won't submit to your Napoleon! Others may if they please.... If

you don't want to do this..."



"But I will, I'll give the order at once."



The princess was apparently vexed at not having anyone to be angry

with. Muttering to herself, she sat down on a chair.



"But you have been misinformed," said Pierre. "Everything is quiet

in the city and there is not the slightest danger. See! I've just been

reading..." He showed her the broadsheet. "Count Rostopchin writes

that he will stake his life on it that the enemy will not enter

Moscow."



"Oh, that count of yours!" said the princess malevolently. "He is

a hypocrite, a rascal who has himself roused the people to riot.

Didn't he write in those idiotic broadsheets that anyone, 'whoever

it might be, should be dragged to the lockup by his hair'? (How

silly!) 'And honor and glory to whoever captures him,' he says. This

is what his cajolery has brought us to! Barbara Ivanovna told me the

mob near killed her because she said something in French."



"Oh, but it's so... You take everything so to heart," said Pierre,

and began laying out his cards for patience.

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Although that patience did come out, Pierre did not join the army,

but remained in deserted Moscow ever in the same state of agitation,

irresolution, and alarm, yet at the same time joyfully expecting

something terrible.



Next day toward evening the princess set off, and Pierre's head

steward came to inform him that the money needed for the equipment

of his regiment could not be found without selling one of the estates.

In general the head steward made out to Pierre that his project of

raising a regiment would ruin him. Pierre listened to him, scarcely

able to repress a smile.



"Well then, sell it," said he. "What's to be done? I can't draw back

now!"



The worse everything became, especially his own affairs, the

better was Pierre pleased and the more evident was it that the

catastrophe he expected was approaching. Hardly anyone he knew was

left in town. Julie had gone, and so had Princess Mary. Of his

intimate friends only the Rostovs remained, but he did not go to see

them.



To distract his thoughts he drove that day to the village of

Vorontsovo to see the great balloon Leppich was constructing to

destroy the foe, and a trial balloon that was to go up next day. The

balloon was not yet ready, but Pierre learned that it was being

constructed by the Emperor's desire. The Emperor had written to

Count Rostopchin as follows:





As soon as Leppich is ready, get together a crew of reliable and

intelligent men for his car and send a courier to General Kutuzov to

let him know. I have informed him of the matter.



Please impress upon Leppich to be very careful where he descends for

the first time, that he may not make a mistake and fall into the

enemy's hands. It is essential for him to combine his movements with

those of the commander in chief.





On his way home from Vorontsovo, as he was passing the Bolotnoe

Place Pierre, seeing a large crowd round the Lobnoe Place, stopped and

got out of his trap. A French cook accused of being a spy was being

flogged. The flogging was only just over, and the executioner was

releasing from the flogging bench a stout man with red whiskers, in

blue stockings and a green jacket, who was moaning piteously.

Another criminal, thin and pale, stood near. Judging by their faces

they were both Frenchmen. With a frightened and suffering look

resembling that on the thin Frenchman's face, Pierre pushed his way in

through the crowd.



"What is it? Who is it? What is it for?" he kept asking.



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But the attention of the crowd--officials, burghers, shopkeepers,

peasants, and women in cloaks and in pelisses--was so eagerly centered

on what was passing in Lobnoe Place that no one answered him. The

stout man rose, frowned, shrugged his shoulders, and evidently

trying to appear firm began to pull on his jacket without looking

about him, but suddenly his lips trembled and he began to cry, in

the way full-blooded grown-up men cry, though angry with himself for

doing so. In the crowd people began talking loudly, to stifle their

feelings of pity as it seemed to Pierre.



"He's cook to some prince."



"Eh, mounseer, Russian sauce seems to be sour to a Frenchman... sets

his teeth on edge!" said a wrinkled clerk who was standing behind

Pierre, when the Frenchman began to cry.



The clerk glanced round, evidently hoping that his joke would be

appreciated. Some people began to laugh, others continued to watch

in dismay the executioner who was undressing the other man.



Pierre choked, his face puckered, and he turned hastily away, went

back to his trap muttering something to himself as he went, and took

his seat. As they drove along he shuddered and exclaimed several times

so audibly that the coachman asked him:



"What is your pleasure?"



"Where are you going?" shouted Pierre to the man, who was driving to

Lubyanka Street.



"To the Governor's, as you ordered," answered the coachman.



"Fool! Idiot!" shouted Pierre, abusing his coachman--a thing he

rarely did. "Home, I told you! And drive faster, blockhead!" "I must

get away this very day," he murmured to himself.



At the sight of the tortured Frenchman and the crowd surrounding the

Lobnoe Place, Pierre had so definitely made up his mind that he

could no longer remain in Moscow and would leave for the army that

very day that it seemed to him that either he had told the coachman

this or that the man ought to have known it for himself.



On reaching home Pierre gave orders to Evstafey--his head coachman

who knew everything, could do anything, and was known to all Moscow-

that he would leave that night for the army at Mozhaysk, and that

his saddle horses should be sent there. This could not all be arranged

that day, so on Evstafey's representation Pierre had to put off his

departure till next day to allow time for the relay horses to be

sent on in advance.



On the twenty-fourth the weather cleared up after a spell of rain,

and after dinner Pierre left Moscow. When changing horses that night

in Perkhushkovo, he learned that there had been a great battle that

evening. (This was the battle of Shevardino.) He was told that there

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in Perkhushkovo the earth trembled from the firing, but nobody could

answer his questions as to who had won. At dawn next day Pierre was

approaching Mozhaysk.



Every house in Mozhaysk had soldiers quartered in it, and at the

hostel where Pierre was met by his groom and coachman there was no

room to be had. It was full of officers.



Everywhere in Mozhaysk and beyond it, troops were stationed or on

the march. Cossacks, foot and horse soldiers, wagons, caissons, and

cannon were everywhere. Pierre pushed forward as fast as he could, and

the farther he left Moscow behind and the deeper he plunged into

that sea of troops the more was he overcome by restless agitation

and a new and joyful feeling he had not experienced before. It was a

feeling akin to what he had felt at the Sloboda Palace during the

Emperor's visit--a sense of the necessity of undertaking something and

sacrificing something. He now experienced a glad consciousness that

everything that constitutes men's happiness--the comforts of life,

wealth, even life itself--is rubbish it is pleasant to throw away,

compared with something... With what? Pierre could not say, and he did

not try to determine for whom and for what he felt such particular

delight in sacrificing everything. He was not occupied with the

question of what to sacrifice for; the fact of sacrificing in itself

afforded him a new and joyous sensation.









CHAPTER XIX





On the twenty-fourth of August the battle of the Shevardino

Redoubt was fought, on the twenty-fifth not a shot was fired by either

side, and on the twenty-sixth the battle of Borodino itself took

place.



Why and how were the battles of Shevardino and Borodino given and

accepted? Why was the battle of Borodino fought? There was not the

least sense in it for either the French or the Russians. Its immediate

result for the Russians was, and was bound to be, that we were brought

nearer to the destruction of Moscow--which we feared more than

anything in the world; and for the French its immediate result was

that they were brought nearer to the destruction of their whole

army--which they feared more than anything in the world. What the

result must be was quite obvious, and yet Napoleon offered and Kutuzov

accepted that battle.



If the commanders had been guided by reason, it would seem that it

must have been obvious to Napoleon that by advancing thirteen

hundred miles and giving battle with a probability of losing a quarter

of his army, he was advancing to certain destruction, and it must have

been equally clear to Kutuzov that by accepting battle and risking the

loss of a quarter of his army he would certainly lose Moscow. For

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Kutuzov this was mathematically clear, as it is that if when playing

draughts I have one man less and go on exchanging, I shall certainly

lose, and therefore should not exchange. When my opponent has

sixteen men and I have fourteen, I am only one eighth weaker than

he, but when I have exchanged thirteen more men he will be three times

as strong as I am.



Before the battle of Borodino our strength in proportion to the

French was about as five to six, but after that battle it was little

more than one to two: previously we had a hundred thousand against a

hundred and twenty thousand; afterwards little more than fifty

thousand against a hundred thousand. Yet the shrewd and experienced

Kutuzov accepted the battle, while Napoleon, who was said to be a

commander of genius, gave it, losing a quarter of his army and

lengthening his lines of communication still more. If it is said

that he expected to end the campaign by occupying Moscow as he had

ended a previous campaign by occupying Vienna, there is much

evidence to the contrary. Napoleon's historians themselves tell us

that from Smolensk onwards he wished to stop, knew the danger of his

extended position, and knew that the occupation of Moscow would not be

the end of the campaign, for he had seen at Smolensk the state in

which Russian towns were left to him, and had not received a single

reply to his repeated announcements of his wish to negotiate.



In giving and accepting battle at Borodino, Kutuzov acted

involuntarily and irrationally. But later on, to fit what had

occurred, the historians provided cunningly devised evidence of the

foresight and genius the generals who, of all the blind tools of

history were the most enslaved and involuntary.



The ancients have left us model heroic poems in which the heroes

furnish the whole interest of the story, and we are still unable to

accustom ourselves to the fact that for our epoch histories of that

kind are meaningless.



On the other question, how the battle of Borodino and the

preceding battle of Shevardino were fought, there also exists a

definite and well-known, but quite false, conception. All the

historians describe the affair as follows:



The Russian army, they say, in its retreat from Smolensk sought

out for itself the best position for a general engagement and found

such a position at Borodino.



The Russians, they say, fortified this position in advance on the

left of the highroad (from Moscow to Smolensk) and almost at a right

angle to it, from Borodino to Utitsa, at the very place where the

battle was fought.



In front of this position, they say, a fortified outpost was set

up on the Shevardino mound to observe the enemy. On the twenty-fourth,

we are told, Napoleon attacked this advanced post and took it, and, on

the twenty-sixth, attacked the whole Russian army, which was in

position on the field of Borodino.

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So the histories say, and it is all quite wrong, as anyone who cares

to look into the matter can easily convince himself.



The Russians did not seek out the best position but, on the

contrary, during the retreat passed many positions better than

Borodino. They did not stop at any one of these positions because

Kutuzov did not wish to occupy a position he had not himself chosen,

because the popular demand for a battle had not yet expressed itself

strongly enough, and because Miloradovich had not yet arrived with the

militia, and for many other reasons. The fact is that other

positions they had passed were stronger, and that the position at

Borodino (the one where the battle was fought), far from being strong,

was no more a position than any other spot one might find in the

Russian Empire by sticking a pin into the map at hazard.



Not only did the Russians not fortify the position on the field of

Borodino to the left of, and at a right angle to, the highroad (that

is, the position on which the battle took place), but never till the

twenty-fifth of August, 1812, did they think that a battle might be

fought there. This was shown first by the fact that there were no

entrenchments there by the twenty fifth and that those begun on the

twenty-fifth and twenty-sixth were not completed, and secondly, by the

position of the Shevardino Redoubt. That redoubt was quite senseless

in front of the position where the battle was accepted. Why was it

more strongly fortified than any other post? And why were all

efforts exhausted and six thousand men sacrificed to defend it till

late at night on the twenty-fourth? A Cossack patrol would have

sufficed to observe the enemy. Thirdly, as proof that the position

on which the battle was fought had not been foreseen and that the

Shevardino Redoubt was not an advanced post of that position, we

have the fact that up to the twenty-fifth, Barclay de Tolly and

Bagration were convinced that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left

flank of the position, and that Kutuzov himself in his report, written

in hot haste after the battle, speaks of the Shevardino Redoubt as the

left flank of the position. It was much later, when reports on the

battle of Borodino were written at leisure, that the incorrect and

extraordinary statement was invented (probably to justify the mistakes

of a commander in chief who had to be represented as infallible)

that the Shevardino Redoubt was an advanced post--whereas in reality

it was simply a fortified point on the left flank--and that the battle

of Borodino was fought by us on an entrenched position previously

selected, where as it was fought on a quite unexpected spot which

was almost unentrenched.



The case was evidently this: a position was selected along the river

Kolocha--which crosses the highroad not at a right angle but at an

acute angle--so that the left flank was at Shevardino, the right flank

near the village of Novoe, and the center at Borodino at the

confluence of the rivers Kolocha and Voyna.



To anyone who looks at the field of Borodino without thinking of how

the battle was actually fought, this position, protected by the

river Kolocha, presents itself as obvious for an army whose object was

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to prevent an enemy from advancing along the Smolensk road to Moscow.



Napoleon, riding to Valuevo on the twenty-fourth, did not see (as

the history books say he did) the position of the Russians from Utitsa

to Borodino (he could not have seen that position because it did not

exist), nor did he see an advanced post of the Russian army, but while

pursuing the Russian rearguard he came upon the left flank of the

Russian position--at the Shevardino Redoubt--and unexpectedly for

the Russians moved his army across the Kolocha. And the Russians,

not having time to begin a general engagement, withdrew their left

wing from the position they had intended to occupy and took up a new

position which had not been foreseen and was not fortified. By

crossing to the other side of the Kolocha to the left of the highroad,

Napoleon shifted the whole forthcoming battle from right to left

(looking from the Russian side) and transferred it to the plain

between Utitsa, Semenovsk, and Borodino--a plain no more

advantageous as a position than any other plain in Russia--and there

the whole battle of the twenty-sixth of August took place.



Had Napoleon not ridden out on the evening of the twenty-fourth to

the Kolocha, and had he not then ordered an immediate attack on the

redoubt but had begun the attack next morning, no one would have

doubted that the Shevardino Redoubt was the left flank of our and

the battle would have taken place where we expected it. In that case

we should probably have defended the Shevardino Redoubt--our left

flank--still more obstinately. We should have attacked Napoleon in the

center or on the right, and the engagement would have taken place on

the twenty-fifth, in the position we intended and had fortified. But

as the attack on our left flank took place in the evening after the

retreat of our rear guard (that is, immediately after the fight at

Gridneva), and as the Russian commanders did not wish, or were not

in time, to begin a general engagement then on the evening of the

twenty-fourth, the first and chief action of the battle of Borodino

was already lost on the twenty-fourth, and obviously led to the loss

of the one fought on the twenty-sixth.



After the loss of the Shevardino Redoubt, we found ourselves on

the morning of the twenty-fifth without a position for our left flank,

and were forced to bend it back and hastily entrench it where it

chanced to be.



Not only was the Russian army on the twenty-sixth defended by

weak, unfinished entrenchments, but the disadvantage of that

position was increased by the fact that the Russian commanders--not

having fully realized what had happened, namely the loss of our

position on the left flank and the shifting of the whole field of

the forthcoming battle from right to left--maintained their extended

position from the village of Novoe to Utitsa, and consequently had

to move their forces from right to left during the battle. So it

happened that throughout the whole battle the Russians opposed the

entire French army launched against our left flank with but half as

many men. (Poniatowski's action against Utitsa, and Uvarov's on the

right flank against the French, were actions distinct from the main

course of the battle.) So the battle of Borodino did not take place at

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all as (in an effort to conceal our commanders' mistakes even at the

cost of diminishing the glory due to the Russian army and people) it

has been described. The battle of Borodino was not fought on a

chosen and entrenched position with forces only slightly weaker than

those of the enemy, but, as a result of the loss of the Shevardino

Redoubt, the Russians fought the battle of Borodino on an open and

almost unentrenched position, with forces only half as numerous as the

French; that is to say, under conditions in which it was not merely

unthinkable to fight for ten hours and secure an indecisive result,

but unthinkable to keep an army even from complete disintegration

and flight.









CHAPTER XX





On the morning of the twenty-fifth Pierre was leaving Mozhaysk. At

the descent of the high steep hill, down which a winding road led

out of the town past the cathedral on the right, where a service was

being held and the bells were ringing, Pierre got out of his vehicle

and proceeded on foot. Behind him a cavalry regiment was coming down

the hill preceded by its singers. Coming up toward him was a train

of carts carrying men who had been wounded in the engagement the day

before. The peasant drivers, shouting and lashing their horses, kept

crossing from side to side. The carts, in each of which three or

four wounded soldiers were lying or sitting, jolted over the stones

that had been thrown on the steep incline to make it something like

a road. The wounded, bandaged with rags, with pale cheeks,

compressed lips, and knitted brows, held on to the sides of the

carts as they were jolted against one another. Almost all of them

stared with naive, childlike curiosity at Pierre's white hat and green

swallow-tail coat.



Pierre's coachman shouted angrily at the convoy of wounded to keep

to one side of the road. The cavalry regiment, as it descended the

hill with its singers, surrounded Pierre's carriage and blocked the

road. Pierre stopped, being pressed against the side of the cutting in

which the road ran. The sunshine from behind the hill did not

penetrate into the cutting and there it was cold and damp, but above

Pierre's head was the bright August sunshine and the bells sounded

merrily. One of the carts with wounded stopped by the side of the road

close to Pierre. The driver in his bast shoes ran panting up to it,

placed a stone under one of its tireless hind wheels, and began

arranging the breech-band on his little horse.



One of the wounded, an old soldier with a bandaged arm who was

following the cart on foot, caught hold of it with his sound hand

and turned to look at Pierre.



"I say, fellow countryman! Will they set us down here or take us

on to Moscow?" he asked.

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Pierre was so deep in thought that he did not hear the question.

He was looking now at the cavalry regiment that had met the convoy

of wounded, now at the cart by which he was standing, in which two

wounded men were sitting and one was lying. One of those sitting up in

the cart had probably been wounded in the cheek. His whole head was

wrapped in rags and one cheek was swollen to the size of a baby's

head. His nose and mouth were twisted to one side. This soldier was

looking at the cathedral and crossing himself. Another, a young lad, a

fair-haired recruit as white as though there was no blood in his

thin face, looked at Pierre kindly, with a fixed smile. The third

lay prone so that his face was not visible. The cavalry singers were

passing close by:



Ah lost, quite lost... is my head so keen,

Living in a foreign land.



they sang their soldiers' dance song.



As if responding to them but with a different sort of merriment, the

metallic sound of the bells reverberated high above and the hot rays

of the sun bathed the top of the opposite slope with yet another

sort of merriment. But beneath the slope, by the cart with the wounded

near the panting little nag where Pierre stood, it was damp, somber,

and sad.



The soldier with the swollen cheek looked angrily at the cavalry

singers.



"Oh, the coxcombs!" he muttered reproachfully.



"It's not the soldiers only, but I've seen peasants today, too....

The peasants--even they have to go," said the soldier behind the cart,

addressing Pierre with a sad smile. "No distinctions made nowadays....

They want the whole nation to fall on them--in a word, it's Moscow!

They want to make an end of it."



In spite of the obscurity of the soldier's words Pierre understood

what he wanted to say and nodded approval.



The road was clear again; Pierre descended the hill and drove on.



He kept looking to either side of the road for familiar faces, but

only saw everywhere the unfamiliar faces of various military men of

different branches of the service, who all looked with astonishment at

his white hat and green tail coat.



Having gone nearly three miles he at last met an acquaintance and

eagerly addressed him. This was one of the head army doctors. He was

driving toward Pierre in a covered gig, sitting beside a young

surgeon, and on recognizing Pierre he told the Cossack who occupied

the driver's seat to pull up.



"Count! Your excellency, how come you to be here?" asked the doctor.

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"Well, you know, I wanted to see..."



"Yes, yes, there will be something to see...."



Pierre got out and talked to the doctor, explaining his intention of

taking part in a battle.



The doctor advised him to apply direct to Kutuzov.



"Why should you be God knows where out of sight, during the battle?"

he said, exchanging glances with his young companion. "Anyhow his

Serene Highness knows you and will receive you graciously. That's what

you must do."



The doctor seemed tired and in a hurry.



"You think so?... Ah, I also wanted to ask you where our position is

exactly?" said Pierre.



"The position?" repeated the doctor. "Well, that's not my line.

Drive past Tatarinova, a lot of digging is going on there. Go up the

hillock and you'll see."



"Can one see from there?... If you would..."



But the doctor interrupted him and moved toward his gig.



"I would go with you but on my honor I'm up to here"--and he pointed

to his throat. "I'm galloping to the commander of the corps. How do

matters stand?... You know, Count, there'll be a battle tomorrow.

Out of an army of a hundred thousand we must expect at least twenty

thousand wounded, and we haven't stretchers, or bunks, or dressers, or

doctors enough for six thousand. We have ten thousand carts, but we

need other things as well--we must manage as best we can!"



The strange thought that of the thousands of men, young and old, who

had stared with merry surprise at his hat (perhaps the very men he had

noticed), twenty thousand were inevitably doomed to wounds and death

amazed Pierre.



"They may die tomorrow; why are they thinking of anything but

death?" And by some latent sequence of thought the descent of the

Mozhaysk hill, the carts with the wounded, the ringing bells, the

slanting rays of the sun, and the songs of the cavalrymen vividly

recurred to his mind.



"The cavalry ride to battle and meet the wounded and do not for a

moment think of what awaits them, but pass by, winking at the wounded.

Yet from among these men twenty thousand are doomed to die, and they

wonder at my hat! Strange!" thought Pierre, continuing his way to

Tatarinova.



In front of a landowner's house to the left of the road stood

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carriages, wagons, and crowds of orderlies and sentinels. The

commander in chief was putting up there, but just when Pierre

arrived he was not in and hardly any of the staff were there--they had

gone to the church service. Pierre drove on toward Gorki.



When he had ascended the hill and reached the little village street,

he saw for the first time peasant militiamen in their white shirts and

with crosses on their caps, who, talking and laughing loudly, animated

and perspiring, were at work on a huge knoll overgrown with grass to

the right of the road.



Some of them were digging, others were wheeling barrowloads of earth

along planks, while others stood about doing nothing.



Two officers were standing on the knoll, directing the men. On

seeing these peasants, who were evidently still amused by the

novelty of their position as soldiers, Pierre once more thought of the

wounded men at Mozhaysk and understood what the soldier had meant when

he said: "They want the whole nation to fall on them." The sight of

these bearded peasants at work on the battlefield, with their queer,

clumsy boots and perspiring necks, and their shirts opening from the

left toward the middle, unfastened, exposing their sunburned

collarbones, impressed Pierre more strongly with the solemnity and

importance of the moment than anything he had yet seen or heard.









CHAPTER XXI





Pierre stepped out of his carriage and, passing the toiling

militiamen, ascended the knoll from which, according to the doctor,

the battlefield could be seen.



It was about eleven o'clock. The sun shone somewhat to the left

and behind him and brightly lit up the enormous panorama which, rising

like an amphitheater, extended before him in the clear rarefied

atmosphere.



From above on the left, bisecting that amphitheater, wound the

Smolensk highroad, passing through a village with a white church

some five hundred paces in front of the knoll and below it. This was

Borodino. Below the village the road crossed the river by a bridge

and, winding down and up, rose higher and higher to the village of

Valuevo visible about four miles away, where Napoleon was then

stationed. Beyond Valuevo the road disappeared into a yellowing forest

on the horizon. Far in the distance in that birch and fir forest to

the right of the road, the cross and belfry of the Kolocha Monastery

gleamed in the sun. Here and there over the whole of that blue

expanse, to right and left of the forest and the road, smoking

campfires could be seen and indefinite masses of troops--ours and

the enemy's. The ground to the right--along the course of the

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Kolocha and Moskva rivers--was broken and hilly. Between the hollows

the villages of Bezubova and Zakharino showed in the distance. On

the left the ground was more level; there were fields of grain, and

the smoking ruins of Semenovsk, which had been burned down, could be

seen.



All that Pierre saw was so indefinite that neither the left nor

the right side of the field fully satisfied his expectations.

Nowhere could he see the battlefield he had expected to find, but only

fields, meadows, troops, woods, the smoke of campfires, villages,

mounds, and streams; and try as he would he could descry no military

"position" in this place which teemed with life, nor could he even

distinguish our troops from the enemy's.



"I must ask someone who knows," he thought, and addressed an officer

who was looking with curiosity at his huge unmilitary figure.



"May I ask you," said Pierre, "what village that is in front?"



"Burdino, isn't it?" said the officer, turning to his companion.



"Borodino," the other corrected him.



The officer, evidently glad of an opportunity for a talk, moved up

to Pierre.



"Are those our men there?" Pierre inquired.



"Yes, and there, further on, are the French," said the officer.

"There they are, there... you can see them."



"Where? Where?" asked Pierre.



"One can see them with the naked eye... Why, there!"



The officer pointed with his hand to the smoke visible on the left

beyond the river, and the same stern and serious expression that

Pierre had noticed on many of the faces he had met came into his face.



"Ah, those are the French! And over there?..." Pierre pointed to a

knoll on the left, near which some troops could be seen.



"Those are ours."



"Ah, ours! And there?..." Pierre pointed to another knoll in the

distance with a big tree on it, near a village that lay in a hollow

where also some campfires were smoking and something black was

visible.



"That's his again," said the officer. (It was the Shevardino

Redoubt.) "It was ours yesterday, but now it is his."



"Then how about our position?"



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"Our position?" replied the officer with a smile of satisfaction. "I

can tell you quite clearly, because I constructed nearly all our

entrenchments. There, you see? There's our center, at Borodino, just

there," and he pointed to the village in front of them with the

white church. "That's where one crosses the Kolocha. You see down

there where the rows of hay are lying in the hollow, there's the

bridge. That's our center. Our right flank is over there"--he

pointed sharply to the right, far away in the broken ground--"That's

where the Moskva River is, and we have thrown up three redoubts there,

very strong ones. The left flank..." here the officer paused. "Well,

you see, that's difficult to explain.... Yesterday our left flank

was there at Shevardino, you see, where the oak is, but now we have

withdrawn our left wing--now it is over there, do you see that village

and the smoke? That's Semenovsk, yes, there," he pointed to

Raevski's knoll. "But the battle will hardly be there. His having

moved his troops there is only a ruse; he will probably pass round

to the right of the Moskva. But wherever it may be, many a man will be

missing tomorrow!" he remarked.



An elderly sergeant who had approached the officer while he was

giving these explanations had waited in silence for him to finish

speaking, but at this point, evidently not liking the officer's

remark, interrupted him.



"Gabions must be sent for," said he sternly.



The officer appeared abashed, as though he understood that one might

think of how many men would be missing tomorrow but ought not to speak

to speak of it.



"Well, send number three company again," the officer replied

hurriedly.



"And you, are you one of the doctors?"



"No, I've come on my own," answered Pierre, and he went down the

hill again, passing the militiamen.



"Oh, those damned fellows!" muttered the officer who followed him,

holding his nose as he ran past the men at work.



"There they are... bringing her, coming... There they are... They'll

be here in a minute..." voices were suddenly heard saying; and

officers, soldiers, and militiamen began running forward along the

road.



A church procession was coming up the hill from Borodino. First

along the dusty road came the infantry in ranks, bareheaded and with

arms reversed. From behind them came the sound of church singing.



Soldiers and militiamen ran bareheaded past Pierre toward the

procession.



"They are bringing her, our Protectress!... The Iberian Mother of

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God!" someone cried.



"The Smolensk Mother of God," another corrected him.



The militiamen, both those who had been in the village and those who

had been at work on the battery, threw down their spades and ran to

meet the church procession. Following the battalion that marched along

the dusty road came priests in their vestments--one little old man

in a hood with attendants and singers. Behind them soldiers and

officers bore a large, dark-faced icon with an embossed metal cover.

This was the icon that had been brought from and had since accompanied

the army. Behind, before, and on both sides, crowds of militiamen with

bared heads walked, ran, and bowed to the ground.



At the summit of the hill they stopped with the icon; the men who

had been holding it up by the linen bands attached to it were relieved

by others, the chanters relit their censers, and service began. The

hot rays of the sun beat down vertically and a fresh soft wind

played with the hair of the bared heads and with the ribbons

decorating the icon. The singing did not sound loud under the open

sky. An immense crowd of bareheaded officers, soldiers, and militiamen

surrounded the icon. Behind the priest and a chanter stood the

notabilities on a spot reserved for them. A bald general with

general with a St. George's Cross on his neck stood just behind the

priest's back, and without crossing himself (he was evidently a

German) patiently awaited the end of the service, which he

considered it necessary to hear to the end, probably to arouse the

patriotism of the Russian people. Another general stood in a martial

pose, crossing himself by shaking his hand in front of his chest while

looking about him. Standing among the crowd of peasants, Pierre

recognized several acquaintances among these notables, but did not

look at them--his whole attention was absorbed in watching the serious

expression on the faces of the crowd of soldiers and militiamen who

were all gazing eagerly at the icon. As soon as the tired chanters,

who were singing the service for the twentieth time that day, began

lazily and mechanically to sing: "Save from calamity Thy servants, O

Mother of God," and the priest and deacon chimed in: "For to Thee

under God we all flee as to an inviolable bulwark and protection,"

there again kindled in all those faces the same expression of

consciousness of the solemnity of the impending moment that Pierre had

seen on the faces at the foot of the hill at Mozhaysk and

momentarily on many and many faces he had met that morning; and

heads were bowed more frequently and hair tossed back, and sighs and

the sound men made as they crossed themselves were heard.



The crowd round the icon suddenly parted and pressed against Pierre.

Someone, a very important personage judging by the haste with which

way was made for him, was approaching the icon.



It was Kutuzov, who had been riding round the position and on his

way back to Tatarinova had stopped where the service was being held.

Pierre recognized him at once by his peculiar figure, which

distinguished him from everybody else.



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With a long overcoat on his his exceedingly stout,

round-shouldered body, with uncovered white head and puffy face

showing the white ball of the eye he had lost, Kutuzov walked with

plunging, swaying gait into the crowd and stopped behind the priest.

He crossed himself with an accustomed movement, bent till he touched

the ground with his hand, and bowed his white head with a deep sigh.

Behind Kutuzov was Bennigsen and the suite. Despite the presence of

the commander in chief, who attracted the attention of all the

superior officers, the militiamen and soldiers continued their prayers

without looking at him.



When the service was over, Kutuzov stepped up to the icon, sank

heavily to his knees, bowed to the ground, and for a long time tried

vainly to rise, but could not do so on account of his weakness and

weight. His white head twitched with the effort. At last he rose,

kissed the icon as a child does with naively pouting lips, and again

bowed till he touched the ground with his hand. The other generals

followed his example, then the officers, and after them with excited

faces, pressing on one another, crowding, panting, and pushing,

scrambled the soldiers and militiamen.









CHAPTER XXII





Staggering amid the crush, Pierre looked about him.



"Count Peter Kirilovich! How did you get here?" said a voice.



Pierre looked round. Boris Drubetskoy, brushing his knees with his

hand (he had probably soiled them when he, too, had knelt before the

icon), came up to him smiling. Boris was elegantly dressed, with a

slightly martial touch appropriate to a campaign. He wore a long

coat and like Kutuzov had a whip slung across his shoulder.



Meanwhile Kutuzov had reached the village and seated himself in

the shade of the nearest house, on a bench which one Cossack had run

to fetch and another had hastily covered with a rug. An immense and

brilliant suite surrounded him.



The icon was carried further, accompanied by the throng. Pierre

stopped some thirty paces from Kutuzov, talking to Boris.



He explained his wish to be present at the battle and to see the

position.



"This is what you must do," said Boris. "I will do the honors of the

camp to you. You will see everything best from where Count Bennigsen

will be. I am in attendance on him, you know; I'll mention it to

him. But if you want to ride round the position, come along with us.

We are just going to the left flank. Then when we get back, do spend

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the night with me and we'll arrange a game of cards. Of course you

know Dmitri Sergeevich? Those are his quarters," and he pointed to the

third house in the village of Gorki.



"But I should like to see the right flank. They say it's very

strong," said Pierre. "I should like to start from the Moskva River

and ride round the whole position."



"Well, you can do that later, but the chief thing is the left

flank."



"Yes, yes. But where is Prince Bolkonski's regiment? Can you point

it out to me?"



"Prince Andrew's? We shall pass it and I'll take you to him."



"What about the left flank?" asked Pierre



"To tell you the truth, between ourselves, God only knows what state

our left flank is in," said Boris confidentially lowering his voice.

"It is not at all what Count Bennigsen intended. He meant to fortify

that knoll quite differently, but..." Boris shrugged his shoulders,

"his Serene Highness would not have it, or someone persuaded him.

You see..." but Boris did not finish, for at that moment Kaysarov,

Kutuzov's adjutant, came up to Pierre. "Ah, Kaysarov!" said Boris,

addressing him with an unembarrassed smile, "I was just trying to

explain our position to the count. It is amazing how his Serene

Highness could so the intentions of the French!"



"You mean the left flank?" asked Kaysarov.



"Yes, exactly; the left flank is now extremely strong."



Though Kutuzov had dismissed all unnecessary men from the staff,

Boris had contrived to remain at headquarters after the changes. He

had established himself with Count Bennigsen, who, like all on whom

Boris had been in attendance, considered young Prince Drubetskoy an

invaluable man.



In the higher command there were two sharply defined parties:

Kutuzov's party and that of Bennigsen, the chief of staff. Boris

belonged to the latter and no one else, while showing servile

respect to Kutuzov, could so create an impression that the old

fellow was not much good and that Bennigsen managed everything. Now

the decisive moment of battle had come when Kutuzov would be destroyed

and the power pass to Bennigsen, or even if Kutuzov won the battle

it would be felt that everything was done by Bennigsen. In any case

many great rewards would have to be given for tomorrow's action, and

new men would come to the front. So Boris was full of nervous vivacity

all day.



After Kaysarov, others whom Pierre knew came up to him, and he had

not time to reply to all the questions about Moscow that were showered

upon him, or to listen to all that was told him. The faces all

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expressed animation and apprehension, but it seemed to Pierre that the

cause of the excitement shown in some of these faces lay chiefly in

questions of personal success; his mind, however, was occupied by

the different expression he saw on other faces--an expression that

spoke not of personal matters but of the universal questions of life

and death. Kutuzov noticed Pierre's figure and the group gathered

round him.



"Call him to me," said Kutuzov.



An adjutant told Pierre of his Serene Highness' wish, and Pierre

went toward Kutuzov's bench. But a militiaman got there before him. It

was Dolokhov.



"How did that fellow get here?" asked Pierre.



"He's a creature that wriggles in anywhere!" was the answer. "He has

been degraded, you know. Now he wants to bob up again. He's been

proposing some scheme or other and has crawled into the enemy's picket

line at night.... He's a brave fellow."



Pierre took off his hat and bowed respectfully to Kutuzov.



"I concluded that if I reported to your Serene Highness you might

send me away or say that you knew what I was reporting, but then I

shouldn't lose anything..." Dolokhov was saying.



"Yes, yes."



"But if I were right, I should be rendering a service to my

Fatherland for which I am ready to die."



"Yes, yes."



"And should your Serene Highness require a man who will not spare

his skin, please think of me.... Perhaps I may prove useful to your

Serene Highness."



"Yes... Yes..." Kutuzov repeated, his laughing eye narrowing more

and more as he looked at Pierre.



Just then Boris, with his courtierlike adroitness, stepped up to

Pierre's side near Kutuzov and in a most natural manner, without

raising his voice, said to Pierre, as though continuing an interrupted

conversation:



"The militia have put on clean white shirts to be ready to die. What

heroism, Count!"



Boris evidently said this to Pierre in order to be overheard by

his Serene Highness. He knew Kutuzov's attention would be caught by

those words, and so it was.



"What are you saying about the militia?" he asked Boris.

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"Preparing for tomorrow, your Serene Highness--for death--they

have put on clean shirts."



"Ah... a wonderful, a matchless people!" said Kutuzov; and he closed

his eyes and swayed his head. "A matchless people!" he repeated with a

sigh.



"So you want to smell gunpowder?" he said to Pierre. "Yes, it's a

pleasant smell. I have the honor to be one of your wife's adorers.

Is she well? My quarters are at your service."



And as often happens with old people, Kutuzov began looking about

absent-mindedly as if forgetting all he wanted to say or do.



Then, evidently remembering what he wanted, he beckoned to Andrew

Kaysarov, his adjutant's brother.



"Those verses... those verses of Marin's... how do they go, eh?

Those he wrote about Gerakov: 'Lectures for the corps inditing'...

Recite them, recite them!" said he, evidently preparing to laugh.



Kaysarov recited.... Kutuzov smilingly nodded his head to the rhythm

of the verses.



When Pierre had left Kutuzov, Dolokhov came up to him and took his

hand.



"I am very glad to meet you here, Count," he said aloud,

regardless of the presence of strangers and in a particularly resolute

and solemn tone. "On the eve of a day when God alone knows who of us

is fated to survive, I am glad of this opportunity to tell you that

I regret the misunderstandings that occurred between us and should

wish you not to have any ill feeling for me. I beg you to forgive me."



Pierre looked at Dolokhov with a smile, not knowing what to say to

him. With tears in his eyes Dolokhov embraced Pierre and kissed him.



Boris said a few words to his general, and Count Bennigsen turned to

Pierre and proposed that he should ride with him along the line.



"It will interest you," said he.



"Yes, very much," replied Pierre.



Half an hour later Kutuzov left for Tatarinova, and Bennigsen and

his suite, with Pierre among them, set out on their ride along the

line.









CHAPTER XXIII

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From Gorki, Bennigsen descended the highroad to the bridge which,

when they had looked it from the hill, the officer had pointed out

as being the center of our position and where rows of fragrant

new-mown hay lay by the riverside. They rode across that bridge into

the village of Borodino and thence turned to the left, passing an

enormous number of troops and guns, and came to a high knoll where

militiamen were digging. This was the redoubt, as yet unnamed, which

afterwards became known as the Raevski Redoubt, or the Knoll

Battery, but Pierre paid no special attention to it. He did not know

that it would become more memorable to him than any other spot on

the plain of Borodino.



They then crossed the hollow to Semenovsk, where the soldiers were

dragging away the last logs from the huts and barns. Then they rode

downhill and uphill, across a ryefield trodden and beaten down as if

by hail, following a track freshly made by the artillery over the

furrows of the plowed land, and reached some fleches* which were still

being dug.





*A kind of entrenchment.





At the fleches Bennigsen stopped and began looking at the Shevardino

Redoubt opposite, which had been ours the day before and where several

horsemen could be descried. The officers said that either Napoleon

or Murat was there, and they all gazed eagerly at this little group of

horsemen. Pierre also looked at them, trying to guess which of the

scarcely discernible figures was Napoleon. At last those mounted men

rode away from the mound and disappeared.



Bennigsen spoke to a general who approached him, and began

explaining the whole position of our troops. Pierre listened to him,

straining each faculty to understand the essential points of the

impending battle, but was mortified to feel that his mental capacity

was inadequate for the task. He could make nothing of it. Bennigsen

stopped speaking and, noticing that Pierre was listening, suddenly

said to him:



"I don't think this interests you?"



"On the contrary it's very interesting!" replied Pierre not quite

truthfully.



From the fleches they rode still farther to the left, along a road

winding through a thick, low-growing birch wood. In the middle of

the wood a brown hare with white feet sprang out and, scared by the

tramp of the many horses, grew so confused that it leaped along the

road in front of them for some time, arousing general attention and

laughter, and only when several voices shouted at it did it dart to

one side and disappear in the thicket. After going through the wood

for about a mile and a half they came out on a glade where troops of

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Tuchkov's corps were stationed to defend the left flank.



Here, at the extreme left flank, Bennigsen talked a great deal and

with much heat, and, as it seemed to Pierre, gave orders of great

military importance. In front of Tuchkov's troops was some high ground

not occupied by troops. Bennigsen loudly criticized this mistake,

saying that it was madness to leave a height which commanded the

country around unoccupied and to place troops below it. Some of the

generals expressed the same opinion. One in particular declared with

martial heat that they were put there to be slaughtered. Bennigsen

on his own authority ordered the troops to occupy the high ground.

This disposition on the left flank increased Pierre's doubt of his own

capacity to understand military matters. Listening to Bennigsen and

the generals criticizing the position of the troops behind the hill,

he quite understood them and shared their opinion, but for that very

reason he could not understand how the man who put them there behind

the hill could have made so gross and palpable a blunder.



Pierre did not know that these troops were not, as Bennigsen

supposed, put there to defend the position, but were in a concealed

position as an ambush, that they should not be seen and might be

able to strike an approaching enemy unexpectedly. Bennigsen did not

know this and moved the troops forward according to his own ideas

without mentioning the matter to the commander in chief.









CHAPTER XXIV





On that bright evening of August 25, Prince Andrew lay leaning on

his elbow in a broken-down shed in the village of Knyazkovo at the

further end of his regiment's encampment. Through a gap in the

broken wall he could see, beside the wooden fence, a row of thirty

year-old birches with their lower branches lopped off, a field on

which shocks of oats were standing, and some bushes near which rose

the smoke of campfires--the soldiers' kitchens.



Narrow and burdensome and useless to anyone as his life now seemed

to him, Prince Andrew on the eve of battle felt agitated and irritable

as he had done seven years before at Austerlitz.



He had received and given the orders for next day's battle and had

nothing more to do. But his thoughts--the simplest, clearest, and

therefore most terrible thoughts--would give him no peace. He knew

that tomorrow's battle would be the most terrible of all he had

taken part in, and for the first time in his life the possibility of

death presented itself to him--not in relation to any worldly matter

or with reference to its effect on others, but simply in relation to

himself, to his own soul--vividly, plainly, terribly, and almost as

a certainty. And from the height of this perception all that had

previously tormented and preoccupied him suddenly became illumined

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by a cold white light without shadows, without perspective, without

distinction of outline. All life appeared to him like magic-lantern

pictures at which he had long been gazing by artificial light

through a glass. Now he suddenly saw those badly daubed pictures in

clear daylight and without a glass. "Yes, yes! There they are, those

false images that agitated, enraptured, and tormented me," said he

to himself, passing in review the principal pictures of the magic

lantern of life and regarding them now in the cold white daylight of

his clear perception of death. "There they are, those rudely painted

figures that once seemed splendid and mysterious. Glory, the good of

society, love of a woman, the Fatherland itself--how important these

pictures appeared to me, with what profound meaning they seemed to

be filled! And it is all so simple, pale, and crude in the cold

white light of this morning which I feel is dawning for me." The three

great sorrows of his life held his attention in particular: his love

for a woman, his father's death, and the French invasion which had

overrun half Russia. "Love... that little girl who seemed to me

brimming over with mystic forces! Yes, indeed, I loved her. I made

romantic plans of love and happiness with her! Oh, what a boy I

was!" he said aloud bitterly. "Ah me! I believed in some ideal love

which was to keep her faithful to me for the whole year of my absence!

Like the gentle dove in the fable she was to pine apart from me....

But it was much simpler really.... It was all very simple and

horrible."



"When my father built Bald Hills he thought the place was his: his

land, his air, his peasants. But Napoleon came and swept him aside,

unconscious of his existence, as he might brush a chip from his

path, and his Bald Hills and his whole life fell to pieces. Princess

Mary says it is a trial sent from above. What is the trial for, when

he is not here and will never return? He is not here! For whom then is

the trial intended? The Fatherland, the destruction of Moscow! And

tomorrow I shall be killed, perhaps not even by a Frenchman but by one

of our own men, by a soldier discharging a musket close to my ear as

one of them did yesterday, and the French will come and take me by

head and heels and fling me into a hole that I may not stink under

their noses, and new conditions of life will arise, which will seem

quite ordinary to others and about which I shall know nothing. I shall

not exist..."



He looked at the row of birches shining in the sunshine, with

their motionless green and yellow foliage and white bark. "To die...

to be killed tomorrow... That I should not exist... That all this

should still be, but no me...."



And the birches with their light and shade, the curly clouds, the

smoke of the campfires, and all that was around him changed and seemed

terrible and menacing. A cold shiver ran down his spine. He rose

quickly, went out of the shed, and began to walk about.



After he had returned, voices were heard outside the shed. "Who's

that?" he cried.



The red-nosed Captain Timokhin, formerly Dolokhov's squadron

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commander, but now from lack of officers a battalion commander,

shyly entered the shed followed by an adjutant and the regimental

paymaster.



Prince Andrew rose hastily, listened to the business they had come

about, gave them some further instructions, and was about to dismiss

them when he heard a familiar, lisping, voice behind the shed.



"Devil take it!" said the voice of a man stumbling over something.



Prince Andrew looked out of the shed and saw Pierre, who had tripped

over a pole on the ground and had nearly fallen, coming his way. It

was unpleasant to Prince Andrew to meet people of his own set in

general, and Pierre especially, for he reminded him of all the painful

moments of his last visit to Moscow.



"You? What a surprise!" said he. "What brings you here? This is

unexpected!"



As he said this his eyes and face expressed more than coldness--they

expressed hostility, which Pierre noticed at once. He had approached

the shed full of animation, but on seeing Prince Andrew's face he felt

constrained and ill at ease.



"I have come... simply... you know... come... it interests me," said

Pierre, who had so often that day senselessly repeated that word

"interesting." "I wish to see the battle."



"Oh yes, and what do the Masonic brothers say about war? How would

they stop it?" said Prince Andrew sarcastically. "Well, and how's

Moscow? And my people? Have they reached Moscow at last?" he asked

seriously.



"Yes, they have. Julie Drubetskaya told me so. I went to see them,

but missed them. They have gone to your estate near Moscow."









CHAPTER XXV





The officers were about to take leave, but Prince Andrew, apparently

reluctant to be left alone with his friend, asked them to stay and

have tea. Seats were brought in and so was the tea. The officers gazed

with surprise at Pierre's huge stout figure and listened to his talk

of Moscow and the position of our army, round which he had ridden.

Prince Andrew remained silent, and his expression was so forbidding

that Pierre addressed his remarks chiefly to the good-natured

battalion commander.



"So you understand the whole position of our troops?" Prince

Andrew interrupted him.

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"Yes--that is, how do you mean?" said Pierre. "Not being a

military man I can't say I have understood it fully, but I

understand the general position."



"Well, then, you know more than anyone else, be it who it may," said

Prince Andrew.



"Oh!" said Pierre, looking over his spectacles in perplexity at

Prince Andrew. "Well, and what do think of Kutuzov's appointment?"

he asked.



"I was very glad of his appointment, that's all I know," replied

Prince Andrew.



"And tell me your opinion of Barclay de Tolly. In Moscow they are

saying heaven knows what about him.... What do you think of him?"



"Ask them," replied Prince Andrew, indicating the officers.



Pierre looked at Timokhin with the condescendingly interrogative

smile with which everybody involuntarily addressed that officer.



"We see light again, since his Serenity has been appointed, your

excellency," said Timokhin timidly, and continually turning to

glance at his colonel.



"Why so?" asked Pierre.



"Well, to mention only firewood and fodder, let me inform you.

Why, when we were retreating from Sventsyani we dare not touch a stick

or a wisp of hay or anything. You see, we were going away, so he would

get it all; wasn't it so, your excellency?" and again Timokhin

turned to the prince. "But we daren't. In our regiment two officers

were court-martialed for that kind of thing. But when his Serenity

took command everything became straight forward. Now we see light..."



"Then why was it forbidden?"



Timokhin looked about in confusion, not knowing what or how to

answer such a question. Pierre put the same question to Prince Andrew.



"Why, so as not to lay waste the country we were abandoning to the

enemy," said Prince Andrew with venomous irony. "It is very sound: one

can't permit the land to be pillaged and accustom the troops to

marauding. At Smolensk too he judged correctly that the French might

outflank us, as they had larger forces. But he could not understand

this," cried Prince Andrew in a shrill voice that seemed to escape him

involuntarily: "he could not understand that there, for the first

time, we were fighting for Russian soil, and that there was a spirit

in the men such as I had never seen before, that we had held the

French for two days, and that that success had increased our

strength tenfold. He ordered us to retreat, and all our efforts and

losses went for nothing. He had no thought of betraying us, he tried

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to do the best he could, he thought out everything, and that is why he

is unsuitable. He is unsuitable now, just because he plans out

everything very thoroughly and accurately as every German has to.

How can I explain?... Well, say your father has a German valet, and he

is a splendid valet and satisfies your father's requirements better

than you could, then it's all right to let him serve. But if your

father is mortally sick you'll send the valet away and attend to

your father with your own unpracticed, awkward hands, and will

soothe him better than a skilled man who is a stranger could. So it

has been with Barclay. While Russia was well, a foreigner could

serve her and be a splendid minister; but as soon as she is in

danger she needs one of her own kin. But in your Club they have been

making him out a traitor! They slander him as a traitor, and the

only result will be that afterwards, ashamed of their false

accusations, they will make him out a hero or a genius instead of a

traitor, and that will be still more unjust. He is an honest and

very punctilious German."



"And they say he's a skillful commander," rejoined Pierre.



"I don't understand what is meant by 'a skillful commander,'"

replied Prince Andrew ironically.



"A skillful commander?" replied Pierre. "Why, one who foresees all

contingencies... and foresees the adversary's intentions."



"But that's impossible," said Prince Andrew as if it were a matter

settled long ago.



Pierre looked at him in surprise.



"And yet they say that war is like a game of chess?" he remarked.



"Yes," replied Prince Andrew, "but with this little difference, that

in chess you may think over each move as long as you please and are

not limited for time, and with this difference too, that a knight is

always stronger than a pawn, and two pawns are always stronger than

one, while in war a battalion is sometimes stronger than a division

and sometimes weaker than a company. The relative strength of bodies

of troops can never be known to anyone. Believe me," he went on, "if

things depended on arrangements made by the staff, I should be there

making arrangements, but instead of that I have the honor to serve

here in the regiment with these gentlemen, and I consider that on us

tomorrow's battle will depend and not on those others.... Success

never depends, and never will depend, on position, or equipment, or

even on numbers, and least of all on position."



"But on what then?"



"On the feeling that is in me and in him," he pointed to Timokhin,

"and in each soldier."



Prince Andrew glanced at Timokhin, who looked at his commander in

alarm and bewilderment. In contrast to his former reticent taciturnity

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Prince Andrew now seemed excited. He could apparently not refrain from

expressing the thoughts that had suddenly occurred to him.



"A battle is won by those who firmly resolve to win it! Why did we

lose the battle at Austerlitz? The French losses were almost equal

to ours, but very early we said to ourselves that we were losing the

battle, and we did lose it. And we said so because we had nothing to

fight for there, we wanted to get away from the battlefield as soon as

we could. 'We've lost, so let us run,' and we ran. If we had not

said that till the evening, heaven knows what might not have happened.

But tomorrow we shan't say it! You talk about our position, the left

flank weak and the right flank too extended," he went on. "That's

all nonsense, there's nothing of the kind. But what awaits us

tomorrow? A hundred million most diverse chances which will be decided

on the instant by the fact that our men or theirs run or do not run,

and that this man or that man is killed, but all that is being done at

present is only play. The fact is that those men with whom you have

ridden round the position not only do not help matters, but hinder.

They are only concerned with their own petty interests."



"At such a moment?" said Pierre reproachfully.



"At such a moment!" Prince Andrew repeated. "To them it is only a

moment affording opportunities to undermine a rival and obtain an

extra cross or ribbon. For me tomorrow means this: a Russian army of a

hundred thousand and a French army of a hundred thousand have met to

fight, and the thing is that these two hundred thousand men will fight

and the side that fights more fiercely and spares itself least will

win. And if you like I will tell you that whatever happens and

whatever muddles those at the top may make, we shall win tomorrow's

battle. Tomorrow, happen what may, we shall win!"



"There now, your excellency! That's the truth, the real truth," said

Timokhin. "Who would spare himself now? The soldiers in my

battalion, believe me, wouldn't drink their vodka! 'It's not the day

for that!' they say."



All were silent. The officers rose. Prince Andrew went out of the

shed with them, giving final orders to the adjutant. After they had

gone Pierre approached Prince Andrew and was about to start a

conversation when they heard the clatter of three horses' hoofs on the

road not far from the shed, and looking in that direction Prince

Andrew recognized Wolzogen and Clausewitz accompanied by a Cossack.

They rode close by continuing to converse, and Prince Andrew

involuntarily heard these words:



"Der Krieg muss in Raum verlegt werden. Der Ansicht kann ich nicht

genug Preis geben,"* said one of them.





*"The war must be extended widely. I cannot sufficiently commend

that view."





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"Oh, ja," said the other, "der Zweck ist nur den Feind zu schwachen,

so kann man gewiss nicht den Verlust der Privat-Personen in Achtung

nehmen."*





*"Oh, yes, the only aim is to weaken the enemy, so of course one

cannot take into account the loss of private individuals."





"Oh, no," agreed the other.



"Extend widely!" said Prince Andrew with an angry snort, when they

had ridden past. "In that 'extend' were my father, son, and sister, at

Bald Hills. That's all the same to him! That's what I was saying to

you--those German gentlemen won't win the battle tomorrow but will

only make all the mess they can, because they have nothing in their

German heads but theories not worth an empty eggshell and haven't in

their hearts the one thing needed tomorrow--that which Timokhin has.

They have yielded up all Europe to him, and have now come to teach us.

Fine teachers!" and again his voice grew shrill.



"So you think we shall win tomorrow's battle?" asked Pierre.



"Yes, yes," answered Prince Andrew absently. "One thing I would do

if I had the power," he began again, "I would not take prisoners.

Why take prisoners? It's chivalry! The French have destroyed my home

and are on their way to destroy Moscow, they have outraged and are

outraging me every moment. They are my enemies. In my opinion they are

all criminals. And so thinks Timokhin and the whole army. They

should be executed! Since they are my foes they cannot be my

friends, whatever may have been said at Tilsit."



"Yes, yes," muttered Pierre, looking with shining eyes at Prince

Andrew. "I quite agree with you!"



The question that had perturbed Pierre on the Mozhaysk hill and

all that day now seemed to him quite clear and completely solved. He

now understood the whole meaning and importance of this war and of the

impending battle. All he had seen that day, all the significant and

stern expressions on the faces he had seen in passing, were lit up for

him by a new light. He understood that latent heat (as they say in

physics) of patriotism which was present in all these men he had seen,

and this explained to him why they all prepared for death calmly,

and as it were lightheartedly.



"Not take prisoners," Prince Andrew continued: "That by itself would

quite change the whole war and make it less cruel. As it is we have

played at war--that's what's vile! We play at magnanimity and all that

stuff. Such magnanimity and sensibility are like the magnanimity and

sensibility of a lady who faints when she sees a calf being killed:

she is so kind-hearted that she can't look at blood, but enjoys eating

the calf served up with sauce. They talk to us of the rules of war, of

chivalry, of flags of truce, of mercy to the unfortunate and so on.

It's all rubbish! I saw chivalry and flags of truce in 1805; they

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humbugged us and we humbugged them. They plunder other people's

houses, issue false paper money, and worst of all they kill my

children and my father, and then talk of rules of war and

magnanimity to foes! Take no prisoners, but kill and be killed! He who

has come to this as I have through the same sufferings..."



Prince Andrew, who had thought it was all the same to him whether or

not Moscow was taken as Smolensk had been, was suddenly checked in his

speech by an unexpected cramp in his throat. He paced up and down a

few times in silence, but his eyes glittered feverishly and his lips

quivered as he began speaking.



"If there was none of this magnanimity in war, we should go to war

only when it was worth while going to certain death, as now. Then

there would not be war because Paul Ivanovich had offended Michael

Ivanovich. And when there was a war, like this one, it would be war!

And then the determination of the troops would be quite different.

Then all these Westphalians and Hessians whom Napoleon is leading

would not follow him into Russia, and we should not go to fight in

Austria and Prussia without knowing why. War is not courtesy but the

most horrible thing in life; and we ought to understand that and not

play at war. We ought to accept this terrible necessity sternly and

seriously. It all lies in that: get rid of falsehood and let war be

war and not a game. As it is now, war is the favorite pastime of the

idle and frivolous. The military calling is the most highly honored.



"But what is war? What is needed for success in warfare? What are

the habits of the military? The aim of war is murder; the methods of

war are spying, treachery, and their encouragement, the ruin of a

country's inhabitants, robbing them or stealing to provision the army,

and fraud and falsehood termed military craft. The habits of the

military class are the absence of freedom, that is, discipline,

idleness, ignorance, cruelty, debauchery, and drunkenness. And in

spite of all this it is the highest class, respected by everyone.

All the kings, except the Chinese, wear military uniforms, and he

who kills most people receives the highest rewards.



"They meet, as we shall meet tomorrow, to murder one another; they

kill and maim tens of thousands, and then have thanksgiving services

for having killed so many people (they even exaggerate the number),

and they announce a victory, supposing that the more people they

have killed the greater their achievement. How does God above look

at them and hear them?" exclaimed Prince Andrew in a shrill,

piercing voice. "Ah, my friend, it has of late become hard for me to

live. I see that I have begun to understand too much. And it doesn't

do for man to taste of the tree of knowledge of good and evil....

Ah, well, it's not for long!" he added.



"However, you're sleepy, and it's time for me to sleep. Go back to

Gorki!" said Prince Andrew suddenly.



"Oh no!" Pierre replied, looking at Prince Andrew with frightened,

compassionate eyes.



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"Go, go! Before a battle one must have one's sleep out," repeated

Prince Andrew.



He came quickly up to Pierre and embraced and kissed him.

"Good-by, be off!" he shouted. "Whether we meet again or not..."

and turning away hurriedly he entered the shed.



It was already dark, and Pierre could not make out whether the

expression of Prince Andrew's face was angry or tender.



For some time he stood in silence considering whether he should

follow him or go away. "No, he does not want it!" Pierre concluded.

"And I know that this is our last meeting!" He sighed deeply and

rode back to Gorki.



On re-entering the shed Prince Andrew lay down on a rug, but he

could not sleep.



He closed his eyes. One picture succeeded another in his

imagination. On one of them he dwelt long and joyfully. He vividly

recalled an evening in Petersburg. Natasha with animated and excited

face was telling him how she had gone to look for mushrooms the

previous summer and had lost her way in the big forest. She

incoherently described the depths of the forest, her feelings, and a

talk with a beekeeper she met, and constantly interrupted her story to

say: "No, I can't! I'm not telling it right; no, you don't

understand," though he encouraged her by saying that he did

understand, and he really had understood all she wanted to say. But

Natasha was not satisfied with her own words: she felt that they did

not convey the passionately poetic feeling she had experienced that

day and wished to convey. "He was such a delightful old man, and it

was so dark in the forest... and he had such kind... No, I can't

describe it," she had said, flushed and excited. Prince Andrew

smiled now the same happy smile as then when he had looked into her

eyes. "I understood her," he thought. "I not only understood her,

but it was just that inner, spiritual force, that sincerity, that

frankness of soul--that very soul of hers which seemed to be

fettered by her body--it was that soul I loved in her... loved so

strongly and happily..." and suddenly he remembered how his love had

ended. "He did not need anything of that kind. He neither saw nor

understood anything of the sort. He only saw in her a pretty and fresh

young girl, with whom he did not deign to unite his fate. And I?...

and he is still alive and gay!"



Prince Andrew jumped up as if someone had burned him, and again

began pacing up and down in front of the shed.









CHAPTER XXVI





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On August 25, the eve of the battle of Borodino, M. de Beausset,

prefect of the French Emperor's palace, arrived at Napoleon's quarters

at Valuevo with Colonel Fabvier, the former from Paris and the

latter from Madrid.



Donning his court uniform, M. de Beausset ordered a box he had

brought for the Emperor to be carried before him and entered the first

compartment of Napoleon's tent, where he began opening the box while

conversing with Napoleon's aides-de-camp who surrounded him.



Fabvier, not entering the tent, remained at the entrance talking

to some generals of his acquaintance.



The Emperor Napoleon had not yet left his bedroom and was

finishing his toilet. Slightly snorting and grunting, he presented now

his back and now his plump hairy chest to the brush with which his

valet was rubbing him down. Another valet, with his finger over the

mouth of a bottle, was sprinkling Eau de Cologne on the Emperor's

pampered body with an expression which seemed to say that he alone

knew where and how much Eau de Cologne should be sprinkled. Napoleon's

short hair was wet and matted on the forehead, but his face, though

puffy and yellow, expressed physical satisfaction. "Go on, harder,

go on!" he muttered to the valet who was rubbing him, slightly

twitching and grunting. An aide-de-camp, who had entered the bedroom

to report to the Emperor the number of prisoners taken in

yesterday's action, was standing by the door after delivering his

message, awaiting permission to withdraw. Napoleon, frowning, looked

at him from under his brows.



"No prisoners!" said he, repeating the aide-de-camp's words. "They

are forcing us to exterminate them. So much the worse for the

Russian army.... Go on... harder, harder!" he muttered, hunching his

back and presenting his fat shoulders.



"All right. Let Monsieur de Beausset enter, and Fabvier too," he

said, nodding to the aide-de-camp.



"Yes, sire," and the aide-de-camp disappeared through the door of

the tent.



Two valets rapidly dressed His Majesty, and wearing the blue uniform

of the Guards he went with firm quick steps to the reception room.



De Beausset's hands meanwhile were busily engaged arranging the

present he had brought from the Empress, on two chairs directly in

front of the entrance. But Napoleon had dressed and come out with such

unexpected rapidity that he had not time to finish arranging the

surprise.



Napoleon noticed at once what they were about and guessed that

they were not ready. He did not wish to deprive them of the pleasure

of giving him a surprise, so he pretended not to see de Beausset and

called Fabvier to him, listening silently and with a stern frown to

what Fabvier told him of the heroism and devotion of his troops

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fighting at Salamanca, at the other end of Europe, with but one

thought--to be worthy of their Emperor--and but one fear--to fail to

please him. The result of that battle had been deplorable. Napoleon

made ironic remarks during Fabvier's account, as if he had not

expected that matters could go otherwise in his absence.



"I must make up for that in Moscow," said Napoleon. "I'll see you

later," he added, and summoned de Beausset, who by that time had

prepared the surprise, having placed something on the chairs and

covered it with a cloth.



De Beausset bowed low, with that courtly French bow which only the

old retainers of the Bourbons knew how to make, and approached him,

presenting an envelope.



Napoleon turned to him gaily and pulled his ear.



"You have hurried here. I am very glad. Well, what is Paris saying?"

he asked, suddenly changing his former stern expression for a most

cordial tone.



"Sire, all Paris regrets your absence," replied de Beausset as was

proper.



But though Napoleon knew that de Beausset had to say something of

this kind, and though in his lucid moments he knew it was untrue, he

was pleased to hear it from him. Again he honored him by touching

his ear.



"I am very sorry to have made you travel so far," said he.



"Sire, I expected nothing less than to find you at the gates of

Moscow," replied de Beausset.



Napoleon smiled and, lifting his head absentmindedly, glanced to the

right. An aide-de-camp approached with gliding steps and offered him a

gold snuffbox, which he took.



"Yes, it has happened luckily for you," he said, raising the open

snuffbox to his nose. "You are fond of travel, and in three days you

will see Moscow. You surely did not expect to see that Asiatic

capital. You will have a pleasant journey."



De Beausset bowed gratefully at this regard for his taste for travel

(of which he had not till then been aware).



"Ha, what's this?" asked Napoleon, noticing that all the courtiers

were looking at something concealed under a cloth.



With courtly adroitness de Beausset half turned and without

turning his back to the Emperor retired two steps, twitching off the

cloth at the same time, and said:



"A present to Your Majesty from the Empress."

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It was a portrait, painted in bright colors by Gerard, of the son

borne to Napoleon by the daughter of the Emperor of Austria, the boy

whom for some reason everyone called "The King of Rome."



A very pretty curly-headed boy with a look of the Christ in the

Sistine Madonna was depicted playing at stick and ball. The ball

represented the terrestrial globe and the stick in his other hand a

scepter.



Though it was not clear what the artist meant to express by

depicting the so-called King of Rome spiking the earth with a stick,

the allegory apparently seemed to Napoleon, as it had done to all

who had seen it in Paris, quite clear and very pleasing.



"The King of Rome!" he said, pointing to the portrait with a

graceful gesture. "Admirable!"



With the natural capacity of an Italian for changing the

expression of his face at will, he drew nearer to the portrait and

assumed a look of pensive tenderness. He felt that what he now said

and did would be historical, and it seemed to him that it would now be

best for him--whose grandeur enabled his son to play stick and ball

with the terrestrial globe--to show, in contrast to that grandeur, the

simplest paternal tenderness. His eyes grew dim, he moved forward,

glanced round at a chair (which seemed to place itself under him), and

sat down on it before the portrait. At a single gesture from him

everyone went out on tiptoe, leaving the great man to himself and

his emotion.



Having sat still for a while he touched--himself not knowing why-

the thick spot of paint representing the highest light in the

portrait, rose, and recalled de Beausset and the officer on duty. He

ordered the portrait to be carried outside his tent, that the Old

Guard, stationed round it, might not be deprived of the pleasure of

seeing the King of Rome, the son and heir of their adored monarch.



And while he was doing M. de Beausset the honor of breakfasting with

him, they heard, as Napoleon had anticipated, the rapturous cries of

the officers and men of the Old Guard who had run up to see the

portrait.



"Vive l'Empereur! Vive le roi de Rome! Vive l'Empereur!" came

those ecstatic cries.



After breakfast Napoleon in de Beausset's presence dictated his

order of the day to the army.



"Short and energetic!" he remarked when he had read over the

proclamation which he had dictated straight off without corrections.

It ran:





Soldiers! This is the battle you have so longed for. Victory depends

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on you. It is essential for us; it will give us all we need:

comfortable quarters and a speedy return to our country. Behave as you

did at Austerlitz, Friedland, Vitebsk, and Smolensk. Let our

remotest posterity recall your achievements this day with pride. Let

it be said of each of you: "He was in the great battle before Moscow!"





"Before Moscow!" repeated Napoleon, and inviting M. de Beausset, who

was so fond of travel, to accompany him on his ride, he went out of

the tent to where the horses stood saddled.



"Your Majesty is too kind!" replied de Beausset to the invitation to

accompany the Emperor; he wanted to sleep, did not know how to ride

and was afraid of doing so.



But Napoleon nodded to the traveler, and de Beausset had to mount.

When Napoleon came out of the tent the shouting of the Guards before

his son's portrait grew still louder. Napoleon frowned.



"Take him away!" he said, pointing with a gracefully majestic

gesture to the portrait. "It is too soon for him to see a field of

battle."



De Beausset closed his eyes, bowed his head, and sighed deeply, to

indicate how profoundly he valued and comprehended the Emperor's

words.









CHAPTER XXVII





On the twenty-fifth of August, so his historians tell us, Napoleon

spent the whole day on horseback inspecting the locality,

considering plans submitted to him by his marshals, and personally

giving commands to his generals.



The original line of the Russian forces along the river Kolocha

had been dislocated by the capture of the Shevardino Redoubt on the

twenty-fourth, and part of the line--the left flank--had been drawn

back. That part of the line was not entrenched and in front of it

the ground was more open and level than elsewhere. It was evident to

anyone, military or not, that it was here the French should attack. It

would seem that not much consideration was needed to reach this

conclusion, nor any particular care or trouble on the part of the

Emperor and his marshals, nor was there any need of that special and

supreme quality called genius that people are so apt to ascribe to

Napoleon; yet the historians who described the event later and the men

who then surrounded Napoleon, and he himself, thought otherwise.



Napoleon rode over the plain and surveyed the locality with a

profound air and in silence, nodded with approval or shook his head

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dubiously, and without communicating to the generals around him the

profound course of ideas which guided his decisions merely gave them

his final conclusions in the form of commands. Having listened to a

suggestion from Davout, who was now called Prince d'Eckmuhl, to turn

the Russian left wing, Napoleon said it should not be done, without

explaining why not. To a proposal made by General Campan (who was to

attack the fleches) to lead his division through the woods, Napoleon

agreed, though the so-called Duke of Elchingen (Ney) ventured to

remark that a movement through the woods was dangerous and might

disorder the division.



Having inspected the country opposite the Shevardino Redoubt,

Napoleon pondered a little in silence and then indicated the spots

where two batteries should be set up by the morrow to act against

the Russian entrenchments, and the places where, in line with them,

the field artillery should be placed.



After giving these and other commands he returned to his tent, and

the dispositions for the battle were written down from his dictation.



These dispositions, of which the French historians write with

enthusiasm and other historians with profound respect, were as

follows:





At dawn the two new batteries established during the night on the

plain occupied by the Prince d'Eckmuhl will open fire on the

opposing batteries of the enemy.



At the same time the commander of the artillery of the 1st Corps,

General Pernetti, with thirty cannon of Campan's division and all

the howitzers of Dessaix's and Friant's divisions, will move

forward, open fire, and overwhelm with shellfire the enemy's

battery, against which will operate:



24 guns of the artillery of the Guards

30 guns of Campan's division



and 8 guns of Friant's and Dessaix's divisions

--



in all 62 guns.





The commander of the artillery of the 3rd Corps, General Fouche,

will place the howitzers of the 3rd and 8th Corps, sixteen in all,

on the flanks of the battery that is to bombard the entrenchment on

the left, which will have forty guns in all directed against it.



General Sorbier must be ready at the first order to advance with all

the howitzers of the Guard's artillery against either one or other

of the entrenchments.



During the cannonade Prince Poniatowski is to advance through the

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wood on the village and turn the enemy's position.



General Campan will move through the wood to seize the first

fortification.



After the advance has begun in this manner, orders will be given

in accordance with the enemy's movements.



The cannonade on the left flank will begin as soon as the guns of

the right wing are heard. The sharpshooters of Morand's division and

of the vice-King's division will open a heavy fire on seeing the

attack commence on the right wing.



The vice-King will occupy the village and cross by its three

bridges, advancing to the same heights as Morand's and Gibrard's

divisions, which under his leadership will be directed against the

redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.



All this must be done in good order (le tout se fera avec ordre et

methode) as far as possible retaining troops in reserve.

The Imperial Camp near Mozhaysk,

September, 6, 1812.





These dispositions, which are very obscure and confused if one

allows oneself to regard the arrangements without religious awe of his

genius, related to Napoleon's orders to deal with four points--four

different orders. Not one of these was, or could be, carried out.



In the disposition it is said first that the batteries placed on the

spot chosen by Napoleon, with the guns of Pernetti and Fouche; which

were to come in line with them, 102 guns in all, were to open fire and

shower shells on the Russian fleches and redoubts. This could not be

done, as from the spots selected by Napoleon the projectiles did not

carry to the Russian works, and those 102 guns shot into the air until

the nearest commander, contrary to Napoleon's instructions, moved them

forward.



The second order was that Poniatowski, moving to the village through

the wood, should turn the Russian left flank. This could not be done

and was not done, because Poniatowski, advancing on the village

through the wood, met Tuchkov there barring his way, and could not and

did not turn the Russian position.



The third order was: General Campan will move through the wood to

seize the first fortification. General Campan's division did not seize

the first fortification but was driven back, for on emerging from

the wood it had to reform under grapeshot, of which Napoleon was

unaware.



The fourth order was: The vice-King will occupy the village

(Borodino) and cross by its three bridges, advancing to the same

heights as Morand's and Gdrard's divisions (for whose movements no

directions are given), which under his leadership will be directed

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against the redoubt and come into line with the rest of the forces.



As far as one can make out, not so much from this unintelligible

sentence as from the attempts the vice-King made to execute the orders

given him, he was to advance from the left through Borodino to the

redoubt while the divisions of Morand and Gerard were to advance

simultaneously from the front.



All this, like the other parts of the disposition, was not and could

not be executed. After passing through Borodino the vice-King was

driven back to the Kolocha and could get no farther; while the

divisions of Morand and Gerard did not take the redoubt but were

driven back, and the redoubt was only taken at the end of the battle

by the cavalry (a thing probably unforeseen and not heard of by

Napoleon). So not one of the orders in the disposition was, or could

be, executed. But in the disposition it is said that, after the

fight has commenced in this manner, orders will be given in accordance

with the enemy's movements, and so it might be supposed that all

necessary arrangements would be made by Napoleon during the battle.

But this was not and could not be done, for during the whole battle

Napoleon was so far away that, as appeared later, he could not know

the course of the battle and not one of his orders during the fight

could be executed.









CHAPTER XXVIII





Many historians say that the French did not win the battle of

Borodino because Napoleon had a cold, and that if he had not had a

cold the orders he gave before and during the battle would have been

still more full of genius and Russia would have been lost and the face

of the world have been changed. To historians who believe that

Russia was shaped by the will of one man--Peter the Great--and that

France from a republic became an empire and French armies went to

Russia at the will of one man--Napoleon--to say that Russia remained a

power because Napoleon had a bad cold on the twenty-fourth of August

may seem logical and convincing.



If it had depended on Napoleon's will to fight or not to fight the

battle of Borodino, and if this or that other arrangement depended

on his will, then evidently a cold affecting the manifestation of

his will might have saved Russia, and consequently the valet who

omitted to bring Napoleon his waterproof boots on the twenty-fourth

would have been the savior of Russia. Along that line of thought

such a deduction is indubitable, as indubitable as the deduction

Voltaire made in jest (without knowing what he was jesting at) when he

saw that the Massacre of St. Bartholomew was due to Charles IX's

stomach being deranged. But to men who do not admit that Russia was

formed by the will of one man, Peter I, or that the French Empire

was formed and the war with Russia begun by the will of one man,

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Napoleon, that argument seems not merely untrue and irrational, but

contrary to all human reality. To the question of what causes historic

events another answer presents itself, namely, that the course of

human events is predetermined from on high--depends on the coincidence

of the wills of all who take part in the events, and that a Napoleon's

influence on the course of these events is purely external and

fictitious.



Strange as at first glance it may seem to suppose that the

Massacre of St. Bartholomew was not due to Charles IX's will, though

he gave the order for it and thought it was done as a result of that

order; and strange as it may seem to suppose that the slaughter of

eighty thousand men at Borodino was not due to Napoleon's will, though

he ordered the commencement and conduct of the battle and thought it

was done because he ordered it; strange as these suppositions

appear, yet human dignity--which tells me that each of us is, if not

more at least not less a man than the great Napoleon--demands the

acceptance of that solution of the question, and historic

investigation abundantly confirms it.



At the battle of Borodino Napoleon shot at no one and killed no one.

That was all done by the soldiers. Therefore it was not he who

killed people.



The French soldiers went to kill and be killed at the battle of

Borodino not because of Napoleon's orders but by their own volition.

The whole army--French, Italian, German, Polish, and Dutch--hungry,

ragged, and weary of the campaign, felt at the sight of an army

blocking their road to Moscow that the wine was drawn and must be

drunk. Had Napoleon then forbidden them to fight the Russians, they

would have killed him and have proceeded to fight the Russians because

it was inevitable.



When they heard Napoleon's proclamation offering them, as

compensation for mutilation and death, the words of posterity about

their having been in the battle before Moscow, they cried "Vive

l'Empereur!" just as they had cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at the sight of

the portrait of the boy piercing the terrestrial globe with a toy

stick, and just as they would have cried "Vive l'Empereur!" at any

nonsense that might be told them. There was nothing left for them to

do but cry "Vive l'Empereur!" and go to fight, in order to get food

and rest as conquerors in Moscow. So it was not because of

Napoleon's commands that they killed their fellow men.



And it was not Napoleon who directed the course of the battle, for

none of his orders were executed and during the battle he did not know

what was going on before him. So the way in which these people

killed one another was not decided by Napoleon's will but occurred

independently of him, in accord with the will of hundreds of thousands

of people who took part in the common action. It only seemed to

Napoleon that it all took place by his will. And so the question

whether he had or had not a cold has no more historic interest than

the cold of the least of the transport soldiers.



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Moreover, the assertion made by various writers that his cold was

the cause of his dispositions not being as well planned as on former

occasions, and of his orders during the battle not being as good as

previously, is quite baseless, which again shows that Napoleon's

cold on the twenty-sixth of August was unimportant.



The dispositions cited above are not at all worse, but are even

better, than previous dispositions by which he had won victories.

His pseudo-orders during the battle were also no worse than

formerly, but much the same as usual. These dispositions and orders

only seem worse than previous ones because the battle of Borodino

was the first Napoleon did not win. The profoundest and most excellent

dispositions and orders seem very bad, and every learned militarist

criticizes them with looks of importance, when they relate to a

battle that has been lost, and the very worst dispositions and

orders seem very good, and serious people fill whole volumes to

demonstrate their merits, when they relate to a battle that has been

won.



The dispositions drawn up by Weyrother for the battle of

Austerlitz were a model of perfection for that kind of composition,

but still they were criticized--criticized for their very

perfection, for their excessive minuteness.



Napoleon at the battle of Borodino fulfilled his office as

representative of authority as well as, and even better than, at other

battles. He did nothing harmful to the progress of the battle; he

inclined to the most reasonable opinions, he made no confusion, did

not contradict himself, did not get frightened or run away from the

field of battle, but with his great tact and military experience

carried out his role of appearing to command, calmly and with dignity.









CHAPTER XXIX





On returning from a second inspection of the lines, Napoleon

remarked:



"The chessmen are set up, the game will begin tomorrow!"



Having ordered punch and summoned de Beausset, he began to talk to

him about Paris and about some changes he meant to make the Empress'

household, surprising the prefect by his memory of minute details

relating to the court.



He showed an interest in trifles, joked about de Beausset's love

of travel, and chatted carelessly, as a famous, self-confident surgeon

who knows his job does when turning up his sleeves and putting on

his apron while a patient is being strapped to the operating table.

"The matter is in my hands and is clear and definite in my head.

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When the times comes to set to work I shall do it as no one else

could, but now I can jest, and the more I jest and the calmer I am the

more tranquil and confident you ought to be, and the more amazed at my

genius."



Having finished his second glass of punch, Napoleon went to rest

before the serious business which, he considered, awaited him next

day. He was so much interested in that task that he was unable to

sleep, and in spite of his cold which had grown worse from the

dampness of the evening, he went into the large division of the tent

at three o'clock in the morning, loudly blowing his nose. He asked

whether the Russians had not withdrawn, and was told that the

enemy's fires were still in the same places. He nodded approval.



The adjutant in attendance came into the tent.



"Well, Rapp, do you think we shall do good business today?" Napoleon

asked him.



"Without doubt, sire," replied Rapp.



Napoleon looked at him.



"Do you remember, sire, what you did me the honor to say at

Smolensk?" continued Rapp. "The wine is drawn and must be drunk."



Napoleon frowned and sat silent for a long time leaning his head

on his hand.



"This poor army!" he suddenly remarked. "It has diminished greatly

since Smolensk. Fortune is frankly a courtesan, Rapp. I have always

said so and I am beginning to experience it. But the Guards, Rapp, the

Guards are intact?" he remarked interrogatively.



"Yes, sire," replied Rapp.



Napoleon took a lozenge, put it in his mouth, and glanced at his

watch. He was not sleepy and it was still not nearly morning. It was

impossible to give further orders for the sake of killing time, for

the orders had all been given and were now being executed.



"Have the biscuits and rice been served out to the regiments of

the Guards?" asked Napoleon sternly.



"Yes, sire."



"The rice too?"



Rapp replied that he had given the Emperor's order about the rice,

but Napoleon shook his head in dissatisfaction as if not believing

that his order had been executed. An attendant came in with punch.

Napoleon ordered another glass to be brought for Rapp, and silently

sipped his own.



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"I have neither taste nor smell," he remarked, sniffing at his

glass. "This cold is tiresome. They talk about medicine--what is the

good of medicine when it can't cure a cold! Corvisart gave me these

lozenges but they don't help at all. What can doctors cure? One

can't cure anything. Our body is a machine for living. It is organized

for that, it is its nature. Let life go on in it unhindered and let it

defend itself, it will do more than if you paralyze it by

encumbering it with remedies. Our body is like a perfect watch that

should go for a certain time; watchmaker cannot open it, he can only

adjust it by fumbling, and that blindfold.... Yes, our body is just

a machine for living, that is all."



And having entered on the path of definition, of which he was

fond, Napoleon suddenly and unexpectedly gave a new one.



"Do you know, Rapp, what military art is?" asked he. "It is the

art of being stronger than the enemy at a given moment. That's all."



Rapp made no reply.



"Tomorrow we shall have to deal with Kutuzov!" said Napoleon. "We

shall see! Do you remember at Braunau he commanded an army for three

weeks and did not once mount a horse to inspect his

entrenchments.... We shall see!"



He looked at his watch. It was still only four o'clock. He did not

feel sleepy. The punch was finished and there was still nothing to do.

He rose, walked to and fro, put on a warm overcoat and a hat, and went

out of the tent. The night was dark and damp, a scarcely perceptible

moisture was descending from above. Near by, the campfires were

dimly burning among the French Guards, and in the distance those of

the Russian line shone through the smoke. The weather was calm, and

the rustle and tramp of the French troops already beginning to move to

take up their positions were clearly audible.



Napoleon walked about in front of his tent, looked at the fires

and listened to these sounds, and as he was passing a tall guardsman

in a shaggy cap, who was standing sentinel before his tent and had

drawn himself up like a black pillar at sight of the Emperor, Napoleon

stopped in front of him.



"What year did you enter the service?" he asked with that

affectation of military bluntness and geniality with which he always

addressed the soldiers.



The man answered the question.



"Ah! One of the old ones! Has your regiment had its rice?"



"It has, Your Majesty."



Napoleon nodded and walked away.





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At half-past five Napoleon rode to the village of Shevardino.



It was growing light, the sky was clearing, only a single cloud

lay in the east. The abandoned campfires were burning themselves out

in the faint morning light.



On the right a single deep report of a cannon resounded and died

away in the prevailing silence. Some minutes passed. A second and a

third report shook the air, then a fourth and a fifth boomed

solemnly near by on the right.



The first shots had not yet ceased to reverberate before others rang

out and yet more were heard mingling with and overtaking one another.



Napoleon with his suite rode up to the Shevardino Redoubt where he

dismounted. The game had begun.









CHAPTER XXX





On returning to Gorki after having seen Prince Andrew, Pierre

ordered his groom to get the horses ready and to call him early in the

morning, and then immediately fell asleep behind a partition in a

corner Boris had given up to him.



Before he was thoroughly awake next morning everybody had already

left the hut. The panes were rattling in the little windows and his

groom was shaking him.



"Your excellency! Your excellency! Your excellency!" he kept

repeating pertinaciously while he shook Pierre by the shoulder without

looking at him, having apparently lost hope of getting him to wake up.



"What? Has it begun? Is it time?" Pierre asked, waking up.



"Hear the firing," said the groom, a discharged soldier. "All the

gentlemen have gone out, and his Serene Highness himself rode past

long ago."



Pierre dressed hastily and ran out to the porch. Outside all was

bright, fresh, dewy, and cheerful. The sun, just bursting forth from

behind a cloud that had concealed it, was shining, with rays still

half broken by the clouds, over the roofs of the street opposite, on

the dew-besprinkled dust of the road, on the walls of the houses, on

the windows, the fence, and on Pierre's horses standing before the

hut. The roar of guns sounded more distinct outside. An adjutant

accompanied by a Cossack passed by at a sharp trot.



"It's time, Count; it's time!" cried the adjutant.



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Telling the groom to follow him with the horses, Pierre went down

the street to the knoll from which he had looked at the field of

battle the day before. A crowd of military men was assembled there,

members of the staff could be heard conversing in French, and

Kutuzov's gray head in a white cap with a red band was visible, his

gray nape sunk between his shoulders. He was looking through a field

glass down the highroad before him.



Mounting the steps to the knoll Pierre looked at the scene before

him, spellbound by beauty. It was the same panorama he had admired

from that spot the day before, but now the whole place was full of

troops and covered by smoke clouds from the guns, and the slanting

rays of the bright sun, rising slightly to the left behind Pierre,

cast upon it through the clear morning air penetrating streaks of

rosy, golden tinted light and long dark shadows. The forest at the

farthest extremity of the panorama seemed carved in some precious

stone of a yellowish-green color; its undulating outline was

silhouetted against the horizon and was pierced beyond Valuevo by

the Smolensk highroad crowded with troops. Nearer at hand glittered

golden cornfields interspersed with copses. There were troops to be

seen everywhere, in front and to the right and left. All this was

vivid, majestic, and unexpected; but what impressed Pierre most of all

was the view of the battlefield itself, of Borodino and the hollows on

both sides of the Kolocha.



Above the Kolocha, in Borodino and on both sides of it, especially

to the left where the Voyna flowing between its marshy banks falls

into the Kolocha, a mist had spread which seemed to melt, to dissolve,

and to become translucent when the brilliant sun appeared and

magically colored and outlined everything. The smoke of the guns

mingled with this mist, and over the whole expanse and through that

mist the rays of the morning sun were reflected, flashing back like

lightning from the water, from the dew, and from the bayonets of the

troops crowded together by the riverbanks and in Borodino. A white

church could be seen through the mist, and here and there the roofs of

huts in Borodino as well as dense masses of soldiers, or green

ammunition chests and ordnance. And all this moved, or seemed to move,

as the smoke and mist spread out over the whole space. Just as in

the mist-enveloped hollow near Borodino, so along the entire line

outside and above it and especially in the woods and fields to the

left, in the valleys and on the summits of the high ground, clouds

of powder smoke seemed continually to spring up out of nothing, now

singly, now several at a time, some translucent, others dense,

which, swelling, growing, rolling, and blending, extended over the

whole expanse.



These puffs of smoke and (strange to say) the sound of

the firing produced the chief beauty of the spectacle.



"Puff!"--suddenly a round compact cloud of smoke was seen merging

from violet into gray and milky white, and "boom!" came the report a

second later.



"Puff! puff!"--and two clouds arose pushing one another and blending

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together; and "boom, boom!" came the sounds confirming what the eye

had seen.



Pierre glanced round at the first cloud, which he had seen as a

round compact ball, and in its place already were balloons of smoke

floating to one side, and--"puff" (with a pause)--"puff, puff!"

three and then four more appeared and then from each, with the same

interval--"boom--boom, boom!" came the fine, firm, precise sounds in

reply. It seemed as if those smoke clouds sometimes ran and

sometimes stood still while woods, fields, and glittering bayonets ran

past them. From the left, over fields and bushes, those large balls of

smoke were continually appearing followed by their solemn reports,

while nearer still, in the hollows and woods, there burst from the

muskets small cloudlets that had no time to become balls, but had

their little echoes in just the same way. "Trakh-ta-ta-takh!" came the

frequent crackle of musketry, but it was irregular and feeble in

comparison with the reports of the cannon.



Pierre wished to be there with that smoke, those shining bayonets,

that movement, and those sounds. He turned to look at Kutuzov and

his suite, to compare his impressions with those of others. They

were all looking at the field of battle as he was, and, as it seemed

to him, with the same feelings. All their faces were now shining

with that latent warmth of feeling Pierre had noticed the day before

and had fully understood after his talk with Prince Andrew.



"Go, my dear fellow, go... and Christ be with you!" Kutuzov was

saying to a general who stood beside him, not taking his eye from

the battlefield.



Having received this order the general passed by Pierre on his way

down the knoll.



"To the crossing!" said the general coldly and sternly in reply to

one of the staff who asked where he was going.



"I'll go there too, I too!" thought Pierre, and followed the

general.



The general mounted a horse a Cossack had brought him. Pierre went

to his groom who was holding his horses and, asking which was the

quietest, clambered onto it, seized it by the mane, and turning out

his toes pressed his heels against its sides and, feeling that his

spectacles were slipping off but unable to let go of the mane and

reins, he galloped after the general, causing the staff officers to

smile as they watched him from the knoll.









CHAPTER XXXI





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Having descended the hill the general after whom Pierre was

galloping turned sharply to the left, and Pierre, losing sight of him,

galloped in among some ranks of infantry marching ahead of him. He

tried to pass either in front of them or to the right or left, but

there were soldiers everywhere, all with expression and busy with some

unseen but evidently important task. They all gazed with the same

dissatisfied and inquiring expression at this stout man in a white

hat, who for some unknown reason threatened to trample them under

his horse's hoofs.



"Why ride into the middle of the battalion?" one of them shouted

at him.



Another prodded his horse with the butt end of a musket, and Pierre,

bending over his saddlebow and hardly able to control his shying

horse, galloped ahead of the soldiers where there was a free space.



There was a bridge ahead of him, where other soldiers stood

firing. Pierre rode up to them. Without being aware of it he had

come to the bridge across the Kolocha between Gorki and Borodino,

which the French (having occupied Borodino) were attacking in the

first phase of the battle. Pierre saw that there was a bridge in front

of him and that soldiers were doing something on both sides of it

and in the meadow, among the rows of new-mown hay which he had taken

no notice of amid the smoke of the campfires the day before; but

despite the incessant firing going on there he had no idea that this

was the field of battle. He did not notice the sound of the bullets

whistling from every side, or the projectiles that flew over him,

did not see the enemy on the other side of the river, and for a long

time did not notice the killed and wounded, though many fell near him.

He looked about him with a smile which did not leave his face.



"Why's that fellow in front of the line?" shouted somebody at him

again.



"To the left!... Keep to the right!" the men shouted to him.



Pierre went to the right, and unexpectedly encountered one of

Raevski's adjutants whom he knew. The adjutant looked angrily at

him, evidently also intending to shout at him, but on recognizing

him he nodded.



"How have you got here?" he said, and galloped on.



Pierre, feeling out of place there, having nothing to do, and afraid

of getting in someone's way again, galloped after the adjutant.



"What's happening here? May I come with you?" he asked.



"One moment, one moment!" replied the adjutant, and riding up to a

stout colonel who was standing in the meadow, he gave him some message

and then addressed Pierre.



"Why have you come here, Count?" he asked with a smile. "Still

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inquisitive?"



"Yes, yes," assented Pierre.



But the adjutant turned his horse about and rode on.



"Here it's tolerable," said he, "but with Bagration on the left

flank they're getting it frightfully hot."



"Really?" said Pierre. "Where is that?"



"Come along with me to our knoll. We can get a view from there and

in our battery it is still bearable," said the adjutant. "Will you

come?"



"Yes, I'll come with you," replied Pierre, looking round for his

groom.



It was only now that he noticed wounded men staggering along or

being carried on stretchers. On that very meadow he had ridden over

the day before, a soldier was lying athwart the rows of scented hay,

with his head thrown awkwardly back and his shako off.



"Why haven't they carried him away?" Pierre was about to ask, but

seeing the stern expression of the adjutant who was also looking

that way, he checked himself.



Pierre did not find his groom and rode along the hollow with the

adjutant to Raevski's Redoubt. His horse lagged behind the

adjutant's and jolted him at every step.



"You don't seem to be used to riding, Count?" remarked the adjutant.



"No it's not that, but her action seems so jerky," said Pierre in

a puzzled tone.



"Why... she's wounded!" said the adjutant. "In the off foreleg above

the knee. A bullet, no doubt. I congratulate you, Count, on your

baptism of fire!"



Having ridden in the smoke past the Sixth Corps, behind the

artillery which had been moved forward and was in action, deafening

them with the noise of firing, they came to a small wood. There it was

cool and quiet, with a scent of autumn. Pierre and the adjutant

dismounted and walked up the hill on foot.



"Is the general here?" asked the adjutant on reaching the knoll.



"He was here a minute ago but has just gone that way," someone

told him, pointing to the right.



The adjutant looked at Pierre as if puzzled what to do with him now.



"Don't trouble about me," said Pierre. "I'll go up onto the knoll if

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I may?"



"Yes, do. You'll see everything from there and it's less

dangerous, and I'll come for you."



Pierre went to the battery and the adjutant rode on. They did not

meet again, and only much later did Pierre learn that he lost an arm

that day.



The knoll to which Pierre ascended was that famous one afterwards

known to the Russians as the Knoll Battery or Raevski's Redoubt, and

to the French as la grande redoute, la fatale redoute, la redoute du

centre, around which tens of thousands fell, and which the French

regarded as the key to the whole position.



This redoubt consisted of a knoll, on three sides of which

trenches had been dug. Within the entrenchment stood ten guns that

were being fired through openings in the earthwork.



In line with the knoll on both sides stood other guns which also

fired incessantly. A little behind the guns stood infantry. When

ascending that knoll Pierre had no notion that this spot, on which

small trenches had been dug and from which a few guns were firing, was

the most important point of the battle.



On the contrary, just because he happened to be there he thought

it one of the least significant parts of the field.



Having reached the knoll, Pierre sat down at one end of a trench

surrounding the battery and gazed at what was going on around him with

an unconsciously happy smile. Occasionally he rose and walked about

the battery still with that same smile, trying not to obstruct the

soldiers who were loading, hauling the guns, and continually running

past him with bags and charges. The guns of that battery were being

fired continually one after another with a deafening roar,

enveloping the whole neighborhood in powder smoke.



In contrast with the dread felt by the infantrymen placed in

support, here in the battery where a small number of men busy at their

work were separated from the rest by a trench, everyone experienced

a common and as it were family feeling of animation.



The intrusion of Pierre's nonmilitary figure in a white hat made

an unpleasant impression at first. The soldiers looked askance at

him with surprise and even alarm as they went past him. The senior

artillery officer, a tall, long-legged, pockmarked man, moved over

to Pierre as if to see the action of the farthest gun and looked at

him with curiosity.



A young round-faced officer, quite a boy still and evidently only

just out of the Cadet College, who was zealously commanding the two

guns entrusted to him, addressed Pierre sternly.



"Sir," he said, "permit me to ask you to stand aside. You must not

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be here."



The soldiers shook their heads disapprovingly as they looked at

Pierre. But when they had convinced themselves that this man in the

white hat was doing no harm, but either sat quietly on the slope of

the trench with a shy smile or, politely making way for the

soldiers, paced up and down the battery under fire as calmly as if

he were on a boulevard, their feeling of hostile distrust gradually

began to change into a kindly and bantering sympathy, such as soldiers

feel for their dogs, cocks, goats, and in general for the animals that

live with the regiment. The men soon accepted Pierre into their

family, adopted him, gave him a nickname ("our gentleman"), and made

kindly fun of him among themselves.



A shell tore up the earth two paces from Pierre and he looked around

with a smile as he brushed from his clothes some earth it had thrown

up.



"And how's it you're not afraid, sir, really now?" a red-faced,

broad-shouldered soldier asked Pierre, with a grin that disclosed a

set of sound, white teeth.



"Are you afraid, then?" said Pierre.



"What else do you expect?" answered the soldier. "She has no

mercy, you know! When she comes spluttering down, out go your innards.

One can't help being afraid," he said laughing.



Several of the men, with bright kindly faces, stopped beside Pierre.

They seemed not to have expected him to talk like anybody else, and

the discovery that he did so delighted them.



"It's the business of us soldiers. But in a gentleman it's

wonderful! There's a gentleman for you!"



"To your places!" cried the young officer to the men gathered

round Pierre.



The young officer was evidently exercising his duties for the

first or second time and therefore treated both his superiors and

the men with great precision and formality.



The booming cannonade and the fusillade of musketry were growing

more intense over the whole field, especially to the left where

Bagration's fleches were, but where Pierre was the smoke of the firing

made it almost impossible to distinguish anything. Moreover, his whole

attention was engrossed by watching the family circle--separated

from all else--formed by the men in the battery. His first unconscious

feeling of joyful animation produced by the sights and sounds of the

battlefield was now replaced by another, especially since he had

seen that soldier lying alone in the hayfield. Now, seated on the

slope of the trench, he observed the faces of those around him.



By ten o'clock some twenty men had already been carried away from

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the battery; two guns were smashed and cannon balls fell more and more

frequently on the battery and spent bullets buzzed and whistled

around. But the men in the battery seemed not to notice this, and

merry voices and jokes were heard on all sides.



"A live one!" shouted a man as a whistling shell approached.



"Not this way! To the infantry!" added another with loud laughter,

seeing the shell fly past and fall into the ranks of the supports.



"Are you bowing to a friend, eh?" remarked another, chaffing a

peasant who ducked low as a cannon ball flew over.



Several soldiers gathered by the wall of the trench, looking out

to see what was happening in front.



"They've withdrawn the front line, it has retired," said they,

pointing over the earthwork.



"Mind your own business," an old sergeant shouted at them. "If

they've retired it's because there's work for them to do farther

back."



And the sergeant, taking one of the men by the shoulders, gave him a

shove with his knee. This was followed by a burst of laughter.



"To the fifth gun, wheel it up!" came shouts from one side.



"Now then, all together, like bargees!" rose the merry voices of

those who were moving the gun.



"Oh, she nearly knocked our gentleman's hat off!" cried the

red-faced humorist, showing his teeth chaffing Pierre. "Awkward

baggage!" he added reproachfully to a cannon ball that struck a cannon

wheel and a man's leg.



"Now then, you foxes!" said another, laughing at some militiamen

who, stooping low, entered the battery to carry away the wounded man.



"So this gruel isn't to your taste? Oh, you crows! You're scared!"

they shouted at the militiamen who stood hesitating before the man

whose leg had been torn off.



"There, lads... oh, oh!" they mimicked the peasants, "they don't

like it at all!"



Pierre noticed that after every ball that hit the redoubt, and after

every loss, the liveliness increased more and more.



As the flames of the fire hidden within come more and more vividly

and rapidly from an approaching thundercloud, so, as if in

opposition to what was taking place, the lightning of hidden fire

growing more and more intense glowed in the faces of these men.



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Pierre did not look out at the battlefield and was not concerned

to know what was happening there; he was entirely absorbed in watching

this fire which burned ever more brightly and which he felt was

flaming up in the same way in his own soul.



At ten o'clock the infantry that had been among the bushes in

front of the battery and along the Kamenka streamlet retreated. From

the battery they could be seen running back past it carrying their

wounded on their muskets. A general with his suite came to the

battery, and after speaking to the colonel gave Pierre an angry look

and went away again having ordered the infantry supports behind the

battery to lie down, so as to be less exposed to fire. After this from

amid the ranks of infantry to the right of the battery came the

sound of a drum and shouts of command, and from the battery one saw

how those ranks of infantry moved forward.



Pierre looked over the wall of the trench and was particularly

struck by a pale young officer who, letting his sword hang down, was

walking backwards and kept glancing uneasily around.



The ranks of the infantry disappeared amid the smoke but their

long-drawn shout and rapid musketry firing could still be heard. A few

minutes later crowds of wounded men and stretcher-bearers came back

from that direction. Projectiles began to fall still more frequently

in the battery. Several men were lying about who had not been removed.

Around the cannon the men moved still more briskly and busily. No

one any longer took notice of Pierre. Once or twice he was shouted

at for being in the way. The senior officer moved with big, rapid

strides from one gun to another with a frowning face. The young

officer, with his face still more flushed, commanded the men more

scrupulously than ever. The soldiers handed up the charges, turned,

loaded, and did their business with strained smartness. They gave

little jumps as they walked, as though they were on springs.



The stormcloud had come upon them, and in every face the fire

which Pierre had watched kindle burned up brightly. Pierre standing

beside the commanding officer. The young officer, his hand to his

shako, ran up to his superior.



"I have the honor to report, sir, that only eight rounds are left.

Are we to continue firing?" he asked.



"Grapeshot!" the senior shouted, without answering the question,

looking over the wall of the trench.



Suddenly something happened: the young officer gave a gasp and

bending double sat down on the ground like a bird shot on the wing.

Everything became strange, confused, and misty in Pierre's eyes.



One cannon ball after another whistled by and struck the

earthwork, a soldier, or a gun. Pierre, who had not noticed these

sounds before, now heard nothing else. On the right of the battery

soldiers shouting "Hurrah!" were running not forwards but backwards,

it seemed to Pierre.

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A cannon ball struck the very end of the earth work by which he

was standing, crumbling down the earth; a black ball flashed before

his eyes and at the same instant plumped into something. Some

militiamen who were entering the battery ran back.



"All with grapeshot!" shouted the officer.



The sergeant ran up to the officer and in a frightened whisper

informed him (as a butler at dinner informs his master that there is

no more of some wine asked for) that there were no more charges.



"The scoundrels! What are they doing?" shouted the officer,

turning to Pierre.



The officer's face was red and perspiring and his eyes glittered

under his frowning brow.



"Run to the reserves and bring up the ammunition boxes!" he

yelled, angrily avoiding Pierre with his eyes and speaking to his men.



"I'll go," said Pierre.



The officer, without answering him, strode across to the opposite

side.



"Don't fire.... Wait!" he shouted.



The man who had been ordered to go for ammunition stumbled against

Pierre.



"Eh, sir, this is no place for you," said he, and ran down the

slope.



Pierre ran after him, avoiding the spot where the young officer

was sitting.



One cannon ball, another, and a third flew over him, falling in

front, beside, and behind him. Pierre ran down the slope. "Where am

I going?" he suddenly asked himself when he was already near the green

ammunition wagons. He halted irresolutely, not knowing whether to

return or go on. Suddenly a terrible concussion threw him backwards to

the ground. At the same instant he was dazzled by a great flash of

flame, and immediately a deafening roar, crackling, and whistling made

his ears tingle.



When he came to himself he was sitting on the ground leaning on

his hands; the ammunition wagons he had been approaching no longer

existed, only charred green boards and rags littered the scorched

grass, and a horse, dangling fragments of its shaft behind it,

galloped past, while another horse lay, like Pierre, on the ground,

uttering prolonged and piercing cries.





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CHAPTER XXXII





Beside himself with terror Pierre jumped up and ran back to the

battery, as to the only refuge from the horrors that surrounded him.



On entering the earthwork he noticed that there were men doing

something there but that no shots were being fired from the battery.

He had no time to realize who these men were. He saw the senior

officer lying on the earth wall with his back turned as if he were

examining something down below and that one of the soldiers he had

noticed before was struggling forward shouting "Brothers!" and

trying to free himself from some men who were holding him by the

arm. He also saw something else that was strange.



But he had not time to realize that the colonel had been killed,

that the soldier shouting "Brothers!" was a prisoner, and that another

man had been bayoneted in the back before his eyes, for hardly had

he run into the redoubt before a thin, sallow-faced, perspiring man in

a blue uniform rushed on him sword in hand, shouting something.

Instinctively guarding against the shock--for they had been running

together at full speed before they saw one another--Pierre put out his

hands and seized the man (a French officer) by the shoulder with one

hand and by the throat with the other. The officer, dropping his

sword, seized Pierre by his collar.



For some seconds they gazed with frightened eyes at one another's

unfamiliar faces and both were perplexed at what they had done and

what they were to do next. "Am I taken prisoner or have I taken him

prisoner?" each was thinking. But the French officer was evidently

more inclined to think he had been taken prisoner because Pierre's

strong hand, impelled by instinctive fear, squeezed his throat ever

tighter and tighter. The Frenchman was about to say something, when

just above their heads, terrible and low, a cannon ball whistled,

and it seemed to Pierre that the French officer's head had been torn

off, so swiftly had he ducked it.



Pierre too bent his head and let his hands fall. Without further

thought as to who had taken whom prisoner, the Frenchman ran back to

the battery and Pierre ran down the slope stumbling over the dead

and wounded who, it seemed to him, caught at his feet. But before he

reached the foot of the knoll he was met by a dense crowd of Russian

soldiers who, stumbling, tripping up, and shouting, ran merrily and

wildly toward the battery. (This was the attack for which Ermolov

claimed the credit, declaring that only his courage and good luck made

such a feat possible: it was the attack in which he was said to have

thrown some St. George's Crosses he had in his pocket into the battery

for the first soldiers to take who got there.)



The French who had occupied the battery fled, and our troops

shouting "Hurrah!" pursued them so far beyond the battery that it

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was difficult to call them back.



The prisoners were brought down from the battery and among them

was a wounded French general, whom the officers surrounded. Crowds

of wounded--some known to Pierre and some unknown--Russians and

French, with faces distorted by suffering, walked, crawled, and were

carried on stretchers from the battery. Pierre again went up onto

the knoll where he had spent over an hour, and of that family circle

which had received him as a member he did not find a single one. There

were many dead whom he did not know, but some he recognized. The young

officer still sat in the same way, bent double, in a pool of blood

at the edge of the earth wall. The red-faced man was still

twitching, but they did not carry him away.



Pierre ran down the slope once more.



"Now they will stop it, now they will be horrified at what they have

done!" he thought, aimlessly going toward a crowd of stretcher bearers

moving from the battlefield.



But behind the veil of smoke the sun was still high, and in front

and especially to the left, near Semenovsk, something seemed to be

seething in the smoke, and the roar of cannon and musketry did not

diminish, but even increased to desperation like a man who,

straining himself, shrieks with all his remaining strength.









CHAPTER XXXIII





The chief action of the battle of Borodino was fought within the

seven thousand feet between Borodino and Bagration's fleches. Beyond

that space there was, on the one side, a demonstration made by the

Russians with Uvarov's cavalry at midday, and on the other side,

beyond Utitsa, Poniatowski's collision with Tuchkov; but these two

were detached and feeble actions in comparison with what took place in

the center of the battlefield. On the field between Borodino and the

fleches, beside the wood, the chief action of the day took place on an

open space visible from both sides and was fought in the simplest

and most artless way.



The battle began on both sides with a cannonade from several hundred

guns.



Then when the whole field was covered with smoke, two divisions,

Campan's and Dessaix's, advanced from the French right, while

Murat's troops advanced on Borodino from their left.



From the Shevardino Redoubt where Napoleon was standing the

fleches were two thirds of a mile away, and it was more than a mile as

the crow flies to Borodino, so that Napoleon could not see what was

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happening there, especially as the smoke mingling with the mist hid

the whole locality. The soldiers of Dessaix's division advancing

against the fleches could only be seen till they had entered the

hollow that lay between them and the fleches. As soon as they had

descended into that hollow, the smoke of the guns and musketry on

the fleches grew so dense that it covered the whole approach on that

side of it. Through the smoke glimpses could be caught of something

black--probably men--and at times the glint of bayonets. But whether

they were moving or stationary, whether they were French or Russian,

could not be discovered from the Shevardino Redoubt.



The sun had risen brightly and its slanting rays struck straight

into Napoleon's face as, shading his eyes with his hand, he looked

at the fleches. The smoke spread out before them, and at times it

looked as if the smoke were moving, at times as if the troops moved.

Sometimes shouts were heard through the firing, but it was

impossible to tell what was being done there.



Napoleon, standing on the knoll, looked through a field glass, and

in its small circlet saw smoke and men, sometimes his own and

sometimes Russians, but when he looked again with the naked eye, he

could not tell where what he had seen was.



He descended the knoll and began walking up and down before it.



Occasionally he stopped, listened to the firing, and gazed

intently at the battlefield.



But not only was it impossible to make out what was happening from

where he was standing down below, or from the knoll above on which

some of his generals had taken their stand, but even from the

fleches themselves--in which by this time there were now Russian and

now French soldiers, alternately or together, dead, wounded, alive,

frightened, or maddened--even at those fleches themselves it was

impossible to make out what was taking place. There for several

hours amid incessant cannon and musketry fire, now Russians were

seen alone, now Frenchmen alone, now infantry, and now cavalry: they

appeared, fired, fell, collided, not knowing what to do with one

another, screamed, and ran back again.



From the battlefield adjutants he had sent out, and orderlies from

his marshals, kept galloping up to Napoleon with reports of the

progress of the action, but all these reports were false, both because

it was impossible in the heat of battle to say what was happening at

any given moment and because many of the adjutants did not go to the

actual place of conflict but reported what they had heard from others;

and also because while an adjutant was riding more than a mile to

Napoleon circumstances changed and the news he brought was already

becoming false. Thus an adjutant galloped up from Murat with tidings

that Borodino had been occupied and the bridge over the Kolocha was in

the hands of the French. The adjutant asked whether Napoleon wished

the troops to cross it? Napoleon gave orders that the troops should

form up on the farther side and wait. But before that order was given-

almost as soon in fact as the adjutant had left Borodino--the bridge

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had been retaken by the Russians and burned, in the very skirmish at

which Pierre had been present at the beginning of the battle.



An adjutant galloped up from the fleches with a pale and

frightened face and reported to Napoleon that their attack had been

repulsed, Campan wounded, and Davout killed; yet at the very time

the adjutant had been told that the French had been repulsed, the

fleches had in fact been recaptured by other French troops, and Davout

was alive and only slightly bruised. On the basis of these necessarily

untrustworthy reports Napoleon gave his orders, which had either

been executed before he gave them or could not be and were not

executed.



The marshals and generals, who were nearer to the field of battle

but, like Napoleon, did not take part in the actual fighting and

only occasionally went within musket range, made their own

arrangements without asking Napoleon and issued orders where and in

what direction to fire and where cavalry should gallop and infantry

should run. But even their orders, like Napoleon's, were seldom

carried out, and then but partially. For the most part things happened

contrary to their orders. Soldiers ordered to advance ran back on

meeting grapeshot; soldiers ordered to remain where they were,

suddenly, seeing Russians unexpectedly before them, sometimes rushed

back and sometimes forward, and the cavalry dashed without orders in

pursuit of the flying Russians. In this way two cavalry regiments

galloped through the Semenovsk hollow and as soon as they reached

the top of the incline turned round and galloped full speed back

again. The infantry moved in the same way, sometimes running to

quite other places than those they were ordered to go to. All orders

as to where and when to move the guns, when to send infantry to

shoot or horsemen to ride down the Russian infantry--all such orders

were given by the officers on the spot nearest to the units concerned,

without asking either Ney, Davout, or Murat, much less Napoleon.

They did not fear getting into trouble for not fulfilling orders or

for acting on their own initiative, for in battle what is at stake

is what is dearest to man--his own life--and it sometimes seems that

safety lies in running back, sometimes in running forward; and these

men who were right in the heat of the battle acted according to the

mood of the moment. In reality, however, all these movements forward

and backward did not improve or alter the position of the troops.

All their rushing and galloping at one another did little harm, the

harm of disablement and death was caused by the balls and bullets that

flew over the fields on which these men were floundering about. As

soon as they left the place where the balls and bullets were flying

about, their superiors, located in the background, re-formed them

and brought them under discipline and under the influence of that

discipline led them back to the zone of fire, where under the

influence of fear of death they lost their discipline and rushed about

according to the chance promptings of the throng.









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CHAPTER XXXIV





Napoleon's generals--Davout, Ney, and Murat, who were near that

region of fire and sometimes even entered it--repeatedly led into it

huge masses of well-ordered troops. But contrary to what had always

happened in their former battles, instead of the news they expected of

the enemy's flight, these orderly masses returned thence as

disorganized and terrified mobs. The generals re-formed them, but

their numbers constantly decreased. In the middle of the day Murat

sent his adjutant to Napoleon to demand reinforcements.



Napoleon sat at the foot of the knoll, drinking punch, when

Murat's adjutant galloped up with an assurance that the Russians would

be routed if His Majesty would let him have another division.



"Reinforcements?" said Napoleon in a tone of stern surprise, looking

at the adjutant--a handsome lad with long black curls arranged like

Murat's own--as though he did not understand his words.



"Reinforcements!" thought Napoleon to himself. "How can they need

reinforcements when they already have half the army directed against a

weak, unentrenched Russian wing?"



"Tell the King of Naples," said he sternly, "that it is not noon

yet, and I don't yet see my chessboard clearly. Go!..."



The handsome boy adjutant with the long hair sighed deeply without

removing his hand from his hat and galloped back to where men were

being slaughtered.



Napoleon rose and having summoned Caulaincourt and Berthier began

talking to them about matters unconnected with the battle.



In the midst of this conversation, which was beginning to interest

Napoleon, Berthier's eyes turned to look at a general with a suite,

who was galloping toward the knoll on a lathering horse. It was

Belliard. Having dismounted he went up to the Emperor with rapid

strides and in a loud voice began boldly demonstrating the necessity

of sending reinforcements. He swore on his honor that the Russians

were lost if the Emperor would give another division.



Napoleon shrugged his shoulders and continued to pace up and down

without replying. Belliard began talking loudly and eagerly to the

generals of the suite around him.



"You are very fiery, Belliard," said Napoleon, when he again came up

to the general. "In the heat of a battle it is easy to make a mistake.

Go and have another look and then come back to me."



Before Belliard was out of sight, a messenger from another part of

the battlefield galloped up.



"Now then, what do you want?" asked Napoleon in the tone of a man

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irritated at being continually disturbed.



"Sire, the prince..." began the adjutant.



"Asks for reinforcements?" said Napoleon with an angry gesture.



The adjutant bent his head affirmatively and began to report, but

the Emperor turned from him, took a couple of steps, stopped, came

back, and called Berthier.



"We must give reserves," he said, moving his arms slightly apart.

"Who do you think should be sent there?" he asked of Berthier (whom he

subsequently termed "that gosling I have made an eagle").



"Send Claparede's division, sire," replied Berthier, who knew all

the divisions regiments, and battalions by heart.



Napoleon nodded assent.



The adjutant galloped to Claparede's division and a few minutes

later the Young Guards stationed behind the knoll moved forward.

Napoleon gazed silently in that direction.



"No!" he suddenly said to Berthier. "I can't send Claparede. Send

Friant's division."



Though there was no advantage in sending Friant's division instead

of Claparede's, and even in obvious inconvenience and delay in

stopping Claparede and sending Friant now, the order was carried out

exactly. Napoleon did not notice that in regard to his army he was

playing the part of a doctor who hinders by his medicines--a role he

so justly understood and condemned.



Friant's division disappeared as the others had done into the

smoke of the battlefield. From all sides adjutants continued to arrive

at a gallop and as if by agreement all said the same thing. They all

asked for reinforcements and all said that the Russians were holding

their positions and maintaining a hellish fire under which the

French army was melting away.



Napoleon sat on a campstool, wrapped in thought.



M. de Beausset, the man so fond of travel, having fasted since

morning, came up to the Emperor and ventured respectfully to suggest

lunch to His Majesty.



"I hope I may now congratulate Your Majesty on a victory?" said he.



Napoleon silently shook his head in negation. Assuming the

negation to refer only to the victory and not to the lunch, M. de

Beausset ventured with respectful jocularity to remark that there is

no reason for not having lunch when one can get it.



"Go away..." exclaimed Napoleon suddenly and morosely, and turned

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aside.



A beatific smile of regret, repentance, and ecstasy beamed on M.

de Beausset's face and he glided away to the other generals.



Napoleon was experiencing a feeling of depression like that of an

ever-lucky gambler who, after recklessly flinging money about and

always winning, suddenly just when he has calculated all the chances

of the game, finds that the more he considers his play the more surely

he loses.



His troops were the same, his generals the same, the same

preparations had been made, the same dispositions, and the same

proclamation courte et energique, he himself was still the same: he

knew that and knew that he was now even more experienced and

skillful than before. Even the enemy was the same as at Austerlitz and

Friedland--yet the terrible stroke of his arm had supernaturally

become impotent.



All the old methods that had been unfailingly crowned with

success: the concentration of batteries on one point, an attack by

reserves to break the enemy's line, and a cavalry attack by "the men

of iron," all these methods had already been employed, yet not only

was there no victory, but from all sides came the same news of

generals killed and wounded, of reinforcements needed, of the

impossibility of driving back the Russians, and of disorganization

among his own troops.



Formerly, after he had given two or three orders and uttered a few

phrases, marshals and adjutants had come galloping up with

congratulations and happy faces, announcing the trophies taken, the

corps of prisoners, bundles of enemy eagles and standards, cannon

and stores, and Murat had only begged leave to loose the cavalry to

gather in the baggage wagons. So it had been at Lodi, Marengo, Arcola,

Jena, Austerlitz, Wagram, and so on. But now something strange was

happening to his troops.



Despite news of the capture of the fleches, Napoleon saw that this

was not the same, not at all the same, as what had happened in his

former battles. He saw that what he was feeling was felt by all the

men about him experienced in the art of war. All their faces looked

dejected, and they all shunned one another's eyes--only a de

Beausset could fail to grasp the meaning of what was happening.



But Napoleon with his long experience of war well knew the meaning

of a battle not gained by the attacking side in eight hours, after all

efforts had been expended. He knew that it was a lost battle and

that the least accident might now--with the fight balanced on such a

strained center--destroy him and his army.



When he ran his mind over the whole of this strange Russian campaign

in which not one battle had been won, and in which not a flag, or

cannon, or army corps had been captured in two months, when he

looked at the concealed depression on the faces around him and heard

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reports of the Russians still holding their ground--a terrible feeling

like a nightmare took possession of him, and all the unlucky accidents

that might destroy him occurred to his mind. The Russians might fall

on his left wing, might break through his center, he himself might

be killed by a stray cannon ball. All this was possible. In former

battles he had only considered the possibilities of success, but now

innumerable unlucky chances presented themselves, and he expected them

all. Yes, it was like a dream in which a man fancies that a ruffian is

coming to attack him, and raises his arm to strike that ruffian a

terrible blow which he knows should annihilate him, but then feels

that his arm drops powerless and limp like a rag, and the horror of

unavoidable destruction seizes him in his helplessness.



The news that the Russians were attacking the left flank of the

French army aroused that horror in Napoleon. He sat silently on a

campstool below the knoll, with head bowed and elbows on his knees.

Berthier approached and suggested that they should ride along the line

to ascertain the position of affairs.



"What? What do you say?" asked Napoleon. "Yes, tell them to bring me

my horse."



He mounted and rode toward Semenovsk.



Amid the powder smoke, slowly dispersing over the whole space

through which Napoleon rode, horses and men were lying in pools of

blood, singly or in heaps. Neither Napoleon nor any of his generals

had ever before seen such horrors or so many slain in such a small

area. The roar of guns, that had not ceased for ten hours, wearied the

ear and gave a peculiar significance to the spectacle, as music does

to tableaux vivants. Napoleon rode up the high ground at Semenovsk,

and through the smoke saw ranks of men in uniforms of a color

unfamiliar to him. They were Russians.



The Russians stood in serried ranks behind Semenovsk village and its

knoll, and their guns boomed incessantly along their line and sent

forth clouds of smoke. It was no longer a battle: it was a

continuous slaughter which could be of no avail either to the French

or the Russians. Napoleon stopped his horse and again fell into the

reverie from which Berthier had aroused him. He could not stop what

was going on before him and around him and was supposed to be directed

by him and to depend on him, and from its lack of success this affair,

for the first time, seemed to him unnecessary and horrible.



One of the generals rode up to Napoleon and ventured to offer to

lead the Old Guard into action. Ney and Berthier, standing near

Napoleon, exchanged looks and smiled contemptuously at this

general's senseless offer.



Napoleon bowed his head and remained silent a long time.



"At eight hundred leagues from France, I will not have my Guard

destroyed!" he said, and turning his horse rode back to Shevardino.



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CHAPTER XXXV





On the rug-covered bench where Pierre had seen him in the morning

sat Kutuzov, his gray head hanging, his heavy body relaxed. He gave no

orders, but only assented to or dissented from what others suggested.



"Yes, yes, do that," he replied to various proposals. "Yes, yes: go,

dear boy, and have a look," he would say to one or another of those

about him; or, "No, don't, we'd better wait!" He listened to the

reports that were brought him and gave directions when his

subordinates demanded that of him; but when listening to the reports

it seemed as if he were not interested in the import of the words

spoken, but rather in something else--in the expression of face and

tone of voice of those who were reporting. By long years of military

experience he knew, and with the wisdom of age understood, that it

is impossible for one man to direct hundreds of thousands of others

struggling with death, and he knew that the result of a battle is

decided not by the orders of a commander in chief, nor the place where

the troops are stationed, nor by the number of cannon or of

slaughtered men, but by that intangible force called the spirit of the

army, and he watched this force and guided it in as far as that was in

his power.



Kutuzov's general expression was one of concentrated quiet

attention, and his face wore a strained look as if he found it

difficult to master the fatigue of his old and feeble body.



At eleven o'clock they brought him news that the fleches captured by

the French had been retaken, but that Prince Bagration was wounded.

Kutuzov groaned and swayed his head.



"Ride over to Prince Peter Ivanovich and find out about it exactly,"

he said to one of his adjutants, and then turned to the Duke of

Wurttemberg who was standing behind him.



"Will Your Highness please take command of the first army?"



Soon after the duke's departure--before he could possibly have

reached Semenovsk--his adjutant came back from him and told Kutuzov

that the duke asked for more troops.



Kutuzov made a grimace and sent an order to Dokhturov to take over

the command of the first army, and a request to the duke--whom he said

he could not spare at such an important moment--to return to him. When

they brought him news that Murat had been taken prisoner, and the

staff officers congratulated him, Kutuzov smiled.



"Wait a little, gentlemen," said he. "The battle is won, and there

is nothing extraordinary in the capture of Murat. Still, it is

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better to wait before we rejoice."



But he sent an adjutant to take the news round the army.



When Scherbinin came galloping from the left flank with news that

the French had captured the fleches and the village of Semenovsk,

Kutuzov, guessing by the sounds of the battle and by Scherbinin's

looks that the news was bad, rose as if to stretch his legs and,

taking Scherbinin's arm, led him aside.



"Go, my dear fellow," he said to Ermolov, "and see whether something

can't be done."



Kutuzov was in Gorki, near the center of the Russian position. The

attack directed by Napoleon against our left flank had been several

times repulsed. In the center the French had not got beyond

Borodino, and on their left flank Uvarov's cavalry had put the

French to flight.



Toward three o'clock the French attacks ceased. On the faces of

all who came from the field of battle, and of those who stood around

him, Kutuzov noticed an expression of extreme tension. He was

satisfied with the day's success--a success exceeding his

expectations, but the old man's strength was failing him. Several

times his head dropped low as if it were falling and he dozed off.

Dinner was brought him.



Adjutant General Wolzogen, the man who when riding past Prince

Andrew had said, "the war should be extended widely," and whom

Bagration so detested, rode up while Kutuzov was at dinner. Wolzogen

had come from Barclay de Tolly to report on the progress of affairs on

the left flank. The sagacious Barclay de Tolly, seeing crowds of

wounded men running back and the disordered rear of the army,

weighed all the circumstances, concluded that the battle was lost, and

sent his favorite officer to the commander in chief with that news.



Kutuzov was chewing a piece of roast chicken with difficulty and

glanced at Wolzogen with eyes that brightened under their puckering

lids.



Wolzogen, nonchalantly stretching his legs, approached Kutuzov

with a half-contemptuous smile on his lips, scarcely touching the peak

of his cap.



He treated his Serene Highness with a somewhat affected

nonchalance intended to show that, as a highly trained military man,

he left it to Russians to make an idol of this useless old man, but

that he knew whom he was dealing with. "Der alte Herr" (as in their

own set the Germans called Kutuzov) "is making himself very

comfortable," thought Wolzogen, and looking severely at the dishes

in front of Kutuzov he began to report to "the old gentleman" the

position of affairs on the left flank as Barclay had ordered him to

and as he himself had seen and understood it.



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"All the points of our position are in the enemy's hands and we

cannot dislodge them for lack of troops, the men are running away

and it is impossible to stop them," he reported.



Kutuzov ceased chewing and fixed an astonished gaze on Wolzogen,

as if not understand what was said to him. Wolzogen, noticing "the old

gentleman's" agitation, said with a smile:



"I have not considered it right to conceal from your Serene Highness

what I have seen. The troops are in complete disorder..."



"You have seen? You have seen?..." Kutuzov shouted frowning, and

rising quickly he went up to Wolzogen.



"How... how dare you!..." he shouted, choking and making a

threatening gesture with his trembling arms: "How dare you, sir, say

that to me? You know nothing about it. Tell General Barclay from me

that his information is incorrect and that the real course of the

battle is better known to me, the commander in chief, than to him."



Wolzogen was about to make a rejoinder, but Kutuzov interrupted him.



"The enemy has been repulsed on the left and defeated on the right

flank. If you have seen amiss, sir, do not allow yourself to say

what you don't know! Be so good as to ride to General Barclay and

inform him of my firm intention to attack the enemy tomorrow," said

Kutuzov sternly.



All were silent, and the only sound audible was the heavy

breathing of the panting old general.



"They are repulsed everywhere, for which I thank God and our brave

army! The enemy is beaten, and tomorrow we shall drive him from the

sacred soil of Russia," said Kutuzov crossing himself, and he suddenly

sobbed as his eyes filled with tears.



Wolzogen, shrugging his shoulders and curling his lips, stepped

silently aside, marveling at "the old gentleman's" conceited

stupidity.



"Ah, here he is, my hero!" said Kutuzov to a portly, handsome,

dark-haired general who was just ascending the knoll.



This was Raevski, who had spent the whole day at the most

important part of the field of Borodino.



Raevski reported that the troops were firmly holding their ground

and that the French no longer ventured to attack.



After hearing him, Kutuzov said in French:



"Then you do not think, like some others, that we must retreat?"



"On the contrary, your Highness, in indecisive actions it is

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always the most stubborn who remain victors," replied Raevski, "and in

my opinion..."



"Kaysarov!" Kutuzov called to his adjutant. "Sit down and write

out the order of the day for tomorrow. And you," he continued,

addressing another, "ride along the line and that tomorrow we attack."



While Kutuzov was talking to Raevski and dictating the order of

the day, Wolzogen returned from Barclay and said that General

Barclay wished to have written confirmation of the order the field

marshal had given.



Kutuzov, without looking at Wolzogen, gave directions for the

order to be written out which the former commander in chief, to

avoid personal responsibility, very judiciously wished to receive.



And by means of that mysterious indefinable bond which maintains

throughout an army one and the same temper, known as "the spirit of

the army," and which constitutes the sinew of war, Kutuzov's words,

his order for a battle next day, immediately became known from one end

of the army to the other.



It was far from being the same words or the same order that

reached the farthest links of that chain. The tales passing from mouth

to mouth at different ends of the army did not even resemble what

Kutuzov had said, but the sense of his words spread everywhere because

what he said was not the outcome of cunning calculations, but of a

feeling that lay in the commander in chief's soul as in that of

every Russian.



And on learning that tomorrow they were to attack the enemy, and

hearing from the highest quarters a confirmation of what they wanted

to believe, the exhausted, wavering men felt comforted and inspirited.









CHAPTER XXXVI





Prince Andrew's regiment was among the reserves which till after one

o'clock were stationed inactive behind Semenovsk, under heavy

artillery fire. Toward two o'clock the regiment, having already lost

more than two hundred men, was moved forward into a trampled

oatfield in the gap between Semenovsk and the Knoll Battery, where

thousands of men perished that day and on which an intense,

concentrated fire from several hundred enemy guns was directed between

one and two o'clock.



Without moving from that spot or firing a single shot the regiment

here lost another third of its men. From in front and especially

from the right, in the unlifting smoke the guns boomed, and out of the

mysterious domain of smoke that overlay the whole space in front,

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quick hissing cannon balls and slow whistling shells flew unceasingly.

At times, as if to allow them a respite, a quarter of an hour passed

during which the cannon balls and shells all flew overhead, but

sometimes several men were torn from the regiment in a minute and

the slain were continually being dragged away and the wounded

carried off.



With each fresh blow less and less chance of life remained for those

not yet killed. The regiment stood in columns of battalion, three

hundred paces apart, but nevertheless the men were always in one and

the same mood. All alike were taciturn and morose. Talk was rarely

heard in the ranks, and it ceased altogether every time the thud of

a successful shot and the cry of "stretchers!" was heard. Most of

the time, by their officers' order, the men sat on the ground. One,

having taken off his shako, carefully loosened the gathers of its

lining and drew them tight again; another, rubbing some dry clay

between his palms, polished his bayonet; another fingered the strap

and pulled the buckle of his bandolier, while another smoothed and

refolded his leg bands and put his boots on again. Some built little

houses of the tufts in the plowed ground, or plaited baskets from

the straw in the cornfield. All seemed fully absorbed in these

pursuits. When men were killed or wounded, when rows of stretchers

went past, when some troops retreated, and when great masses of the

enemy came into view through the smoke, no one paid any attention to

these things. But when our artillery or cavalry advanced or some of

our infantry were seen to move forward, words of approval were heard

on all sides. But the liveliest attention was attracted by occurrences

quite apart from, and unconnected with, the battle. It was as if the

minds of these morally exhausted men found relief in everyday,

commonplace occurrences. A battery of artillery was passing in front

of the regiment. The horse of an ammunition cart put its leg over a

trace. "Hey, look at the trace horse!... Get her leg out! She'll

fall.... Ah, they don't see it!" came identical shouts from the

ranks all along the regiment. Another time, general attention was

attracted by a small brown dog, coming heaven knows whence, which

trotted in a preoccupied manner in front of the ranks with tail

stiffly erect till suddenly a shell fell close by, when it yelped,

tucked its tail between its legs, and darted aside. Yells and

shrieks of laughter rose from the whole regiment. But such

distractions lasted only a moment, and for eight hours the men had

been inactive, without food, in constant fear of death, and their pale

and gloomy faces grew ever paler and gloomier.



Prince Andrew, pale and gloomy like everyone in the regiment,

paced up and down from the border of one patch to another, at the edge

of the meadow beside an oatfield, with head bowed and arms behind

his back. There was nothing for him to do and no orders to be given.

Everything went on of itself. The killed were dragged from the

front, the wounded carried away, and the ranks closed up. If any

soldiers ran to the rear they returned immediately and hastily. At

first Prince Andrew, considering it his duty to rouse the courage of

the men and to set them an example, walked about among the ranks,

but he soon became convinced that this was unnecessary and that

there was nothing he could teach them. All the powers of his soul,

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as of every soldier there, were unconsciously bent on avoiding the

contemplation of the horrors of their situation. He walked along the

meadow, dragging his feet, rustling the grass, and gazing at the

dust that covered his boots; now he took big strides trying to keep to

the footprints left on the meadow by the mowers, then he counted his

steps, calculating how often he must walk from one strip to another to

walk a mile, then he stripped the flowers from the wormwood that

grew along a boundary rut, rubbed them in his palms, and smelled their

pungent, sweetly bitter scent. Nothing remained of the previous

day's thoughts. He thought of nothing. He listened with weary ears

to the ever-recurring sounds, distinguishing the whistle of flying

projectiles from the booming of the reports, glanced at the tiresomely

familiar faces of the men of the first battalion, and waited. "Here it

comes... this one is coming our way again!" he thought, listening to

an approaching whistle in the hidden region of smoke. "One, another!

Again! It has hit...." He stopped and looked at the ranks. "No, it has

gone over. But this one has hit!" And again he started trying to reach

the boundary strip in sixteen paces. A whizz and a thud! Five paces

from him, a cannon ball tore up the dry earth and disappeared. A chill

ran down his back. Again he glanced at the ranks. Probably many had

been hit--a large crowd had gathered near the second battalion.



"Adjutant!" he shouted. "Order them not to crowd together."



The adjutant, having obeyed this instruction, approached Prince

Andrew. From the other side a battalion commander rode up.



"Look out!" came a frightened cry from a soldier and, like a bird

whirring in rapid flight and alighting on the ground, a shell

dropped with little noise within two steps of Prince Andrew and

close to the battalion commander's horse. The horse first,

regardless of whether it was right or wrong to show fear, snorted,

reared almost throwing the major, and galloped aside. The horse's

terror infected the men.



"Lie down!" cried the adjutant, throwing himself flat on the ground.



Prince Andrew hesitated. The smoking shell spun like a top between

him and the prostrate adjutant, near a wormwood plant between the

field and the meadow.



"Can this be death?" thought Prince Andrew, looking with a quite

new, envious glance at the grass, the wormwood, and the streamlet of

smoke that curled up from the rotating black ball. "I cannot, I do not

wish to die. I love life--I love this grass, this earth, this air...."

He thought this, and at the same time remembered that people were

looking at him.



"It's shameful, sir!" he said to the adjutant. "What..."



He did not finish speaking. At one and the same moment came the

sound of an explosion, a whistle of splinters as from a breaking

window frame, a suffocating smell of powder, and Prince Andrew started

to one side, raising his arm, and fell on his chest. Several

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officers ran up to him. From the right side of his abdomen, blood

was welling out making a large stain on the grass.



The militiamen with stretchers who were called up stood behind the

officers. Prince Andrew lay on his chest with his face in the grass,

breathing heavily and noisily.



"What are you waiting for? Come along!"



The peasants went up and took him by his shoulders and legs, but

he moaned piteously and, exchanging looks, they set him down again.



"Pick him up, lift him, it's all the same!" cried someone.



They again took him by the shoulders and laid him on the stretcher.



"Ah, God! My God! What is it? The stomach? That means death! My

God!"--voices among the officers were heard saying.



"It flew a hair's breadth past my ear," said the adjutant.



The peasants, adjusting the stretcher to their shoulders, started

hurriedly along the path they had trodden down, to the dressing

station.



"Keep in step! Ah... those peasants!" shouted an officer, seizing by

their shoulders and checking the peasants, who were walking unevenly

and jolting the stretcher.



"Get into step, Fedor... I say, Fedor!" said the foremost peasant.



"Now that's right!" said the one behind joyfully, when he had got

into step.



"Your excellency! Eh, Prince!" said the trembling voice of Timokhin,

who had run up and was looking down on the stretcher.



Prince Andrew opened his eyes and looked up at the speaker from

the stretcher into which his head had sunk deep and again his

eyelids drooped.





The militiamen carried Prince Andrew to dressing station by the

wood, where wagons were stationed. The dressing station consisted of

three tents with flaps turned back, pitched at the edge of a birch

wood. In the wood, wagons and horses were standing. The horses were

eating oats from their movable troughs and sparrows flew down and

pecked the grains that fell. Some crows, scenting blood, flew among

the birch trees cawing impatiently. Around the tents, over more than

five acres, bloodstained men in various garbs stood, sat, or lay.

Around the wounded stood crowds of soldier stretcher-bearers with

dismal and attentive faces, whom the officers keeping order tried in

vain to drive from the spot. Disregarding the officers' orders, the

soldiers stood leaning against their stretchers and gazing intently,

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as if trying to comprehend the difficult problem of what was taking

place before them. From the tents came now loud angry cries and now

plaintive groans. Occasionally dressers ran out to fetch water, or

to point out those who were to be brought in next. The wounded men

awaiting their turn outside the tents groaned, sighed, wept, screamed,

swore, or asked for vodka. Some were delirious. Prince Andrew's

bearers, stepping over the wounded who had not yet been bandaged, took

him, as a regimental commander, close up to one of the tents and there

stopped, awaiting instructions. Prince Andrew opened his eyes and

for a long time could not make out what was going on around him. He

remembered the meadow, the wormwood, the field, the whirling black

ball, and his sudden rush of passionate love of life. Two steps from

him, leaning against a branch and talking loudly and attracting

general attention, stood a tall, handsome, black-haired

noncommissioned officer with a bandaged head. He had been wounded in

the head and leg by bullets. Around him, eagerly listening to his

talk, a crowd of wounded and stretcher-bearers was gathered.



"We kicked him out from there so that he chucked everything, we

grabbed the King himself!" cried he, looking around him with eyes that

glittered with fever. "If only reserves had come up just then, lads,

there wouldn't have been nothing left of him! I tell you surely..."



Like all the others near the speaker, Prince Andrew looked at him

with shining eyes and experienced a sense of comfort. "But isn't it

all the same now?" thought he. "And what will be there, and what has

there been here? Why was I so reluctant to part with life? There was

something in this life I did not and do not understand."









CHAPTER XXXVII





One of the doctors came out of the tent in a bloodstained apron,

holding a cigar between the thumb and little finger of one of his

small bloodstained hands, so as not to smear it. He raised his head

and looked about him, but above the level of the wounded men. He

evidently wanted a little respite. After turning his head from right

to left for some time, he sighed and looked down.



"All right, immediately," he replied to a dresser who pointed Prince

Andrew out to him, and he told them to carry him into the tent.



Murmurs arose among the wounded who were waiting.



"It seems that even in the next world only the gentry are to have

a chance!" remarked one.



Prince Andrew was carried in and laid on a table that had only

just been cleared and which a dresser was washing down. Prince

Andrew could not make out distinctly what was in that tent. The

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pitiful groans from all sides and the torturing pain in his thigh,

stomach, and back distracted him. All he saw about him merged into a

general impression of naked, bleeding human bodies that seemed to fill

the whole of the low tent, as a few weeks previously, on that hot

August day, such bodies had filled the dirty pond beside the

Smolensk road. Yes, it was the same flesh, the same chair a canon, the

sight of which had even then filled him with horror, as by a

presentiment.



There were three operating tables in the tent. Two were occupied,

and on the third they placed Prince Andrew. For a little while he

was left alone and involuntarily witnessed what was taking place on

the other two tables. On the nearest one sat a Tartar, probably a

Cossack, judging by the uniform thrown down beside him. Four

soldiers were holding him, and a spectacled doctor was cutting into

his muscular brown back.



"Ooh, ooh, ooh!" grunted the Tartar, and suddenly lifting up his

swarthy snub-nosed face with its high cheekbones, and baring his white

teeth, he began to wriggle and twitch his body and utter piercing,

ringing, and prolonged yells. On the other table, round which many

people were crowding, a tall well-fed man lay on his back with his

head thrown back. His curly hair, its color, and the shape of his head

seemed strangely familiar to Prince Andrew. Several dressers were

pressing on his chest to hold him down. One large, white, plump leg

twitched rapidly all the time with a feverish tremor. The man was

sobbing and choking convulsively. Two doctors--one of whom was pale

and trembling--were silently doing something to this man's other, gory

leg. When he had finished with the Tartar, whom they covered with an

overcoat, the spectacled doctor came up to Prince Andrew, wiping his

hands.



He glanced at Prince Andrew's face and quickly turned away.



"Undress him! What are you waiting for?" he cried angrily to the

dressers.



His very first, remotest recollections of childhood came back to

Prince Andrew's mind when the dresser with sleeves rolled up began

hastily to undo the buttons of his clothes and undressed him. The

doctor bent down over the wound, felt it, and sighed deeply. Then he

made a sign to someone, and the torturing pain in his abdomen caused

Prince Andrew to lose consciousness. When he came to himself the

splintered portions of his thighbone had been extracted, the torn

flesh cut away, and the wound bandaged. Water was being sprinkled on

his face. As soon as Prince Andrew opened his eyes, the doctor bent

over, kissed him silently on the lips, and hurried away.



After the sufferings he had been enduring, Prince Andrew enjoyed a

blissful feeling such as he had not experienced for a long time. All

the best and happiest moments of his life--especially his earliest

childhood, when he used to be undressed and put to bed, and when

leaning over him his nurse sang him to sleep and he, burying his

head in the pillow, felt happy in the mere consciousness of life-

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returned to his memory, not merely as something past but as

something present.



The doctors were busily engaged with the wounded man the shape of

whose head seemed familiar to Prince Andrew: they were lifting him

up and trying to quiet him.



"Show it to me.... Oh, ooh... Oh! Oh, ooh!" his frightened moans

could be heard, subdued by suffering and broken by sobs.



Hearing those moans Prince Andrew wanted to weep.

Whether because he was dying without glory, or because he was sorry to

part with life, or because of those memories of a childhood that could

not return, or because he was suffering and others were suffering

and that man near him was groaning so piteously--he felt like

weeping childlike, kindly, and almost happy tears.



The wounded man was shown his amputated leg stained with clotted

blood and with the boot still on.



"Oh! Oh, ooh!" he sobbed, like a woman.



The doctor who had been standing beside him, preventing Prince

Andrew from seeing his face, moved away.



"My God! What is this? Why is he here?" said Prince Andrew to

himself.



In the miserable, sobbing, enfeebled man whose leg had just been

amputated, he recognized Anatole Kuragin. Men were supporting him in

their arms and offering him a glass of water, but his trembling,

swollen lips could not grasp its rim. Anatole was sobbing painfully.

"Yes, it is he! Yes, that man is somehow closely and painfully

connected with me," thought Prince Andrew, not yet clearly grasping

what he saw before him. "What is the connection of that man with my

childhood and life?" he asked himself without finding an answer. And

suddenly a new unexpected memory from that realm of pure and loving

childhood presented itself to him. He remembered Natasha as he had

seen her for the first time at the ball in 1810, with her slender neck

and arms and with a frightened happy face ready for rapture, and

love and tenderness for her, stronger and more vivid than ever,

awoke in his soul. He now remembered the connection that existed

between himself and this man who was dimly gazing at him through tears

that filled his swollen eyes. He remembered everything, and ecstatic

pity and love for that man overflowed his happy heart.



Prince Andrew could no longer restrain himself and wept tender

loving tears for his fellow men, for himself, and for his own and

their errors.



"Compassion, love of our brothers, for those who love us and for

those who hate us, love of our enemies; yes, that love which God

preached on earth and which Princess Mary taught me and I did not

understand--that is what made me sorry to part with life, that is what

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remained for me had I lived. But now it is too late. I know it!"









CHAPTER XXXVIII





The terrible spectacle of the battlefield covered with dead and

wounded, together with the heaviness of his head and the news that

some twenty generals he knew personally had been killed or wounded,

and the consciousness of the impotence of his once mighty arm,

produced an unexpected impression on Napoleon who usually liked to

look at the killed and wounded, thereby, he considered, testing his

strength of mind. This day the horrible appearance of the

battlefield overcame that strength of mind which he thought

constituted his merit and his greatness. He rode hurriedly from the

battlefield and returned to the Shevardino knoll, where he sat on

his campstool, his sallow face swollen and heavy, his eyes dim, his

nose red, and his voice hoarse, involuntarily listening, with downcast

eyes, to the sounds of firing. With painful dejection he awaited the

end of this action, in which he regarded himself as a participant

and which he was unable to arrest. A personal, human feeling for a

brief moment got the better of the artificial phantasm of life he

had served so long. He felt in his own person the sufferings and death

he had witnessed on the battlefield. The heaviness of his head and

chest reminded him of the possibility of suffering and death for

himself. At that moment he did not desire Moscow, or victory, or glory

(what need had he for any more glory?). The one thing he wished for

was rest, tranquillity, and freedom. But when he had been on the

Semenovsk heights the artillery commander had proposed to him to bring

several batteries of artillery up to those heights to strengthen the

fire on the Russian troops crowded in front of Knyazkovo. Napoleon had

assented and had given orders that news should be brought to him of

the effect those batteries produced.



An adjutant came now to inform him that the fire of two hundred guns

had been concentrated on the Russians, as he had ordered, but that

they still held their ground.



"Our fire is mowing them down by rows, but still they hold on," said

the adjutant.



"They want more!..." said Napoleon in a hoarse voice.



"Sire?" asked the adjutant who had not heard the remark.



"They want more!" croaked Napoleon frowning. "Let them have it!"



Even before he gave that order the thing he did not desire, and

for which he gave the order only because he thought it was expected of

him, was being done. And he fell back into that artificial realm of

imaginary greatness, and again--as a horse walking a treadmill

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thinks it is doing something for itself--he submissively fulfilled the

cruel, sad, gloomy, and inhuman role predestined for him.



And not for that day and hour alone were the mind and conscience

darkened of this man on whom the responsibility for what was happening

lay more than on all the others who took part in it. Never to the

end of his life could he understand goodness, beauty, or truth, or the

significance of his actions which were too contrary to goodness and

truth, too remote from everything human, for him ever to be able to

grasp their meaning. He could not disavow his actions, belauded as

they were by half the world, and so he had to repudiate truth,

goodness, and all humanity.



Not only on that day, as he rode over the battlefield strewn with

men killed and maimed (by his will as he believed), did he reckon as

he looked at them how many Russians there were for each Frenchman and,

deceiving himself, find reason for rejoicing in the calculation that

there were five Russians for every Frenchman. Not on that day alone

did he write in a letter to Paris that "the battle field was

superb," because fifty thousand corpses lay there, but even on the

island of St. Helena in the peaceful solitude where he said he

intended to devote his leisure to an account of the great deeds he had

done, he wrote:





The Russian war should have been the most popular war of modern

times: it was a war of good sense, for real interests, for the

tranquillity and security of all; it was purely pacific and

conservative.



It was a war for a great cause, the end of uncertainties and the

beginning of security. A new horizon and new labors were opening

out, full of well-being and prosperity for all. The European system

was already founded; all that remained was to organize it.



Satisfied on these great points and with tranquility everywhere, I

too should have had my Congress and my Holy Alliance. Those ideas were

stolen from me. In that reunion of great sovereigns we should have

discussed our interests like one family, and have rendered account

to the peoples as clerk to master.



Europe would in this way soon have been, in fact, but one people,

and anyone who traveled anywhere would have found himself always in

the common fatherland. I should have demanded the freedom of all

navigable rivers for everybody, that the seas should be common to all,

and that the great standing armies should be reduced henceforth to

mere guards for the sovereigns.



On returning to France, to the bosom of the great, strong,

magnificent, peaceful, and glorious fatherland, I should have

proclaimed her frontiers immutable; all future wars purely

defensive, all aggrandizement antinational. I should have associated

my son in the Empire; my dictatorship would have been finished, and

his constitutional reign would have begun.

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Paris would have been the capital of the world, and the French the

envy of the nations!



My leisure then, and my old age, would have been devoted, in company

with the Empress and during the royal apprenticeship of my son, to

leisurely visiting, with our own horses and like a true country

couple, every corner of the Empire, receiving complaints, redressing

wrongs, and scattering public buildings and benefactions on all

sides and everywhere.





Napoleon, predestined by Providence for the gloomy role of

executioner of the peoples, assured himself that the aim of his

actions had been the peoples' welfare and that he could control the

fate of millions and by the employment of power confer benefactions.





"Of four hundred thousand who crossed the Vistula," he wrote further

of the Russian war, "half were Austrians, Prussians, Saxons, Poles,

Bavarians, Wurttembergers, Mecklenburgers, Spaniards, Italians, and

Neapolitans. The Imperial army, strictly speaking, was one third

composed of Dutch, Belgians, men from the borders of the Rhine,

Piedmontese, Swiss, Genevese, Tuscans, Romans, inhabitants of the

Thirty-second Military Division, of Bremen, of Hamburg, and so on:

it included scarcely a hundred and forty thousand who spoke French.

The Russian expedition actually cost France less than fifty thousand

men; the Russian army in its retreat from Vilna to Moscow lost in

the various battles four times more men than the French army; the

burning of Moscow cost the lives of a hundred thousand Russians who

died of cold and want in the woods; finally, in its march from

Moscow to the Oder the Russian army also suffered from the severity of

the season; so that by the the time it reached Vilna it numbered

only fifty thousand, and at Kalisch less than eighteen thousand."





He imagined that the war with Russia came about by his will, and the

horrors that occurred did not stagger his soul. He boldly took the

whole responsibility for what happened, and his darkened mind found

justification in the belief that among the hundreds of thousands who

perished there were fewer Frenchmen than Hessians and Bavarians.









CHAPTER XXXIX





Several tens of thousands of the slain lay in diverse postures and

various uniforms on the fields and meadows belonging to the Davydov

family and to the crown serfs--those fields and meadows where for

hundreds of years the peasants of Borodino, Gorki, Shevardino, and

Semenovsk had reaped their harvests and pastured their cattle. At

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the dressing stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for a

space of some three acres around. Crowds of men of various arms,

wounded and unwounded, with frightened faces, dragged themselves

back to Mozhaysk from the one army and back to Valuevo from the other.

Other crowds, exhausted and hungry, went forward led by their

officers. Others held their ground and continued to fire.



Over the whole field, previously so gaily beautiful with the glitter

of bayonets and cloudlets of smoke in the morning sun, there now

spread a mist of damp and smoke and a strange acid smell of

saltpeter and blood. Clouds gathered and drops of rain began to fall

on the dead and wounded, on the frightened, exhausted, and

hesitating men, as if to say: "Enough, men! Enough! Cease... bethink

yourselves! What are you doing?"



To the men of both sides alike, worn out by want of food and rest,

it began equally to appear doubtful whether they should continue to

slaughter one another; all the faces expressed hesitation, and the

question arose in every soul: "For what, for whom, must I kill and

be killed?... You may go and kill whom you please, but I don't want to

do so anymore!" By evening this thought had ripened in every soul.

At any moment these men might have been seized with horror at what

they were doing and might have thrown up everything and run away

anywhere.



But though toward the end of the battle the men felt all the

horror of what they were doing, though they would have been glad to

leave off, some incomprehensible, mysterious power continued to

control them, and they still brought up the charges, loaded, aimed,

and applied the match, though only one artilleryman survived out of

every three, and though they stumbled and panted with fatigue,

perspiring and stained with blood and powder. The cannon balls flew

just as swiftly and cruelly from both sides, crushing human bodies,

and that terrible work which was not done by the will of a man but

at the will of Him who governs men and worlds continued.



Anyone looking at the disorganized rear of the Russian army would

have said that, if only the French made one more slight effort, it

would disappear; and anyone looking at the rear of the French army

would have said that the Russians need only make one more slight

effort and the French would be destroyed. But neither the French nor

the Russians made that effort, and the flame of battle burned slowly

out.



The Russians did not make that effort because they were not

attacking the French. At the beginning of the battle they stood

blocking the way to Moscow and they still did so at the end of the

battle as at the beginning. But even had the aim of the Russians

been to drive the French from their positions, they could not have

made this last effort, for all the Russian troops had been broken

up, there was no part of the Russian army that had not suffered in the

battle, and though still holding their positions they had lost ONE

HALF of their army.



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The French, with the memory of all their former victories during

fifteen years, with the assurance of Napoleon's invincibility, with

the consciousness that they had captured part of the battlefield and

had lost only a quarter of their men and still had their Guards

intact, twenty thousand strong, might easily have made that effort.

The French had attacked the Russian army in order to drive it from its

position ought to have made that effort, for as long as the Russians

continued to block the road to Moscow as before, the aim of the French

had not been attained and all their efforts and losses were in vain.

But the French did not make that effort. Some historians say that

Napoleon need only have used his Old Guards, who were intact, and

the battle would have been won. To speak of what would have happened

had Napoleon sent his Guards is like talking of what would happen if

autumn became spring. It could not be. Napoleon did not give his

Guards, not because he did not want to, but because it could not be

done. All the generals, officers, and soldiers of the French army knew

it could not be done, because the flagging spirit of the troops

would not permit it.



It was not Napoleon alone who had experienced that nightmare feeling

of the mighty arm being stricken powerless, but all the generals and

soldiers of his army whether they had taken part in the battle or not,

after all their experience of previous battles--when after one tenth

of such efforts the enemy had fled--experienced a similar feeling of

terror before an enemy who, after losing HALF his men, stood as

threateningly at the end as at the beginning of the battle. The

moral force of the attacking French army was exhausted. Not that

sort of victory which is defined by the capture of pieces of

material fastened to sticks, called standards, and of the ground on

which the troops had stood and were standing, but a moral victory that

convinces the enemy of the moral superiority of his opponent and of

his own impotence was gained by the Russians at Borodino. The French

invaders, like an infuriated animal that has in its onslaught received

a mortal wound, felt that they were perishing, but could not stop, any

more than the Russian army, weaker by one half, could help swerving.

By impetus gained, the French army was still able to roll forward to

Moscow, but there, without further effort on the part of the Russians,

it had to perish, bleeding from the mortal wound it had received at

Borodino. The direct consequence of the battle of Borodino was

Napoleon's senseless flight from Moscow, his retreat along the old

Smolensk road, the destruction of the invading army of five hundred

thousand men, and the downfall of Napoleonic France, on which at

Borodino for the first time the hand of an opponent of stronger spirit

had been laid.









BOOK ELEVEN: 1812









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CHAPTER I





Absolute continuity of motion is not comprehensible to the human

mind. Laws of motion of any kind become comprehensible to man only

when he examines arbitrarily selected elements of that motion; but

at the same time, a large proportion of human error comes from the

arbitrary division of continuous motion into discontinuous elements.

There is a well known, so-called sophism of the ancients consisting in

this, that Achilles could never catch up with a tortoise he was

following, in spite of the fact that he traveled ten times as fast

as the tortoise. By the time Achilles has covered the distance that

separated him from the tortoise, the tortoise has covered one tenth of

that distance ahead of him: when Achilles has covered that tenth,

the tortoise has covered another one hundredth, and so on forever.

This problem seemed to the ancients insoluble. The absurd answer (that

Achilles could never overtake the tortoise) resulted from this: that

motion was arbitrarily divided into discontinuous elements, whereas

the motion both of Achilles and of the tortoise was continuous.



By adopting smaller and smaller elements of motion we only

approach a solution of the problem, but never reach it. Only when we

have admitted the conception of the infinitely small, and the

resulting geometrical progression with a common ratio of one tenth,

and have found the sum of this progression to infinity, do we reach

a solution of the problem.



A modern branch of mathematics having achieved the art of dealing

with the infinitely small can now yield solutions in other more

complex problems of motion which used to appear insoluble.



This modern branch of mathematics, unknown to the ancients, when

dealing with problems of motion admits the conception of the

infinitely small, and so conforms to the chief condition of motion

(absolute continuity) and thereby corrects the inevitable error

which the human mind cannot avoid when it deals with separate elements

of motion instead of examining continuous motion.



In seeking the laws of historical movement just the same thing

happens. The movement of humanity, arising as it does from innumerable

arbitrary human wills, is continuous.



To understand the laws of this continuous movement is the aim of

history. But to arrive at these laws, resulting from the sum of all

those human wills, man's mind postulates arbitrary and disconnected

units. The first method of history is to take an arbitrarily

selected series of continuous events and examine it apart from others,

though there is and can be no beginning to any event, for one event

always flows uninterruptedly from another.



The second method is to consider the actions of some one man--a king

or a commander--as equivalent to the sum of many individual wills;

whereas the sum of individual wills is never expressed by the activity

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of a single historic personage.



Historical science in its endeavor to draw nearer to truth

continually takes smaller and smaller units for examination. But

however small the units it takes, we feel that to take any unit

disconnected from others, or to assume a beginning of any

phenomenon, or to say that the will of many men is expressed by the

actions of any one historic personage, is in itself false.



It needs no critical exertion to reduce utterly to dust any

deductions drawn from history. It is merely necessary to select some

larger or smaller unit as the subject of observation--as criticism has

every right to do, seeing that whatever unit history observes must

always be arbitrarily selected.



Only by taking infinitesimally small units for observation (the

differential of history, that is, the individual tendencies of men)

and attaining to the art of integrating them (that is, finding the sum

of these infinitesimals) can we hope to arrive at the laws of history.



The first fifteen years of the nineteenth century in Europe

present an extraordinary movement of millions of people. Men leave

their customary pursuits, hasten from one side of Europe to the other,

plunder and slaughter one another, triumph and are plunged in despair,

and for some years the whole course of life is altered and presents an

intensive movement which first increases and then slackens. What was

the cause of this movement, by what laws was it governed? asks the

mind of man.



The historians, replying to this question, lay before us the sayings

and doings of a few dozen men in a building in the city of Paris,

calling these sayings and doings "the Revolution"; then they give a

detailed biography of Napoleon and of certain people favorable or

hostile to him; tell of the influence some of these people had on

others, and say: that is why this movement took place and those are

its laws.



But the mind of man not only refuses to believe this explanation,

but plainly says that this method of explanation is fallacious,

because in it a weaker phenomenon is taken as the cause of a stronger.

The sum of human wills produced the Revolution and Napoleon, and

only the sum of those wills first tolerated and then destroyed them.



"But every time there have been conquests there have been

conquerors; every time there has been a revolution in any state

there have been great men," says history. And, indeed, human reason

replies: every time conquerors appear there have been wars, but this

does not prove that the conquerors caused the wars and that it is

possible to find the laws of a war in the personal activity of a

single man. Whenever I look at my watch and its hands point to ten,

I hear the bells of the neighboring church; but because the bells

begin to ring when the hands of the clock reach ten, I have no right

to assume that the movement of the bells is caused by the position

of the hands of the watch.

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Whenever I see the movement of a locomotive I hear the whistle and

see the valves opening and wheels turning; but I have no right to

conclude that the whistling and the turning of wheels are the cause of

the movement of the engine.



The peasants say that a cold wind blows in late spring because the

oaks are budding, and really every spring cold winds do blow when

the oak is budding. But though I do not know what causes the cold

winds to blow when the oak buds unfold, I cannot agree with the

peasants that the unfolding of the oak buds is the cause of the cold

wind, for the force of the wind is beyond the influence of the buds. I

see only a coincidence of occurrences such as happens with all the

phenomena of life, and I see that however much and however carefully I

observe the hands of the watch, and the valves and wheels of the

engine, and the oak, I shall not discover the cause of the bells

ringing, the engine moving, or of the winds of spring. To that I

must entirely change my point of view and study the laws of the

movement of steam, of the bells, and of the wind. History must do

the same. And attempts in this direction have already been made.



To study the laws of history we must completely change the subject

of our observation, must leave aside kings, ministers, and generals,

and the common, infinitesimally small elements by which the masses are

moved. No one can say in how far it is possible for man to advance

in this way toward an understanding of the laws of history; but it

is evident that only along that path does the possibility of

discovering the laws of history lie, and that as yet not a millionth

part as much mental effort has been applied in this direction by

historians as has been devoted to describing the actions of various

kings, commanders, and ministers and propounding the historians' own

reflections concerning these actions.









CHAPTER II





The forces of a dozen European nations burst into Russia. The

Russian army and people avoided a collision till Smolensk was reached,

and again from Smolensk to Borodino. The French army pushed on to

Moscow, its goal, its impetus ever increasing as it neared its aim,

just as the velocity of a falling body increases as it approaches

the earth. Behind it were seven hundred miles of hunger-stricken,

hostile country; ahead were a few dozen miles separating it from its

goal. Every soldier in Napoleon's army felt this and the invasion

moved on by its own momentum.



The more the Russian army retreated the more fiercely a spirit of

hatred of the enemy flared up, and while it retreated the army

increased and consolidated. At Borodino a collision took place.

Neither army was broken up, but the Russian army retreated immediately

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after the collision as inevitably as a ball recoils after colliding

with another having a greater momentum, and with equal inevitability

the ball of invasion that had advanced with such momentum rolled on

for some distance, though the collision had deprived it of all its

force.



The Russians retreated eighty miles--to beyond Moscow--and the

French reached Moscow and there came to a standstill. For five weeks

after that there was not a single battle. The French did not move.

As a bleeding, mortally wounded animal licks its wounds, they remained

inert in Moscow for five weeks, and then suddenly, with no fresh

reason, fled back: they made a dash for the Kaluga road, and (after

a victory--for at Malo-Yaroslavets the field of conflict again

remained theirs) without undertaking a single serious battle, they

fled still more rapidly back to Smolensk, beyond Smolensk, beyond

the Berezina, beyond Vilna, and farther still.



On the evening of the twenty-sixth of August, Kutuzov and the

whole Russian army were convinced that the battle of Borodino was a

victory. Kutuzov reported so to the Emperor. He gave orders to prepare

for a fresh conflict to finish the enemy and did this not to deceive

anyone, but because he knew that the enemy was beaten, as everyone who

had taken part in the battle knew it.



But all that evening and next day reports came in one after

another of unheard-of losses, of the loss of half the army, and a

fresh battle proved physically impossible.



It was impossible to give battle before information had been

collected, the wounded gathered in, the supplies of ammunition

replenished, the slain reckoned up, new officers appointed to

replace those who had been killed, and before the men had had food and

sleep. And meanwhile, the very next morning after the battle, the

French army advanced of itself upon the Russians, carried forward by

the force of its own momentum now seemingly increased in inverse

proportion to the square of the distance from its aim. Kutuzov's

wish was to attack next day, and the whole army desired to do so.

But to make an attack the wish to do so is not sufficient, there

must also be a possibility of doing it, and that possibility did not

exist. It was impossible not to retreat a day's march, and then in the

same way it was impossible not to retreat another and a third day's

march, and at last, on the first of September when the army drew

near Moscow--despite the strength of the feeling that had arisen in

all ranks--the force of circumstances compelled it to retire beyond

Moscow. And the troops retired one more, last, day's march, and

abandoned Moscow to the enemy.



For people accustomed to think that plans of campaign and battles

are made by generals--as any one of us sitting over a map in his study

may imagine how he would have arranged things in this or that

battle--the questions present themselves: Why did Kutuzov during the

retreat not do this or that? Why did he not take up a position

before reaching Fili? Why did he not retire at once by the Kaluga

road, abandoning Moscow? and so on. People accustomed to think in that

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way forget, or do not know, the inevitable conditions which always

limit the activities of any commander in chief. The activity of a

commander in chief does not all resemble the activity we imagine to

ourselves when we sit at case in our studies examining some campaign

on the map, with a certain number of troops on this and that side in a

certain known locality, and begin our plans from some given moment.

A commander in chief is never dealing with the beginning of any event-

the position from which we always contemplate it. The commander in

chief is always in the midst of a series of shifting events and so

he never can at any moment consider the whole import of an event

that is occurring. Moment by moment the event is imperceptibly shaping

itself, and at every moment of this continuous, uninterrupted

shaping of events the commander in chief is in the midst of a most

complex play of intrigues, worries, contingencies, authorities,

projects, counsels, threats, and deceptions and is continually obliged

to reply to innumerable questions addressed to him, which constantly

conflict with one another.



Learned military authorities quite seriously tell us that Kutuzov

should have moved his army to the Kaluga road long before reaching

Fili, and that somebody actually submitted such a proposal to him. But

a commander in chief, especially at a difficult moment, has always

before him not one proposal but dozens simultaneously. And all these

proposals, based on strategics and tactics, contradict each other.



A commander in chief's business, it would seem, is simply to

choose one of these projects. But even that he cannot do. Events and

time do not wait. For instance, on the twenty-eighth it is suggested

to him to cross to the Kaluga road, but just then an adjutant

gallops up from Miloradovich asking whether he is to engage the French

or retire. An order must be given him at once, that instant. And the

order to retreat carries us past the turn to the Kaluga road. And

after the adjutant comes the commissary general asking where the

stores are to be taken, and the chief of the hospitals asks where

the wounded are to go, and a courier from Petersburg brings a letter

from the sovereign which does not admit of the possibility of

abandoning Moscow, and the commander in chief's rival, the man who

is undermining him (and there are always not merely one but several

such), presents a new project diametrically opposed to that of turning

to the Kaluga road, and the commander in chief himself needs sleep and

refreshment to maintain his energy and a respectable general who has

been overlooked in the distribution of rewards comes to complain,

and the inhabitants of the district pray to be defended, and an

officer sent to inspect the locality comes in and gives a report quite

contrary to what was said by the officer previously sent; and a spy, a

prisoner, and a general who has been on reconnaissance, all describe

the position of the enemy's army differently. People accustomed to

misunderstand or to forget these inevitable conditions of a

commander in chief's actions describe to us, for instance, the

position of the army at Fili and assume that the commander in chief

could, on the first of September, quite freely decide whether to

abandon Moscow or defend it; whereas, with the Russian army less

than four miles from Moscow, no such question existed. When had that

question been settled? At Drissa and at Smolensk and most palpably

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of all on the twenty-fourth of August at Shevardino and on the

twenty-sixth at Borodino, and each day and hour and minute of the

retreat from Borodino to Fili.









CHAPTER III





When Ermolov, having been sent by Kutuzov to inspect the position,

told the field marshal that it was impossible to fight there before

Moscow and that they must retreat, Kutuzov looked at him in silence.



"Give me your hand," said he and, turning it over so as to feel

the pulse, added: "You are not well, my dear fellow. Think what you

are saying!"



Kutuzov could not yet admit the possibility of retreating beyond

Moscow without a battle.



On the Poklonny Hill, four miles from the Dorogomilov gate of

Moscow, Kutuzov got out of his carriage and sat down on a bench by the

roadside. A great crowd of generals gathered round him, and Count

Rostopchin, who had come out from Moscow, joined them. This

brilliant company separated into several groups who all discussed

the advantages and disadvantages of the position, the state of the

army, the plans suggested, the situation of Moscow, and military

questions generally. Though they had not been summoned for the

purpose, and though it was not so called, they all felt that this

was really a council of war. The conversations all dealt with public

questions. If anyone gave or asked for personal news, it was done in a

whisper and they immediately reverted to general matters. No jokes, or

laughter, or smiles even, were seen among all these men. They

evidently all made an effort to hold themselves at the height the

situation demanded. And all these groups, while talking among

themselves, tried to keep near the commander in chief (whose bench

formed the center of the gathering) and to speak so that he might

overhear them. The commander in chief listened to what was being

said and sometimes asked them to repeat their remarks, but did not

himself take part in the conversations or express any opinion. After

hearing what was being said by one or other of these groups he

generally turned away with an air of disappointment, as though they

were not speaking of anything he wished to hear. Some discussed the

position that had been chosen, criticizing not the position itself

so much as the mental capacity of those who had chosen it. Others

argued that a mistake had been made earlier and that a battle should

have been fought two days before. Others again spoke of the battle

of Salamanca, which was described by Crosart, a newly arrived

Frenchman in a Spanish uniform. (This Frenchman and one of the

German princes serving with the Russian army were discussing the siege

of Saragossa and considering the possibility of defending Moscow in

a similar manner.) Count Rostopchin was telling a fourth group that he

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was prepared to die with the city train bands under the walls of the

capital, but that he still could not help regretting having been

left in ignorance of what was happening, and that had he known it

sooner things would have been different.... A fifth group,

displaying the profundity of their strategic perceptions, discussed

the direction the troops would now have to take. A sixth group was

talking absolute nonsense. Kutuzov's expression grew more and more

preoccupied and gloomy. From all this talk he saw only one thing: that

to defend Moscow was a physical impossibility in the full meaning of

those words, that is to say, so utterly impossible that if any

senseless commander were to give orders to fight, confusion would

result but the battle would still not take place. It would not take

place because the commanders not merely all recognized the position to

be impossible, but in their conversations were only discussing what

would happen after its inevitable abandonment. How could the

commanders lead their troops to a field of battle they considered

impossible to hold? The lower-grade officers and even the soldiers

(who too reason) also considered the position impossible and therefore

could not go to fight, fully convinced as they were of defeat. If

Bennigsen insisted on the position being defended and others still

discussed it, the question was no longer important in itself but

only as a pretext for disputes and intrigue. This Kutuzov knew well.



Bennigsen, who had chosen the position, warmly displayed his Russian

patriotism (Kutuzov could not listen to this without wincing) by

insisting that Moscow must be defended. His aim was as clear as

daylight to Kutuzov: if the defense failed, to throw the blame on

Kutuzov who had brought the army as far as the Sparrow Hills without

giving battle; if it succeeded, to claim the success as his own; or if

battle were not given, to clear himself of the crime of abandoning

Moscow. But this intrigue did not now occupy the old man's mind. One

terrible question absorbed him and to that question he heard no

reply from anyone. The question for him now was: "Have I really

allowed Napoleon to reach Moscow, and when did I do so? When was it

decided? Can it have been yesterday when I ordered Platov to

retreat, or was it the evening before, when I had a nap and told

Bennigsen to issue orders? Or was it earlier still?... When, when

was this terrible affair decided? Moscow must be abandoned. The army

must retreat and the order to do so must be given." To give that

terrible order seemed to him equivalent to resigning the command of

the army. And not only did he love power to which he was accustomed

(the honours awarded to Prince Prozorovski, under whom he had served

in Turkey, galled him), but he was convinced that he was destined to

save Russia and that that was why, against the Emperor's wish and by

the will of the people, he had been chosen commander in chief. He

was convinced that he alone could maintain command of the army in

these difficult circumstances, and that in all the world he alone

could encounter the invincible Napoleon without fear, and he was

horrified at the thought of the order he had to issue. But something

had to be decided, and these conversations around him which were

assuming too free a character must be stopped.



He called the most important generals to him.



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"My head, be it good or bad, must depend on itself," said he, rising

from the bench, and he rode to Fili where his carriages were waiting.









CHAPTER IV





The Council of War began to assemble at two in the afternoon in

the better and roomier part of Andrew Savostyanov's hut. The men,

women, and children of the large peasant family crowded into the

back room across the passage. Only Malasha, Andrew's six-year-old

granddaughter whom his Serene Highness had petted and to whom he had

given a lump of sugar while drinking his tea, remained on the top of

the brick oven in the larger room. Malasha looked down from the oven

with shy delight at the faces, uniforms, and decorations of the

generals, who one after another came into the room and sat down on the

broad benches in the corner under the icons. "Granddad" himself, as

Malasha in her own mind called Kutuzov, sat apart in a dark corner

behind the oven. He sat, sunk deep in a folding armchair, and

continually cleared his throat and pulled at the collar of his coat

which, though it was unbuttoned, still seemed to pinch his neck. Those

who entered went up one by one to the field marshal; he pressed the

hands of some and nodded to others. His adjutant Kaysarov was about to

draw back the curtain of the window facing Kutuzov, but the latter

moved his hand angrily and Kaysarov understood that his Serene

Highness did not wish his face to be seen.



Round the peasant's deal table, on which lay maps, plans, pencils,

and papers, so many people gathered that the orderlies brought in

another bench and put it beside the table. Ermolov, Kaysarov, and

Toll, who had just arrived, sat down on this bench. In the foremost

place, immediately under the icons, sat Barclay de Tolly, his high

forehead merging into his bald crown. He had a St. George's Cross

round his neck and looked pale and ill. He had been feverish for two

days and was now shivering and in pain. Beside him sat Uvarov, who

with rapid gesticulations was giving him some information, speaking in

low tones as they all did. Chubby little Dokhturov was listening

attentively with eyebrows raised and arms folded on his stomach. On

the other side sat Count Ostermann-Tolstoy, seemingly absorbed in

his own thoughts. His broad head with its bold features and glittering

eyes was resting on his hand. Raevski, twitching forward the black

hair on his temples as was his habit, glanced now at Kutuzov and now

at the door with a look of impatience. Konovnitsyn's firm, handsome,

and kindly face was lit up by a tender, sly smile. His glance met

Malasha's, and the expression of his eyes caused the little girl to

smile.



They were all waiting for Bennigsen, who on the pretext of

inspecting the position was finishing his savory dinner. They waited

for him from four till six o'clock and did not begin their

deliberations all that time talked in low tones of other matters.

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Only when Bennigsen had entered the hut did Kutuzov leave his corner

and draw toward the table, but not near enough for the candles that

had been placed there to light up his face.



Bennigsen opened the council with the question: "Are we to abandon

Russia's ancient and sacred capital without a struggle, or are we to

defend it?" A prolonged and general silence followed. There was a

frown on every face and only Kutuzov's angry grunts and occasional

cough broke the silence. All eyes were gazing at him. Malasha too

looked at "Granddad." She was nearest to him and saw how his face

puckered; he seemed about to cry, but this did not last long.



"Russia's ancient and sacred capital!" he suddenly said, repeating

Bennigsen's words in an angry voice and thereby drawing attention to

the false note in them. "Allow me to tell you, your excellency, that

that question has no meaning for a Russian." (He lurched his heavy

body forward.) "Such a question cannot be put; it is senseless! The

question I have asked these gentlemen to meet to discuss is a military

one. The question is that of saving Russia. Is it better to give up

Moscow without a battle, or by accepting battle to risk losing the

army as well as Moscow? That is the question on which I want your

opinion," and he sank back in his chair.



The discussion began. Bennigsen did not yet consider his game

lost. Admitting the view of Barclay and others that a defensive battle

at Fili was impossible, but imbued with Russian patriotism and the

love of Moscow, he proposed to move troops from the right to the

left flank during the night and attack the French right flank the

following day. Opinions were divided, and arguments were advanced

for and against that project. Ermolov, Dokhturov, and Raevski agreed

with Bennigsen. Whether feeling it necessary to make a sacrifice

before abandoning the capital or guided by other, personal

considerations, these generals seemed not to understand that this

council could not alter the inevitable course of events and that

Moscow was in effect already abandoned. The other generals, however,

understood it and, leaving aside the question of Moscow, of the

direction the army should take in its retreat. Malasha, who kept her

eyes fixed on what was going on before her, understood the meaning

of the council differently. It seemed to her that it was only a

personal struggle between "Granddad" and "Long-coat" as she termed

Bennigsen. She saw that they grew spiteful when they spoke to one

another, and in her heart she sided with "Granddad." In the midst of

the conversation she noticed "Granddad" give Bennigsen a quick, subtle

glance, and then to her joys he saw that "Granddad" said something

to "Long-coat" which settled him. Bennigsen suddenly reddened and

paced angrily up and down the room. What so affected him was Kutuzov's

calm and quiet comment on the advantage or disadvantage of Bennigsen's

proposal to move troops by night from the right to the left flank to

attack the French right wing.



"Gentlemen," said Kutuzov, "I cannot approve of the count's plan.

Moving troops in close proximity to an enemy is always dangerous,

and military history supports that view. For instance..." Kutuzov

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seemed to reflect, searching for an example, then with a clear,

naive look at Bennigsen he added: "Oh yes; take the battle of

Friedland, which I think the count well remembers, and which was...

not fully successful, only because our troops were rearranged too near

the enemy..."



There followed a momentary pause, which seemed very long to them

all.



The discussion recommenced, but pauses frequently occurred and

they all felt that there was no more to be said.



During one of these pauses Kutuzov heaved a deep sigh as if

preparing to speak. They all looked at him.



"Well, gentlemen, I see that it is I who will have to pay for the

broken crockery," said he, and rising slowly he moved to the table.

"Gentlemen, I have heard your views. Some of you will not agree with

me. But I," he paused, "by the authority entrusted to me by my

Sovereign and country, order a retreat."



After that the generals began to disperse with the solemnity and

circumspect silence of people who are leaving, after a funeral.



Some of the generals, in low tones and in a strain very different

from the way they had spoken during the council, communicated

something to their commander in chief.



Malasha, who had long been expected for supper, climbed carefully

backwards down from the oven, her bare little feet catching at its

projections, and slipping between the legs of the generals she

darted out of the room.



When he had dismissed the generals Kutuzov sat a long time with

his elbows on the table, thinking always of the same terrible

question: "When, when did the abandonment of Moscow become inevitable?

When was that done which settled the matter? And who was to blame

for it?"



"I did not expect this," said he to his adjutant Schneider when

the latter came in late that night. "I did not expect this! I did

not think this would happen."



"You should take some rest, your Serene Highness," replied

Schneider.



"But no! They shall eat horseflesh yet, like the Turks!" exclaimed

Kutuzov without replying, striking the table with his podgy fist.

"They shall too, if only..."









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CHAPTER V





At that very time, in circumstances even more important than

retreating without a battle, namely the evacuation and burning of

Moscow, Rostopchin, who is usually represented as being the instigator

of that event, acted in an altogether different manner from Kutuzov.



After the battle of Borodino the abandonment and burning of Moscow

was as inevitable as the retreat of the army beyond Moscow without

fighting.



Every Russian might have predicted it, not by reasoning but by the

feeling implanted in each of us and in our fathers.



The same thing that took place in Moscow had happened in all the

towns and villages on Russian soil beginning with Smolensk, without

the participation of Count Rostopchin and his broadsheets. The

people awaited the enemy unconcernedly, did not riot or become excited

or tear anyone to pieces, but faced its fate, feeling within it the

strength to find what it should do at that most difficult moment.

And as soon as the enemy drew near the wealthy classes went away

abandoning their property, while the poorer remained and burned and

destroyed what was left.



The consciousness that this would be so and would always be so was

and is present in the heart of every Russian. And a consciousness of

this, and a foreboding that Moscow would be taken, was present in

Russian Moscow society in 1812. Those who had quitted Moscow already

in July and at the beginning of August showed that they expected this.

Those who went away, taking what they could and abandoning their

houses and half their belongings, did so from the latent patriotism

which expresses itself not by phrases or by giving one's children to

save the fatherland and similar unnatural exploits, but unobtrusively,

simply, organically, and therefore in the way that always produces the

most powerful results.



"It is disgraceful to run away from danger; only cowards are running

away from Moscow," they were told. In his broadsheets Rostopchin

impressed on them that to leave Moscow was shameful. They were ashamed

to be called cowards, ashamed to leave, but still they left, knowing

it had to be done. Why did they go? It is impossible to suppose that

Rostopchin had scared them by his accounts of horrors Napoleon had

committed in conquered countries. The first people to go away were the

rich educated people who knew quite well that Vienna and Berlin had

remained intact and that during Napoleon's occupation the

inhabitants had spent their time pleasantly in the company of the

charming Frenchmen whom the Russians, and especially the Russian

ladies, then liked so much.



They went away because for Russians there could be no question as to

whether things would go well or ill under French rule in Moscow. It

was out of the question to be under French rule, it would be the worst

thing that could happen. They went away even before the battle of

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Borodino and still more rapidly after it, despite Rostopchin's calls

to defend Moscow or the announcement of his intention to take the

wonder-working icon of the Iberian Mother of God and go to fight, or

of the balloons that were to destroy the French, and despite all the

nonsense Rostopchin wrote in his broadsheets. They knew that it was

for the army to fight, and that if it could not succeed it would not

do to take young ladies and house serfs to the Three Hills quarter

of Moscow to fight Napoleon, and that they must go away, sorry as they

were to abandon their property to destruction. They went away

without thinking of the tremendous significance of that immense and

wealthy city being given over to destruction, for a great city with

wooden buildings was certain when abandoned by its inhabitants to be

burned. They went away each on his own account, and yet it was only in

consequence of their going away that the momentous event was

accomplished that will always remain the greatest glory of the Russian

people. The lady who, afraid of being stopped by Count Rostopchin's

orders, had already in June moved with her Negroes and her women

jesters from Moscow to her Saratov estate, with a vague

consciousness that she was not Bonaparte's servant, was really,

simply, and truly carrying out the great work which saved Russia.

But Count Rostopchin, who now taunted those who left Moscow and now

had the government offices removed; now distributed quite useless

weapons to the drunken rabble; now had processions displaying the

icons, and now forbade Father Augustin to remove icons or the relics

of saints; now seized all the private carts in Moscow and on one

hundred and thirty-six of them removed the balloon that was being

constructed by Leppich; now hinted that he would burn Moscow and

related how he had set fire to his own house; now wrote a proclamation

to the French solemnly upbraiding them for having destroyed his

Orphanage; now claimed the glory of having hinted that he would burn

Moscow and now repudiated the deed; now ordered the people to catch

all spies and bring them to him, and now reproached them for doing so;

now expelled all the French residents from Moscow, and now allowed

Madame Aubert-Chalme (the center of the whole French colony in Moscow)

to remain, but ordered the venerable old postmaster Klyucharev to be

arrested and exiled for no particular offense; now assembled the

people at the Three Hills to fight the French and now, to get rid of

them, handed over to them a man to be killed and himself drove away by

a back gate; now declared that he would not survive the fall of

Moscow, and now wrote French verses in albums concerning his share

in the affair--this man did not understand the meaning of what was

happening but merely wanted to do something himself that would

astonish people, to perform some patriotically heroic feat; and like a

child he made sport of the momentous, and unavoidable event--the

abandonment and burning of Moscow--and tried with his puny hand now to

speed and now to stay the enormous, popular tide that bore him along

with it.









CHAPTER VI



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Helene, having returned with the court from Vilna to Petersburg,

found herself in a difficult position.



In Petersburg she had enjoyed the special protection of a grandee

who occupied one of the highest posts in the Empire. In Vilna she

had formed an intimacy with a young foreign prince. When she

returned to Petersburg both the magnate and the prince were there, and

both claimed their rights. Helene was faced by a new problem--how to

preserve her intimacy with both without offending either.



What would have seemed difficult or even impossible to another woman

did not cause the least embarrassment to Countess Bezukhova, who

evidently deserved her reputation of being a very clever woman. Had

she attempted concealment, or tried to extricate herself from her

awkward position by cunning, she would have spoiled her case by

acknowledging herself guilty. But Helene, like a really great man

who can do whatever he pleases, at once assumed her own position to be

correct, as she sincerely believed it to be, and that everyone else

was to blame.



The first time the young foreigner allowed himself to reproach

her, she lifted her beautiful head and, half turning to him, said

firmly: "That's just like a man--selfish and cruel! I expected nothing

else. A woman sacrifices herself for you, she suffers, and this is her

reward! What right have you, monseigneur, to demand an account of my

attachments and friendships? He is a man who has been more than a

father to me!" The prince was about to say something, but Helene

interrupted him.



"Well, yes," said she, "it may be that he has other sentiments for

me than those of a father, but that is not a reason for me to shut

my door on him. I am not a man, that I should repay kindness with

ingratitude! Know, monseigneur, that in all that relates to my

intimate feelings I render account only to God and to my

conscience," she concluded, laying her hand on her beautiful, fully

expanded bosom and looking up to heaven.



"But for heaven's sake listen to me!"



"Marry me, and I will be your slave!"



"But that's impossible."



"You won't deign to demean yourself by marrying me, you..." said

Helene, beginning to cry.



The prince tried to comfort her, but Helene, as if quite distraught,

said through her tears that there was nothing to prevent her marrying,

that there were precedents (there were up to that time very few, but

she mentioned Napoleon and some other exalted personages), that she

had never been her husband's wife, and that she had been sacrificed.



"But the law, religion..." said the prince, already yielding.

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"The law, religion... What have they been invented for if they can't

arrange that?" said Helene.



The prince was surprised that so simple an idea had not occurred

to him, and he applied for advice to the holy brethren of the

Society of Jesus, with whom he was on intimate terms.



A few days later at one of those enchanting fetes which Helene

gave at her country house on the Stone Island, the charming Monsieur

de Jobert, a man no longer young, with snow white hair and brilliant

black eyes, a Jesuit a robe courte* was presented to her, and in the

garden by the light of the illuminations and to the sound of music

talked to her for a long time of the love of God, of Christ, of the

Sacred Heart, and of the consolations the one true Catholic religion

affords in this world and the next. Helene was touched, and more

than once tears rose to her eyes and to those of Monsieur de Jobert

and their voices trembled. A dance, for which her partner came to seek

her, put an end to her discourse with her future directeur de

conscience, but the next evening Monsieur de Jobert came to see Helene

when she was alone, and after that often came again.





*Lay member of the Society of Jesus.





One day he took the countess to a Roman Catholic church, where she

knelt down before the altar to which she was led. The enchanting,

middle-aged Frenchman laid his hands on her head and, as she herself

afterward described it, she felt something like a fresh breeze

wafted into her soul. It was explained to her that this was la grace.



After that a long-frocked abbe was brought to her. She confessed

to him, and he absolved her from her sins. Next day she received a box

containing the Sacred Host, which was left at her house for her to

partake of. A few days later Helene learned with pleasure that she had

now been admitted to the true Catholic Church and that in a few days

the Pope himself would hear of her and would send her a certain

document.



All that was done around her and to her at this time, all the

attention devoted to her by so many clever men and expressed in such

pleasant, refined ways, and the state of dove-like purity she was

now in (she wore only white dresses and white ribbons all that time)

gave her pleasure, but her pleasure did not cause her for a moment

to forget her aim. And as it always happens in contests of cunning

that a stupid person gets the better of cleverer ones, Helene-

having realized that the main object of all these words and all this

trouble was, after converting her to Catholicism, to obtain money from

her for Jesuit institutions (as to which she received indications)-

before parting with her money insisted that the various operations

necessary to free her from her husband should be performed. In her

view the aim of every religion was merely to preserve certain

proprieties while affording satisfaction to human desires. And with

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this aim, in one of her talks with her Father Confessor, she

insisted on an answer to the question, in how far was she bound by her

marriage?



They were sitting in the twilight by a window in the drawing room.

The scent of flowers came in at the window. Helene was wearing a white

dress, transparent over her shoulders and bosom. The abbe, a

well-fed man with a plump, clean-shaven chin, a pleasant firm mouth,

and white hands meekly folded on his knees, sat close to Helene and,

with a subtle smile on his lips and a peaceful look of delight at

her beauty, occasionally glanced at her face as he explained his

opinion on the subject. Helene with an uneasy smile looked at his

curly hair and his plump, clean-shaven, blackish cheeks and every

moment expected the conversation to take a fresh turn. But the abbe,

though he evidently enjoyed the beauty of his companion, was

absorbed in his mastery of the matter.



The course of the Father Confessor's arguments ran as follows:

"Ignorant of the import of what you were undertaking, you made a vow

of conjugal fidelity to a man who on his part, by entering the married

state without faith in the religious significance of marriage,

committed an act of sacrilege. That marriage lacked the dual

significance it should have had. Yet in spite of this your vow was

binding. You swerved from it. What did you commit by so acting? A

venial, or a mortal, sin? A venial sin, for you acted without evil

intention. If now you married again with the object of bearing

children, your sin might be forgiven. But the question is again a

twofold one: firstly..."



But suddenly Helene, who was getting bored, said with one of her

bewitching smiles: "But I think that having espoused the true religion

I cannot be bound by what a false religion laid upon me."



The director of her conscience was astounded at having the case

presented to him thus with the simplicity of Columbus' egg. He was

delighted at the unexpected rapidity of his pupil's progress, but

could not abandon the edifice of argument he had laboriously

constructed.



"Let us understand one another, Countess," said he with a smile, and

began refuting his spiritual daughter's arguments.









CHAPTER VII





Helene understood that the question was very simple and easy from

the ecclesiastical point of view, and that her directors were making

difficulties only because they were apprehensive as to how the

matter would be regarded by the secular authorities.



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So she decided that it was necessary to prepare the opinion of

society. She provoked the jealousy of the elderly magnate and told him

what she had told her other suitor; that is, she put the matter so

that the only way for him to obtain a right over her was to marry her.

The elderly magnate was at first as much taken aback by this

suggestion of marriage with a woman whose husband was alive, as the

younger man had been, but Helene's imperturbable conviction that it

was as simple and natural as marrying a maiden had its effect on him

too. Had Helene herself shown the least sign of hesitation, shame,

or secrecy, her cause would certainly have been lost; but not only did

she show no signs of secrecy or shame, on the contrary, with

good-natured naivete she told her intimate friends (and these were all

Petersburg) that both the prince and the magnate had proposed to her

and that she loved both and was afraid of grieving either.



A rumor immediately spread in Petersburg, not that Helene wanted

to be divorced from her husband (had such a report spread many would

have opposed so illegal an intention) but simply that the

unfortunate and interesting Helene was in doubt which of the two men

she should marry. The question was no longer whether this was

possible, but only which was the better match and how the matter would

be regarded at court. There were, it is true, some rigid individuals

unable to rise to the height of such a question, who saw in the

project a desecration of the sacrament of marriage, but there were not

many such and they remained silent, while the majority were interested

in Helene's good fortune and in the question which match would be

the more advantageous. Whether it was right or wrong to remarry

while one had a husband living they did not discuss, for that question

had evidently been settled by people "wiser than you or me," as they

said, and to doubt the correctness of that decision would be to risk

exposing one's stupidity and incapacity to live in society.



Only Marya Dmitrievna Akhrosimova, had come to Petersburg that

summer to see one of her sons, allowed herself plainly to express an

opinion contrary to the general one. Meeting Helene at a ball she

stopped her in the middle of the room and, amid general silence,

said in her gruff voice: "So wives of living men have started marrying

again! Perhaps you think you have invented a novelty? You have been

forestalled, my dear! It was thought of long ago. It is done in all

the brothels," and with these words Marya Dmitrievna, turning up her

wide sleeves with her usual threatening gesture and glancing sternly

round, moved across the room.



Though people were afraid of Marya Dmitrievna she was regarded in

Petersburg as a buffoon, and so of what she had said they only

noticed, and repeated in a whisper, the one coarse word she had

used, supposing the whole sting of her remark to lie in that word.



Prince Vasili, who of late very often forgot what he had said and

repeated one and the same thing a hundred times, remarked to his

daughter whenever he chanced to see her:



"Helene, I have a word to say to you," and he would lead her

aside, drawing her hand downward. "I have heard of certain projects

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concerning... you know. Well my dear child, you know how your father's

heart rejoices to know that you... You have suffered so much....

But, my dear child, consult only your own heart. That is all I have to

say," and concealing his unvarying emotion he would press his cheek

against his daughter's and move away.



Bilibin, who had not lost his reputation of an exceedingly clever

man, and who was one of the disinterested friends so

brilliant a woman as Helene always has--men friends who can never

change into lovers--once gave her his view of the matter at a small

and intimate gathering.



"Listen, Bilibin," said Helene (she always called friends of that

sort by their surnames), and she touched his coat sleeve with her

white, beringed fingers. "Tell me, as you would a sister, what I ought

to do. Which of the two?"



Bilibin wrinkled up the skin over his eyebrows and pondered, with

a smile on his lips.



"You are not taking me unawares, you know," said he. "As a true

friend, I have thought and thought again about your affair. You see,

if you marry the prince"--he meant the younger man--and he crooked one

finger, "you forever lose the chance of marrying the other, and you

will displease the court besides. (You know there is some kind of

connection.) But if you marry the old count you will make his last

days happy, and as widow of the Grand... the prince would no longer be

making a mesalliance by marrying you," and Bilibin smoothed out his

forehead.



"That's a true friend!" said Helene beaming, and again touching

Bilibin's sleeve. "But I love them, you know, and don't want to

distress either of them. I would give my life for the happiness of

them both."



Bilibin shrugged his shoulders, as much as to say that not even he

could help in that difficulty.



"Une maitresse-femme!* That's what is called putting things

squarely. She would like to be married to all three at the same time,"

thought he.





*A masterly woman.





"But tell me, how will your husband look at the matter?" Bilibin

asked, his reputation being so well established that he did not fear

to ask so naive a question. "Will he agree?"



"Oh, he loves me so!" said Helene, who for some reason imagined that

Pierre too loved her. "He will do anything for me."



Bilibin puckered his skin in preparation for something witty.

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"Even divorce you?" said he.



Helene laughed.



Among those who ventured to doubt the justifiability of the proposed

marriage was Helene's mother, Princess Kuragina. She was continually

tormented by jealousy of her daughter, and now that jealousy concerned

a subject near to her own heart, she could not reconcile herself to

the idea. She consulted a Russian priest as to the possibility of

divorce and remarriage during a husband's lifetime, and the priest

told her that it was impossible, and to her delight showed her a

text in the Gospel which (as it seemed to him) plainly remarriage

while the husband is alive.



Armed with these arguments, which appeared to her unanswerable,

she drove to her daughter's early one morning so as to find her alone.



Having listened to her mother's objections, Helene smiled blandly

and ironically.



"But it says plainly: 'Whosoever shall marry her that is

divorced...'" said the old princess.



"Ah, Maman, ne dites pas de betises. Vous ne comprenez rein. Dans ma

position j'ai des devoirs,"* said Helene changing from Russian, in

which language she always felt that her case did not sound quite

clear, into French which suited it better.





*"Oh, Mamma, don't talk nonsense! You don't understand anything.

In my position I have obligations.





"But, my dear...."



"Oh, Mamma, how is it you don't understand that the Holy Father, who

has the right to grant dispensations..."



Just then the lady companion who lived with Helene came in to

announce that His Highness was in the ballroom and wished to see her.



"Non, dites-lui que je ne veux pas le voir, que je suis furieuse

contre lui, parce qu'il m' a manque parole."*





*"No, tell him I don't wish to see him, I am furious with him for

not keeping his word to me."





"Comtesse, a tout peche misericorde,"* said a fair-haired young

man with a long face and nose, as he entered the room.





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*"Countess, there is mercy for every sin."





The old princess rose respectfully and curtsied. The young man who

had entered took no notice of her. The princess nodded to her daughter

and sidled out of the room.



"Yes, she is right," thought the old princess, all her convictions

dissipated by the appearance of His Highness. "She is right, but how

is it that we in our irrecoverable youth did not know it? Yet it is so

simple," she thought as she got into her carriage.





By the beginning of August Helene's affairs were clearly defined and

she wrote a letter to her husband--who, as she imagined, loved her

very much--informing him of her intention to marry N.N. and of her

having embraced the one true faith, and asking him to carry out all

the formalities necessary for a divorce, which would be explained to

him by the bearer of the letter.





And so I pray God to have you, my friend, in His holy and powerful

keeping--Your friend Helene.





This letter was brought to Pierre's house when he was on the field

of Borodino.









CHAPTER VIII





Toward the end of the battle of Borodino, Pierre, having run down

from Raevski's battery a second time, made his way through a gully

to Knyazkovo with a crowd of soldiers, reached the dressing station,

and seeing blood and hearing cries and groans hurried on, still

entangled in the crowds of soldiers.



The one thing he now desired with his whole soul was to get away

quickly from the terrible sensations amid which he had lived that

day and return to ordinary conditions of life and sleep quietly in a

room in his own bed. He felt that only in the ordinary conditions of

life would he be able to understand himself and all he had seen and

felt. But such ordinary conditions of life were nowhere to be found.



Though shells and bullets did not whistle over the road along

which he was going, still on all sides there was what there had been

on the field of battle. There were still the same suffering,

exhausted, and sometimes strangely indifferent faces, the same

blood, the same soldiers' overcoats, the same sounds of firing

which, though distant now, still aroused terror, and besides this

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there were the foul air and the dust.



Having gone a couple of miles along the Mozhaysk road, Pierre sat

down by the roadside.



Dusk had fallen, and the roar of guns died away. Pierre lay

leaning on his elbow for a long time, gazing at the shadows that moved

past him in the darkness. He was continually imagining that a cannon

ball was flying toward him with a terrific whizz, and then he

shuddered and sat up. He had no idea how long he had been there. In

the middle of the night three soldiers, having brought some

firewood, settled down near him and began lighting a fire.



The soldiers, who threw sidelong glances at Pierre, got the fire

to burn and placed an iron pot on it into which they broke some

dried bread and put a little dripping. The pleasant odor of greasy

viands mingled with the smell of smoke. Pierre sat up and sighed.

The three soldiers were eating and talking among themselves, taking no

notice of him.



"And who may you be?" one of them suddenly asked Pierre, evidently

meaning what Pierre himself had in mind, namely: "If you want to eat

we'll give you some food, only let us know whether you are an honest

man."



"I, I..." said Pierre, feeling it necessary to minimize his social

position as much as possible so as to be nearer to the soldiers and

better understood by them. "By rights I am a militia officer, but my

men are not here. I came to the battle and have lost them."



"There now!" said one of the soldiers.



Another shook his head.



"Would you like a little mash?" the first soldier asked, and

handed Pierre a wooden spoon after licking it clean.



Pierre sat down by the fire and began eating the mash, as they

called the food in the cauldron, and he thought it more delicious than

any food he had ever tasted. As he sat bending greedily over it,

helping himself to large spoonfuls and chewing one after another,

his was lit up by the fire and the soldiers looked at him in silence.



"Where have you to go to? Tell us!" said one of them.



"To Mozhaysk."



"You're a gentleman, aren't you?"



"Yes."



"And what's your name?"



"Peter Kirilych."

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"Well then, Peter Kirilych, come along with us, we'll take you

there."



In the total darkness the soldiers walked with Pierre to Mozhaysk.



By the time they got near Mozhaysk and began ascending the steep

hill into the town, the cocks were already crowing. Pierre went on

with the soldiers, quite forgetting that his inn was at the bottom

of the hill and that he had already passed it. He would not soon

have remembered this, such was his state of forgetfulness, had he

not halfway up the hill stumbled upon his groom, who had been to

look for him in the town and was returning to the inn. The groom

recognized Pierre in the darkness by his white hat.



"Your excellency!" he said. "Why, we were beginning to despair!

How is it you are on foot? And where are you going, please?"



"Oh, yes!" said Pierre.



The soldiers stopped.



"So you've found your folk?" said one of them. "Well, good-by, Peter

Kirilych--isn't it?"



"Good-by, Peter Kirilych!" Pierre heard the other voices repeat.



"Good-by!" he said and turned with his groom toward the inn.



"I ought to give them something!" he thought, and felt in his

pocket. "No, better not!" said another, inner voice.



There was not a room to be had at the inn, they were all occupied.

Pierre went out into the yard and, covering himself up head and all,

lay down in his carriage.









CHAPTER IX





Scarcely had Pierre laid his head on the pillow before he felt

himself falling asleep, but suddenly, almost with the distinctness

of reality, he heard the boom, boom, boom of firing, the thud of

projectiles, groans and cries, and smelled blood and powder, and a

feeling of horror and dread of death seized him. Filled with fright he

opened his eyes and lifted his head from under his cloak. All was

tranquil in the yard. Only someone's orderly passed through the

gateway, splashing through the mud, and talked to the innkeeper. Above

Pierre's head some pigeons, disturbed by the movement he had made in

sitting up, fluttered under the dark roof of the penthouse. The

whole courtyard was permeated by a strong peaceful smell of stable

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yards, delightful to Pierre at that moment. He could see the clear

starry sky between the dark roofs of two penthouses.



"Thank God, there is no more of that!" he thought, covering up his

head again. "Oh, what a terrible thing is fear, and how shamefully I

yielded to it! But they... they were steady and calm all the time,

to the end..." thought he.



They, in Pierre's mind, were the soldiers, those who had been at the

battery, those who had given him food, and those who had prayed before

the icon. They, those strange men he had not previously known, stood

out clearly and sharply from everyone else.



"To be a soldier, just a soldier!" thought Pierre as he fell asleep,

"to enter communal life completely, to be imbued by what makes them

what they are. But how cast off all the superfluous, devilish burden

of my outer man? There was a time when I could have done it. I could

have run away from my father, as I wanted to. Or I might have been

sent to serve as a soldier after the duel with Dolokhov." And the

memory of the dinner at the English Club when he had challenged

Dolokhov flashed through Pierre's mind, and then he remembered his

benefactor at Torzhok. And now a picture of a solemn meeting of the

lodge presented itself to his mind. It was taking place at the English

Club and someone near and dear to him sat at the end of the table.

"Yes, that is he! It is my benefactor. But he died!" thought Pierre.

"Yes, he died, and I did not know he was alive. How sorry I am that he

died, and how glad I am that he is alive again!" On one side of the

table sat Anatole, Dolokhov, Nesvitski, Denisov, and others like

them (in his dream the category to which these men belonged was as

clearly defined in his mind as the category of those he termed

they), and he heard those people, Anatole and Dolokhov, shouting and

singing loudly; yet through their shouting the voice of his benefactor

was heard speaking all the time and the sound of his words was as

weighty and uninterrupted as the booming on the battlefield, but

pleasant and comforting. Pierre did not understand what his benefactor

was saying, but he knew (the categories of thoughts were also quite

distinct in his dream) that he was talking of goodness and the

possibility of being what they were. And they with their simple, kind,

firm faces surrounded his benefactor on all sides. But though they

were kindly they did not look at Pierre and did not know him.

Wishing to speak and to attract their attention, he got up, but at

that moment his legs grew cold and bare.



He felt ashamed, and with one arm covered his legs from which his

cloak had in fact slipped. For a moment as he was rearranging his

cloak Pierre opened his eyes and saw the same penthouse roofs,

posts, and yard, but now they were all bluish, lit up, and

glittering with frost or dew.



"It is dawn," thought Pierre. "But that's not what I want. I want to

hear and understand my benefactor's words." Again he covered himself

up with his cloak, but now neither the lodge nor his benefactor was

there. There were only thoughts clearly expressed in words, thoughts

that someone was uttering or that he himself was formulating.

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Afterwards when he recalled those thoughts Pierre was convinced that

someone outside himself had spoken them, though the impressions of

that day had evoked them. He had never, it seemed to him, been able to

think and express his thoughts like that when awake.



"To endure war is the most difficult subordination of man's

freedom to the law of God," the voice had said. "Simplicity is

submission to the will of God; you cannot escape from Him. And they

are simple. They do not talk, but act. The spoken word is silver but

the unspoken is golden. Man can be master of nothing while he fears

death, but he who does not fear it possesses all. If there were no

suffering, man would not know his limitations, would not know himself.

The hardest thing [Pierre went on thinking, or hearing, in his

dream] is to be able in your soul to unite the meaning of all. To

unite all?" he asked himself. "No, not to unite. Thoughts cannot be

united, but to harness all these thoughts together is what we need!

Yes, one must harness them, must harness them!" he repeated to himself

with inward rapture, feeling that these words and they alone expressed

what he wanted to say and solved the question that tormented him.



"Yes, one must harness, it is time to harness."



"Time to harness, time to harness, your excellency! Your

excellency!" some voice was repeating. "We must harness, it is time to

harness...."



It was the voice of the groom, trying to wake him. The sun shone

straight into Pierre's face. He glanced at the dirty innyard in the

middle of which soldiers were watering their lean horses at the pump

while carts were passing out of the gate. Pierre turned away with

repugnance, and closing his eyes quickly fell back on the carriage

seat. "No, I don't want that, I don't want to see and understand that.

I want to understand what was revealing itself to me in my dream.

One second more and I should have understood it all! But what am I

to do? Harness, but how can I harness everything?" and Pierre felt

with horror that the meaning of all he had seen and thought in the

dream had been destroyed.



The groom, the coachman, and the innkeeper told Pierre that an

officer had come with news that the French were already near

Mozhaysk and that our men were leaving it.



Pierre got up and, having told them to harness and overtake him,

went on foot through the town.



The troops were moving on, leaving about ten thousand wounded behind

them. There were wounded in the yards, at the windows of the houses,

and the streets were crowded with them. In the streets, around carts

that were to take some of the wounded away, shouts, curses, and

blows could be heard. Pierre offered the use of his carriage, which

had overtaken him, to a wounded general he knew, and drove with him

to Moscow. On the way Pierre was told of the death of his

brother-in-law Anatole and of that of Prince Andrew.

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CHAPTER X





On the thirteenth of August Pierre reached Moscow. Close to the

gates of the city he was met by Count Rostopchin's adjutant.



"We have been looking for you everywhere," said the adjutant. "The

count wants to see you particularly. He asks you to come to him at

once on a very important matter."



Without going home, Pierre took a cab and drove to see the Moscow

commander in chief.



Count Rostopchin had only that morning returned to town from his

summer villa at Sokolniki. The anteroom and reception room of his

house were full of officials who had been summoned or had come for

orders. Vasilchikov and Platov had already seen the count and

explained to him that it was impossible to defend Moscow and that it

would have to be surrendered. Though this news was being concealed

from the inhabitants, the officials--the heads of the various

government departments--knew that Moscow would soon be in the

enemy's hands, just as Count Rostopchin himself knew it, and to escape

personal responsibility they had all come to the governor to ask how

they were to deal with their various departments.



As Pierre was entering the reception room a courier from the army

came out of Rostopchin's private room.



In answer to questions with which he was greeted, the courier made a

despairing gesture with his hand and passed through the room.



While waiting in the reception room Pierre with weary eyes watched

the various officials, old and young, military and civilian, who

were there. They all seemed dissatisfied and uneasy. Pierre went up to

a group of men, one of whom he knew. After greeting Pierre they

continued their conversation.



"If they're sent out and brought back again later on it will do no

harm, but as things are now one can't answer for anything."



"But you see what he writes..." said another, pointing to a

printed sheet he held in his hand.



"That's another matter. That's necessary for the people," said the

first.



"What is it?" asked Pierre.



"Oh, it's a fresh broadsheet."

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Pierre took it and began reading.





His Serene Highness has passed through Mozhaysk in order to join

up with the troops moving toward him and has taken up a strong

position where the enemy will not soon attack him. Forty eight guns

with ammunition have been sent him from here, and his Serene

Highness says he will defend Moscow to the last drop of blood and is

even ready to fight in the streets. Do not be upset, brothers, that

the law courts are closed; things have to be put in order, and we will

deal with villains in our own way! When the time comes I shall want

both town and peasant lads and will raise the cry a day or two

beforehand, but they are not wanted yet so I hold my peace. An ax will

be useful, a hunting spear not bad, but a three-pronged fork will be

best of all: a Frenchman is no heavier than a sheaf of rye. Tomorrow

after dinner I shall take the Iberian icon of the Mother of God to the

wounded in the Catherine Hospital where we will have some water

blessed. That will help them to get well quicker. I, too, am well now:

one of my eyes was sore but now I am on the lookout with both.





"But military men have told me that it is impossible to fight in the

town," said Pierre, "and that the position..."



"Well, of course! That's what we were saying," replied the first

speaker.



"And what does he mean by 'One of my eyes was sore but now I am on

the lookout with both'?" asked Pierre.



"The count had a sty," replied the adjutant smiling, "and was very

much upset when I told him people had come to ask what was the

matter with him. By the by, Count," he added suddenly, addressing

Pierre with a smile, "we heard that you have family troubles and

that the countess, your wife..."



"I have heard nothing," Pierre replied unconcernedly. "But what have

you heard?"



"Oh, well, you know people often invent things. I only say what I

heard."



"But what did you hear?"



"Well, they say," continued the adjutant with the same smile,

"that the countess, your wife, is preparing to go abroad. I expect

it's nonsense...."



"Possibly," remarked Pierre, looking about him absent-mindedly. "And

who is that?" he asked, indicating a short old man in a clean blue

peasant overcoat, with a big snow-white beard and eyebrows and a ruddy

face.



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"He? That's a tradesman, that is to say, he's the restaurant keeper,

Vereshchagin. Perhaps you have heard of that affair with the

proclamation."



"Oh, so that is Vereshchagin!" said Pierre, looking at the firm,

calm face of the old man and seeking any indication of his being a

traitor.



"That's not he himself, that's the father of the fellow who wrote

the proclamation," said the adjutant. "The young man is in prison

and I expect it will go hard with him."



An old gentleman wearing a star and another official, a German

wearing a cross round his neck, approached the speaker.



"It's a complicated story, you know," said the adjutant. "That

proclamation appeared about two months ago. The count was informed

of it. He gave orders to investigate the matter. Gabriel Ivanovich

here made the inquiries. The proclamation had passed through exactly

sixty-three hands. He asked one, 'From whom did you get it?' 'From

so-and-so.' He went to the next one. 'From whom did you get it?' and

so on till he reached Vereshchagin, a half educated tradesman, you

know, 'a pet of a trader,'" said the adjutant smiling. "They asked

him, 'Who gave it you?' And the point is that we knew whom he had it

from. He could only have had it from the Postmaster. But evidently

they had come to some understanding. He replied: 'From no one; I

made it up myself.' They threatened and questioned him, but he stuck

to that: 'I made it up myself.' And so it was reported to the count,

who sent for the man. 'From whom did you get the proclamation?' 'I

wrote it myself.' Well, you know the count," said the adjutant

cheerfully, with a smile of pride, "he flared up dreadfully--and

just think of the fellow's audacity, lying, and obstinacy!"



"And the count wanted him to say it was from Klyucharev? I

understand!" said Pierre.



"Not at all," rejoined the adjutant in dismay. "Klyucharev had his

own sins to answer for without that and that is why he has been

banished. But the point is that the count was much annoyed. 'How could

you have written it yourself?' said he, and he took up the Hamburg

Gazette that was lying on the table. 'Here it is! You did not write it

yourself but translated it, and translated it abominably, because

you don't even know French, you fool.' And what do you think? 'No,'

said he, 'I have not read any papers, I made it up myself.' 'If that's

so, you're a traitor and I'll have you tried, and you'll be hanged!

Say from whom you had it.' 'I have seen no papers, I made it up

myself.' And that was the end of it. The count had the father fetched,

but the fellow stuck to it. He was sent for trial and condemned to

hard labor, I believe. Now the father has come to intercede for him.

But he's a good-for-nothing lad! You know that sort of tradesman's

son, a dandy and lady-killer. He attended some lectures somewhere

and imagines that the devil is no match for him. That's the sort of

fellow he is. His father keeps a cookshop here by the Stone Bridge,

and you know there was a large icon of God Almighty painted with a

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scepter in one hand and an orb in the other. Well, he took that icon

home with him for a few days and what did he do? He found some

scoundrel of a painter..."









CHAPTER XI





In the middle of this fresh tale Pierre was summoned to the

commander in chief.



When he entered the private room Count Rostopchin, puckering his

face, was rubbing his forehead and eyes with his hand. A short man was

saying something, but when Pierre entered he stopped speaking and went

out.



"Ah, how do you do, great warrior?" said Rostopchin as soon as the

short man had left the room. "We have heard of your prowess. But

that's not the point. Between ourselves, mon cher, do you belong to

the Masons?" he went on severely, as though there were something wrong

about it which he nevertheless intended to pardon. Pierre remained

silent. "I am well informed, my friend, but I am aware that there

are Masons and I hope that you are not one of those who

on pretense of saving mankind wish to ruin Russia."



"Yes, I am a Mason," Pierre replied.



"There, you see, mon cher! I expect you know that Messrs.

Speranski and Magnitski have been deported to their proper place.

Mr. Klyucharev has been treated in the same way, and so have others

who on the plea of building up the temple of Solomon have tried to

destroy the temple of their fatherland. You can understand that

there are reasons for this and that I could not have exiled the

Postmaster had he not been a harmful person. It has now come to my

knowledge that you lent him your carriage for his removal from town,

and that you have even accepted papers from him for safe custody. I

like you and don't wish you any harm and--as you are only half my age-

I advise you, as a father would, to cease all communication with men

of that stamp and to leave here as soon as possible."



"But what did Klyucharev do wrong, Count?" asked Pierre.



"That is for me to know, but not for you to ask," shouted

Rostopchin.



"If he is accused of circulating Napoleon's proclamation it is not

proved that he did so," said Pierre without looking at Rostopchin,

"and Vereshchagin..."



"There we are!" Rostopchin shouted at Pierre louder than before,

frowning suddenly. "Vereshchagin is a renegade and a traitor who

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will be punished as he deserves," said he with the vindictive heat

with which people speak when recalling an insult. "But I did not

summon you to discuss my actions, but to give you advice--or an

order if you prefer it. I beg you to leave the town and break off

all communication with such men as Klyucharev. And I will knock the

nonsense out of anybody"--but probably realizing that he was

shouting at Bezukhov who so far was not guilty of anything, he

added, taking Pierre's hand in a friendly manner, "We are on the eve

of a public disaster and I haven't time to be polite to everybody

who has business with me. My head is sometimes in a whirl. Well, mon

cher, what are you doing personally?"



"Why, nothing," answered Pierre without raising his eyes or changing

the thoughtful expression of his face.



The count frowned.



"A word of friendly advice, mon cher. Be off as soon as you can,

that's all I have to tell you. Happy he who has ears to hear. Good-by,

my dear fellow. Oh, by the by!" he shouted through the doorway after

Pierre, "is it true that the countess has fallen into the clutches

of the holy fathers of the Society of Jesus?"



Pierre did not answer and left Rostopchin's room more sullen and

angry than he had ever before shown himself.



When he reached home it was already getting dark. Some eight

people had come to see him that evening: the secretary of a committee,

the colonel of his battalion, his steward, his major-domo, and various

petitioners. They all had business with Pierre and wanted decisions

from him. Pierre did not understand and was not interested in any of

these questions and only answered them in order to get rid of these

people. When left alone at last he opened and read his wife's letter.



"They, the soldiers at the battery, Prince Andrew killed... that old

man... Simplicity is submission to God. Suffering is necessary...

the meaning of all... one must harness... my wife is getting

married... One must forget and understand..." And going to his bed

he threw himself on it without undressing and immediately fell asleep.



When he awoke next morning the major-domo came to inform him that

a special messenger, a police officer, had come from Count

Rostopchin to know whether Count Bezukhov had left or was leaving

the town.



A dozen persons who had business with Pierre were awaiting him in

the drawing room. Pierre dressed hurriedly and, instead of going to

see them, went to the back porch and out through the gate.



From that time till the end of the destruction of Moscow no one of

Bezukhov's household, despite all the search they made, saw Pierre

again or knew where he was.





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CHAPTER XII





The Rostovs remained in Moscow till the first of September, that is,

till the eve of the enemy's entry into the city.



After Petya had joined Obolenski's regiment of Cossacks and left for

Belaya Tserkov where that regiment was forming, the countess was

seized with terror. The thought that both her sons were at the war,

had both gone from under her wing, that today or tomorrow either or

both of them might be killed like the three sons of one of her

acquaintances, struck her that summer for the first time with cruel

clearness. She tried to get Nicholas back and wished to go herself

to join Petya, or to get him an appointment somewhere in Petersburg,

but neither of these proved possible. Petya could not return unless

his regiment did so or unless he was transferred to another regiment

on active service. Nicholas was somewhere with the army and had not

sent a word since his last letter, in which he had given a detailed

account of his meeting with Princess Mary. The countess did not

sleep at night, or when she did fall asleep dreamed that she saw her

sons lying dead. After many consultations and conversations, the count

at last devised means to tranquillize her. He got Petya transferred

from Obolenski's regiment to Bezukhov's, which was in training near

Moscow. Though Petya would remain in the service, this transfer

would give the countess the consolation of seeing at least one of

her sons under her wing, and she hoped to arrange matters for her

Petya so as not to let him go again, but always get him appointed to

places where he could not possibly take part in a battle. As long as

Nicholas alone was in danger the countess imagined that she loved

her first-born more than all her other children and even reproached

herself for it; but when her youngest: the scapegrace who had been bad

at lessons, was always breaking things in the house and making himself

a nuisance to everybody, that snub-nosed Petya with his merry black

eyes and fresh rosy cheeks where soft down was just beginning to show-

when he was thrown amid those big, dreadful, cruel men who were

fighting somewhere about something and apparently finding pleasure

in it--then his mother thought she loved him more, much more, than all

her other children. The nearer the time came for Petya to return,

the more uneasy grew the countess. She began to think she would

never live to see such happiness. The presence of Sonya, of her

beloved Natasha, or even of her husband irritated her. "What do I want

with them? I want no one but Petya," she thought.



At the end of August the Rostovs received another letter from

Nicholas. He wrote from the province of Voronezh where he had been

sent to procure remounts, but that letter did not set the countess

at ease. Knowing that one son was out of danger she became the more

anxious about Petya.



Though by the twentieth of August nearly all the Rostovs'

acquaintances had left Moscow, and though everybody tried to

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persuade the countess to get away as quickly as possible, she would

not bear of leaving before her treasure, her adored Petya, returned.

On the twenty-eighth of August he arrived. The passionate tenderness

with which his mother received him did not please the sixteen-year-old

officer. Though she concealed from him her intention of keeping him

under her wing, Petya guessed her designs, and instinctively fearing

that he might give way to emotion when with her--might "become

womanish" as he termed it to himself--he treated her coldly, avoided

her, and during his stay in Moscow attached himself exclusively to

Natasha for whom he had always had a particularly brotherly

tenderness, almost lover-like.



Owing to the count's customary carelessness nothing was ready for

their departure by the twenty-eighth of August and the carts that were

to come from their Ryazan and Moscow estates to remove their household

belongings did not arrive till the thirtieth.



From the twenty-eighth till the thirty-first all Moscow was in a

bustle and commotion. Every day thousands of men wounded at Borodino

were brought in by the Dorogomilov gate and taken to various parts

of Moscow, and thousands of carts conveyed the inhabitants and their

possessions out by the other gates. In spite of Rostopchin's

broadsheets, or because of them or independently of them, the

strangest and most contradictory rumors were current in the town. Some

said that no one was to be allowed to leave the city, others on the

contrary said that all the icons had been taken out of the churches

and everybody was to be ordered to leave. Some said there had been

another battle after Borodino at which the French had been routed,

while others on the contrary reported that the Russian army bad been

destroyed. Some talked about the Moscow militia which, preceded by the

clergy, would go to the Three Hills; others whispered that Augustin

had been forbidden to leave, that traitors had been seized, that the

peasants were rioting and robbing people on their way from Moscow, and

so on. But all this was only talk; in reality (though the Council of

Fili, at which it was decided to abandon Moscow, had not yet been

held) both those who went away and those who remained behind felt,

though they did not show it, that Moscow would certainly be abandoned,

and that they ought to get away as quickly as possible and save

their belongings. It was felt that everything would suddenly break

up and change, but up to the first of September nothing had done so.

As a criminal who is being led to execution knows that he must die

immediately, but yet looks about him and straightens the cap that is

awry on his head, so Moscow involuntarily continued its wonted life,

though it knew that the time of its destruction was near when the

conditions of life to which its people were accustomed to submit would

be completely upset.



During the three days preceding the occupation of Moscow the whole

Rostov family was absorbed in various activities. The head of the

family, Count Ilya Rostov, continually drove about the city collecting

the current rumors from all sides and gave superficial and hasty

orders at home about the preparations for their departure.



The countess watched the things being packed, was dissatisfied

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with everything, was constantly in pursuit of Petya who was always

running away from her, and was jealous of Natasha with whom he spent

all his time. Sonya alone directed the practical side of matters by

getting things packed. But of late Sonya had been particularly sad and

silent. Nicholas' letter in which he mentioned Princess Mary had

elicited, in her presence, joyous comments from the countess, who

saw an intervention of Providence in this meeting of the princess

and Nicholas.



"I was never pleased at Bolkonski's engagement to Natasha," said the

countess, "but I always wanted Nicholas to marry the princess, and had

a presentiment that it would happen. What a good thing it would be!"



Sonya felt that this was true: that the only possibility of

retrieving the Rostovs' affairs was by Nicholas marrying a rich woman,

and that the princess was a good match. It was very bitter for her.

But despite her grief, or perhaps just because of it, she took on

herself all the difficult work of directing the storing and packing of

their things and was busy for whole days. The count and countess

turned to her when they had any orders to give. Petya and Natasha on

the contrary, far from helping their parents, were generally a

nuisance and a hindrance to everyone. Almost all day long the house

resounded with their running feet, their cries, and their

spontaneous laughter. They laughed and were gay not because there

was any reason to laugh, but because gaiety and mirth were in their

hearts and so everything that happened was a cause for gaiety and

laughter to them. Petya was in high spirits because having left home a

boy he had returned (as everybody told him) a fine young man,

because he was at home, because he had left Belaya Tserkov where there

was no hope of soon taking part in a battle and had come to Moscow

where there was to be fighting in a few days, and chiefly because

Natasha, whose lead he always followed, was in high spirits. Natasha

was gay because she had been sad too long and now nothing reminded her

of the cause of her sadness, and because she was feeling well. She was

also happy because she had someone to adore her: the adoration of

others was a lubricant the wheels of her machine needed to make them

run freely--and Petya adored her. Above all, they were gay because

there was a war near Moscow, there would be fighting at the town

gates, arms were being given out, everybody was escaping--going away

somewhere, and in general something extraordinary was happening, and

that is always exciting, especially to the young.









CHAPTER XIII





On Saturday, the thirty-first of August, everything in the

Rostovs' house seemed topsy-turvy. All the doors were open, all the

furniture was being carried out or moved about, and the mirrors and

pictures had been taken down. There were trunks in the rooms, and hay,

wrapping paper, and ropes were scattered about. The peasants and house

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serfs carrying out the things were treading heavily on the parquet

floors. The yard was crowded with peasant carts, some loaded high

and already corded up, others still empty.



The voices and footsteps of the many servants and of the peasants

who had come with the carts resounded as they shouted to one another

in the yard and in the house. The count bad been out since morning.

The countess had a headache brought on by all the noise and turmoil

and was lying down in the new sitting room with a vinegar compress

on her head. Petya was not at home, he had gone to visit a friend with

whom he meant to obtain a transfer from the militia to the active

army. Sonya was in the ballroom looking after the packing of the glass

and china. Natasha was sitting on the floor of her dismantled room

with dresses, ribbons, and scarves strewn all about her, gazing

fixedly at the floor and holding in her hands the old ball dress

(already out of fashion) which she had worn at her first Petersburg

ball.



Natasha was ashamed of doing nothing when everyone else was so busy,

and several times that morning had tried to set to work, but her heart

was not in it, and she could not and did not know how to do anything

except with all her heart and all her might. For a while she had stood

beside Sonya while the china was being packed and tried to help, but

soon gave it up and went to her room to pack her own things. At

first she found it amusing to give away dresses and ribbons to the

maids, but when that was done and what was left had still to be

packed, she found it dull.



"Dunyasha, you pack! You will, won't you, dear?" And when Dunyasha

willingly promised to do it all for her, Natasha sat down on the

floor, took her old ball dress, and fell into a reverie quite

unrelated to what ought to have occupied her thoughts now. She was

roused from her reverie by the talk of the maids in the next room

(which was theirs) and by the sound of their hurried footsteps going

to the back porch. Natasha got up and looked out of the window. An

enormously long row of carts full of wounded men had stopped in the

street.



The housekeeper, the old nurse, the cooks, coachmen, maids, footmen,

postilions, and scullions stood at the gate, staring at the wounded.



Natasha, throwing a clean pocket handkerchief over her hair and

holding an end of it in each hand, went out into the street.



The former housekeeper, old Mavra Kuzminichna, had stepped out of

the crowd by the gate, gone up to a cart with a hood constructed of

bast mats, and was speaking to a pale young officer who lay inside.

Natasha moved a few steps forward and stopped shyly, still holding her

handkerchief, and listened to what the housekeeper was saying.



"Then you have nobody in Moscow?" she was saying. "You would be more

comfortable somewhere in a house... in ours, for instance... the

family are leaving."



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"I don't know if it would be allowed," replied the officer in a weak

voice. "Here is our commanding officer... ask him," and he pointed

to a stout major who was walking back along the street past the row of

carts.



Natasha glanced with frightened eyes at the face of the wounded

officer and at once went to meet the major.



"May the wounded men stay in our house?" she asked.



The major raised his hand to his cap with a smile.



"Which one do you want, Ma'am'selle?" said he, screwing up his

eyes and smiling.



Natasha quietly repeated her question, and her face and whole manner

were so serious, though she was still holding the ends of her

handkerchief, that the major ceased smiling and after some reflection-

as if considering in how far the thing was possible--replied in the

affirmative.



"Oh yes, why not? They may," he said.



With a slight inclination of her head, Natasha stepped back

quickly to Mavra Kuzminichna, who stood talking compassionately to the

officer.



"They may. He says they may!" whispered Natasha.



The cart in which the officer lay was turned into the Rostovs' yard,

and dozens of carts with wounded men began at the invitation of the

townsfolk to turn into the yards and to draw up at the entrances of

the houses in Povarskaya Street. Natasha was evidently pleased to be

dealing with new people outside the ordinary routine of her life.

She and Mavra Kuzminichna tried to get as many of the wounded as

possible into their yard.



"Your Papa must be told, though," said Mavra Kuzminichna.



"Never mind, never mind, what does it matter? For one day we can

move into the drawing room. They can have all our half of the house."



"There now, young lady, you do take things into your head! Even if

we put them into the wing, the men's room, or the nurse's room, we

must ask permission."



"Well, I'll ask."



Natasha ran into the house and went on tiptoe through the

half-open door into the sitting room, where there was a smell of

vinegar and Hoffman's drops.



"Are you asleep, Mamma?"



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"Oh, what sleep-?" said the countess, waking up just as she was

dropping into a doze.



"Mamma darling!" said Natasha, kneeling by her mother and bringing

her face close to her mother's, "I am sorry, forgive me, I'll never do

it again; I woke you up! Mavra Kuzminichna has sent me: they have

brought some wounded here--officers. Will you let them come? They have

nowhere to go. I knew you'd let them come!" she said quickly all in

one breath.



"What officers? Whom have they brought? I don't understand

anything about it," said the countess.



Natasha laughed, and the countess too smiled slightly.



"I knew you'd give permission... so I'll tell them," and, having

kissed her mother, Natasha got up and went to the door.



In the hall she met her father, who had returned with bad news.



"We've stayed too long!" said the count with involuntary vexation.

"The Club is closed and the police are leaving."



"Papa, is it all right--I've invited some of the wounded into the

house?" said Natasha.



"Of course it is," he answered absently. "That's not the point. I

beg you not to indulge in trifles now, but to help to pack, and

tomorrow we must go, go, go!...."



And the count gave a similar order to the major-domo and the

servants.



At dinner Petya having returned home told them the news he had

heard. He said the people had been getting arms in the Kremlin, and

that though Rostopchin's broadsheet had said that he would sound a

call two or three days in advance, the order had certainly already

been given for everyone to go armed to the Three Hills tomorrow, and

that there would be a big battle there.



The countess looked with timid horror at her son's eager, excited

face as he said this. She realized that if she said a word about his

not going to the battle (she knew he enjoyed the thought of the

impending engagement) he would say something about men, honor, and the

fatherland--something senseless, masculine, and obstinate which

there would be no contradicting, and her plans would be spoiled; and

so, hoping to arrange to leave before then and take Petya with her

as their protector and defender, she did not answer him, but after

dinner called the count aside and implored him with tears to take

her away quickly, that very night if possible. With a woman's

involuntary loving cunning she, who till then had not shown any alarm,

said that she would die of fright if they did not leave that very

night. Without any pretense she was now afraid of everything.



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CHAPTER XIV





Madame Schoss, who had been out to visit her daughter, increased the

countess' fears still more by telling what she had seen at a spirit

dealer's in Myasnitski Street. When returning by that street she had

been unable to pass because of a drunken crowd rioting in front of the

shop. She had taken a cab and driven home by a side street and the

cabman had told her that the people were breaking open the barrels

at the drink store, having received orders to do so.



After dinner the whole Rostov household set to work with

enthusiastic haste packing their belongings and preparing for their

departure. The old count, suddenly setting to work, kept passing

from the yard to the house and back again, shouting confused

instructions to the hurrying people, and flurrying them still more.

Petya directed things in the yard. Sonya, owing to the count's

contradictory orders, lost her head and did not know what to do. The

servants ran noisily about the house and yard, shouting and disputing.

Natasha, with the ardor characteristic of all she did suddenly set

to work too. At first her intervention in the business of packing

was received skeptically. Everybody expected some prank from her and

did not wish to obey her; but she resolutely and passionately demanded

obedience, grew angry and nearly cried because they did not heed

her, and at last succeeded in making them believe her. Her first

exploit, which cost her immense effort and established her

authority, was the packing of the carpets. The count had valuable

Gobelin tapestries and Persian carpets in the house. When Natasha

set to work two cases were standing open in the ballroom, one almost

full up with crockery, the other with carpets. There was also much

china standing on the tables, and still more was being brought in from

the storeroom. A third case was needed and servants had gone to

fetch it.



"Sonya, wait a bit--we'll pack everything into these," said Natasha.



"You can't, Miss, we have tried to," said the butler's assistant.



"No, wait a minute, please."



And Natasha began rapidly taking out of the case dishes and plates

wrapped in paper.



"The dishes must go in here among the carpets," said she.



"Why, it's a mercy if we can get the carpets alone into three

cases," said the butler's assistant.



"Oh, wait, please!" And Natasha began rapidly and deftly sorting out

the things. "These aren't needed," said she, putting aside some plates

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of Kiev ware. "These--yes, these must go among the carpets," she said,

referring to the Saxony china dishes.



"Don't, Natasha! Leave it alone! We'll get it all packed," urged

Sonya reproachfully.



"What a young lady she is!" remarked the major-domo.



But Natasha would not give in. She turned everything out and began

quickly repacking, deciding that the inferior Russian carpets and

unnecessary crockery should not be taken at all. When everything had

been taken out of the cases, they recommenced packing, and it turned

out that when the cheaper things not worth taking had nearly all

been rejected, the valuable ones really did all go into the two cases.

Only the lid of the case containing the carpets would not shut down. A

few more things might have been taken out, but Natasha insisted on

having her own way. She packed, repacked, pressed, made the butler's

assistant and Petya--whom she had drawn into the business of

packing--press on the lid, and made desperate efforts herself.



"That's enough, Natasha," said Sonya. "I see you were right, but

just take out the top one."



"I won't!" cried Natasha, with one hand bolding back the hair that

hung over her perspiring face, while with the other she pressed down

the carpets. "Now press, Petya! Press, Vasilich, press hard!" she

cried.



The carpets yielded and the lid closed; Natasha, clapping her hands,

screamed with delight and tears fell from her eyes. But this only

lasted a moment. She at once set to work afresh and they now trusted

her completely. The count was not angry even when they told him that

Natasha had countermanded an order of his, and the servants now came

to her to ask whether a cart was sufficiently loaded, and whether it

might be corded up. Thanks to Natasha's directions the work now went

on expeditiously, unnecessary things were left, and the most

valuable packed as compactly as possible.



But hard as they all worked till quite late that night, they could

not get everything packed. The countess had fallen asleep and the

count, having put off their departure till next morning, went to bed.



Sonya and Natasha slept in the sitting room without undressing.



That night another wounded man was driven down the Povarskaya, and

Mavra Kuzminichna, who was standing at the gate, had him brought

into the Rostovs' yard. Mavra Kuzminichna concluded that he was a very

important man. He was being conveyed in a caleche with a raised

hood, and was quite covered by an apron. On the box beside the

driver sat a venerable old attendant. A doctor and two soldiers

followed the carriage in a cart.



"Please come in here. The masters are going away and the whole house

will be empty," said the old woman to the old attendant.

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"Well, perhaps," said he with a sigh. "We don't expect to get him

home alive! We have a house of our own in Moscow, but it's a long

way from here, and there's nobody living in it."



"Do us the honor to come in, there's plenty of everything in the

master's house. Come in," said Mavra Kuzminichna. "Is he very ill?"

she asked.



The attendant made a hopeless gesture.



"We don't expect to get him home! We must ask the doctor."



And the old servant got down from the box and went up to the cart.



"All right!" said the doctor.



The old servant returned to the caleche, looked into it, shook his

head disconsolately, told the driver to turn into the yard, and

stopped beside Mavra Kuzminichna.



"O, Lord Jesus Christ!" she murmured.



She invited them to take the wounded man into the house.



"The masters won't object..." she said.



But they had to avoid carrying the man upstairs, and so they took

him into the wing and put him in the room that had been Madame

Schoss'.



This wounded man was Prince Andrew Bolkonski.









CHAPTER XV





Moscow's last day had come. It was a clear bright autumn day, a

Sunday. The church bells everywhere were ringing for service, just

as usual on Sundays. Nobody seemed yet to realize what awaited the

city.



Only two things indicated the social condition of Moscow--the

rabble, that is the poor people, and the price of commodities. An

enormous crowd of factory hands, house serfs, and peasants, with

whom some officials, seminarists, and gentry were mingled, had gone

early that morning to the Three Hills. Having waited there for

Rostopchin who did not turn up, they became convinced that Moscow

would be surrendered, and then dispersed all about the town to the

public houses and cookshops. Prices too that day indicated the state

of affairs. The price of weapons, of gold, of carts and horses, kept

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rising, but the value of paper money and city articles kept falling,

so that by midday there were instances of carters removing valuable

goods, such as cloth, and receiving in payment a half of what they

carted, while peasant horses were fetching five hundred rubles each,

and furniture, mirrors, and bronzes were being given away for nothing.



In the Rostovs' staid old-fashioned house the dissolution of

former conditions of life was but little noticeable. As to the serfs

the only indication was that three out of their huge retinue

disappeared during the night, but nothing was stolen; and as to the

value of their possessions, the thirty peasant carts that had come

in from their estates and which many people envied proved to be

extremely valuable and they were offered enormous sums of money for

them. Not only were huge sums offered for the horses and carts, but on

the previous evening and early in the morning of the first of

September, orderlies and servants sent by wounded officers came to the

Rostovs' and wounded men dragged themselves there from the Rostovs'

and from neighboring houses where they were accommodated, entreating

the servants to try to get them a lift out of Moscow. The major-domo

to whom these entreaties were addressed, though he was sorry for the

wounded, resolutely refused, saying that he dare not even mention

the matter to the count. Pity these wounded men as one might, it was

evident that if they were given one cart there would be no reason to

refuse another, or all the carts and one's own carriages as well.

Thirty carts could not save all the wounded and in the general

catastrophe one could not disregard oneself and one's own family. So

thought the major-domo on his master's behalf.



On waking up that morning Count Ilya Rostov left his bedroom softly,

so as not to wake the countess who had fallen asleep only toward

morning, and came out to the porch in his lilac silk dressing gown. In

the yard stood the carts ready corded. The carriages were at the front

porch. The major-domo stood at the porch talking to an elderly orderly

and to a pale young officer with a bandaged arm. On seeing the count

the major-domo made a significant and stern gesture to them both to go

away.



"Well, Vasilich, is everything ready?" asked the count, and stroking

his bald head he looked good-naturedly at the officer and the

orderly and nodded to them. (He liked to see new faces.)



"We can harness at once, your excellency."



"Well, that's right. As soon as the countess wakes we'll be off, God

willing! What is it, gentlemen?" he added, turning to the officer.

"Are you staying in my house?"



The officer came nearer and suddenly his face flushed crimson.



"Count, be so good as to allow me... for God's sake, to get into

some corner of one of your carts! I have nothing here with me.... I

shall be all right on a loaded cart..."



Before the officer had finished speaking the orderly made the same

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request on behalf of his master.



"Oh, yes, yes, yes!" said the count hastily. "I shall be very

pleased, very pleased. Vasilich, you'll see to it. Just unload one

or two carts. Well, what of it... do what's necessary..." said the

count, muttering some indefinite order.



But at the same moment an expression of warm gratitude on the

officer's face had already sealed the order. The count looked around

him. In the yard, at the gates, at the window of the wings, wounded

officers and their orderlies were to be seen. They were all looking at

the count and moving toward the porch.



"Please step into the gallery, your excellency," said the

major-domo. "What are your orders about the pictures?"



The count went into the house with him, repeating his order not to

refuse the wounded who asked for a lift.



"Well, never mind, some of the things can be unloaded," he added

in a soft, confidential voice, as though afraid of being overheard.



At nine o'clock the countess woke up, and Matrena Timofeevna, who

had been her lady's maid before her marriage and now performed a

sort of chief gendarme's duty for her, came to say that Madame

Schoss was much offended and the young ladies' summer dresses could

not be left behind. On inquiry, the countess learned that Madame

Schoss was offended because her trunk had been taken down from its

cart, and all the loads were being uncorded and the luggage taken

out of the carts to make room for wounded men whom the count in the

simplicity of his heart had ordered that they should take with them.

The countess sent for her husband.



"What is this, my dear? I hear that the luggage is being unloaded."



"You know, love, I wanted to tell you... Countess dear... an officer

came to me to ask for a few carts for the wounded. After all, ours are

things that can be bought but think what being left behind means to

them!... Really now, in our own yard--we asked them in ourselves and

there are officers among them.... You know, I think, my dear... let

them be taken... where's the hurry?"



The count spoke timidly, as he always did when talking of money

matters. The countess was accustomed to this tone as a precursor of

news of something detrimental to the children's interests, such as the

building of a new gallery or conservatory, the inauguration of a

private theater or an orchestra. She was accustomed always to oppose

anything announced in that timid tone and considered it her duty to do

so.



She assumed her dolefully submissive manner and said to her husband:

"Listen to me, Count, you have managed matters so that we are

getting nothing for the house, and now you wish to throw away all our-

all the children's property! You said yourself that we have a

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hundred thousand rubles' worth of things in the house. I don't

consent, my dear, I don't! Do as you please! It's the government's

business to look after the wounded; they know that. Look at the

Lopukhins opposite, they cleared out everything two days ago. That's

what other people do. It's only we who are such fools. If you have

no pity on me, have some for the children."



Flourishing his arms in despair the count left the room without

replying.



"Papa, what are you doing that for?" asked Natasha, who had followed

him into her mother's room.



"Nothing! What business is it of yours?" muttered the count angrily.



"But I heard," said Natasha. "Why does Mamma object?"



"What business is it of yours?" cried the count.



Natasha stepped up to the window and pondered.



"Papa! Here's Berg coming to see us," said she, looking out of the

window.









CHAPTER XVI





Berg, the Rostovs' son-in-law, was already a colonel wearing the

orders of Vladimir and Anna, and he still filled the quiet and

agreeable post of assistant to the head of the staff of the

assistant commander of the first division of the Second Army.



On the first of September he had come to Moscow from the army.



He had nothing to do in Moscow, but he had noticed that everyone

in the army was asking for leave to visit Moscow and had something

to do there. So he considered it necessary to ask for leave of absence

for family and domestic reasons.



Berg drove up to his father-in-law's house in his spruce little trap

with a pair of sleek roans, exactly like those of a certain prince. He

looked attentively at the carts in the yard and while going up to

the porch took out a clean pocket handkerchief and tied a knot in it.



From the anteroom Berg ran with smooth though impatient steps into

the drawing room, where he embraced the count, kissed the hands of

Natasha and Sonya, and hastened to inquire after "Mamma's" health.



"Health, at a time like this?" said the count. "Come, tell us the

news! Is the army retreating or will there be another battle?"

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"God Almighty alone can decide the fate of our fatherland, Papa,"

said Berg. "The army is burning with a spirit of heroism and the

leaders, so to say, have now assembled in council. No one knows what

is coming. But in general I can tell you, Papa, that such a heroic

spirit, the truly antique valor of the Russian army, which they--which

it" (he corrected himself) "has shown or displayed in the battle of

the twenty-sixth--there are no words worthy to do it justice! I tell

you, Papa" (he smote himself on the breast as a general he had heard

speaking had done, but Berg did it a trifle late for he should have

struck his breast at the words "Russian army"), "I tell you frankly

that we, the commanders, far from having to urge the men on or

anything of that kind, could hardly restrain those... those... yes,

those exploits of antique valor," he went on rapidly. "General Barclay

de Tolly risked his life everywhere at the head of the troops, I can

assure you. Our corps was stationed on a hillside. You can imagine!"



And Berg related all that he remembered of the various tales he

had heard those days. Natasha watched him with an intent gaze that

confused him, as if she were trying to find in his face the answer

to some question.



"Altogether such heroism as was displayed by the Russian warriors

cannot be imagined or adequately praised!" said Berg, glancing round

at Natasha, and as if anxious to conciliate her, replying to her

intent look with a smile. "'Russia is not in Moscow, she lives in

the hearts of her sons!' Isn't it so, Papa?" said he.



Just then the countess came in from the sitting room with a weary

and dissatisfied expression. Berg hurriedly jumped up, kissed her

hand, asked about her health, and, swaying his head from side to

side to express sympathy, remained standing beside her.



"Yes, Mamma, I tell you sincerely that these are hard and sad

times for every Russian. But why are you so anxious? You have still

time to get away...."



"I can't think what the servants are about," said the countess,

turning to her husband. "I have just been told that nothing is ready

yet. Somebody after all must see to things. One misses Mitenka at such

times. There won't be any end to it."



The count was about to say something, but evidently restrained

himself. He got up from his chair and went to the door.



At that moment Berg drew out his handkerchief as if to blow his nose

and, seeing the knot in it, pondered, shaking his head sadly and

significantly.



"And I have a great favor to ask of you, Papa," said he.



"Hm..." said the count, and stopped.



"I was driving past Yusupov's house just now," said Berg with a

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laugh, "when the steward, a man I know, ran out and asked me whether I

wouldn't buy something. I went in out of curiosity, you know, and

there is a small chiffonier and a dressing table. You know how dear

Vera wanted a chiffonier like that and how we had a dispute about it."

(At the mention of the chiffonier and dressing table Berg

involuntarily changed his tone to one of pleasure at his admirable

domestic arrangements.) "And it's such a beauty! It pulls out and

has a secret English drawer, you know! And dear Vera has long wanted

one. I wish to give her a surprise, you see. I saw so many of those

peasant carts in your yard. Please let me have one, I will pay the man

well, and..."



The count frowned and coughed.



"Ask the countess, I don't give orders."



"If it's inconvenient, please don't," said Berg. "Only I so wanted

it, for dear Vera's sake."



"Oh, go to the devil, all of you! To the devil, the devil, the

devil..." cried the old count. "My head's in a whirl!"



And he left the room. The countess began to cry.



"Yes, Mamma! Yes, these are very hard times!" said Berg.



Natasha left the room with her father and, as if finding it

difficult to reach some decision, first followed him and then ran

downstairs.



Petya was in the porch, engaged in giving out weapons to the

servants who were to leave Moscow. The loaded carts were still

standing in the yard. Two of them had been uncorded and a wounded

officer was climbing into one of them helped by an orderly.



"Do you know what it's about?" Petya asked Natasha.



She understood that he meant what were their parents quarreling

about. She did not answer.



"It's because Papa wanted to give up all the carts to the

wounded," said Petya. "Vasilich told me. I consider..."



"I consider," Natasha suddenly almost shouted, turning her angry

face to Petya, "I consider it so horrid, so abominable, so... I

don't know what. Are we despicable Germans?"



Her throat quivered with convulsive sobs and, afraid of weakening

and letting the force of her anger run to waste, she turned and rushed

headlong up the stairs.



Berg was sitting beside the countess consoling her with the

respectful attention of a relative. The count, pipe in hand, was

pacing up and down the room, when Natasha, her face distorted by

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anger, burst in like a tempest and approached her mother with rapid

steps.



"It's horrid! It's abominable!" she screamed. "You can't possibly

have ordered it!"



Berg and the countess looked at her, perplexed and frightened. The

count stood still at the window and listened.



"Mamma, it's impossible: see what is going on in the yard!" she

cried. "They will be left!..."



"What's the matter with you? Who are 'they'? What do you want?"



"Why, the wounded! It's impossible, Mamma. It's monstrous!... No,

Mamma darling, it's not the thing. Please forgive me, darling....

Mamma, what does it matter what we take away? Only look what is

going on in the yard... Mamma!... It's impossible!"



The count stood by the window and listened without turning round.

Suddenly he sniffed and put his face closer to the window.



The countess glanced at her daughter, saw her face full of shame for

her mother, saw her agitation, and understood why her husband did

not turn to look at her now, and she glanced round quite disconcerted.



"Oh, do as you like! Am I hindering anyone?" she said, not

surrendering at once.



"Mamma, darling, forgive me!"



But the countess pushed her daughter away and went up to her

husband.



"My dear, you order what is right.... You know I don't understand

about it," said she, dropping her eyes shamefacedly.



"The eggs... the eggs are teaching the hen," muttered the count

through tears of joy, and he embraced his wife who was glad to hide

her look of shame on his breast.



"Papa! Mamma! May I see to it? May I?..." asked Natasha. "We will

still take all the most necessary things."



The count nodded affirmatively, and Natasha, at the rapid pace at

which she used to run when playing at tag, ran through the ballroom to

the anteroom and downstairs into the yard.



The servants gathered round Natasha, but could not believe the

strange order she brought them until the count himself, in his

wife's name, confirmed the order to give up all the carts to the

wounded and take the trunks to the storerooms. When they understood

that order the servants set to work at this new task with pleasure and

zeal. It no longer seemed strange to them but on the contrary it

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seemed the only thing that could be done, just as a quarter of an hour

before it had not seemed strange to anyone that the wounded should

be left behind and the goods carted away but that had seemed the

only thing to do.



The whole household, as if to atone for not having done it sooner,

set eagerly to work at the new task of placing the wounded in the

carts. The wounded dragged themselves out of their rooms and stood

with pale but happy faces round the carts. The news that carts were to

be had spread to the neighboring houses, from which wounded men

began to come into the Rostovs' yard. Many of the wounded asked them

not to unload the carts but only to let them sit on the top of the

things. But the work of unloading, once started, could not be

arrested. It seemed not to matter whether all or only half the

things were left behind. Cases full of china, bronzes, pictures, and

mirrors that had been so carefully packed the night before now lay

about the yard, and still they went on searching for and finding

possibilities of unloading this or that and letting the wounded have

another and yet another cart.



"We can take four more men," said the steward. "They can have my

trap, or else what is to become of them?"



"Let them have my wardrobe cart," said the countess. "Dunyasha can

go with me in the carriage."



They unloaded the wardrobe cart and sent it to take wounded men from

a house two doors off. The whole household, servants included, was

bright and animated. Natasha was in a state of rapturous excitement

such as she had not known for a long time.



"What could we fasten this onto?" asked the servants, trying to

fix a trunk on the narrow footboard behind a carriage. "We must keep

at least one cart."



"What's in it?" asked Natasha.



"The count's books."



"Leave it, Vasilich will put it away. It's not wanted."



The phaeton was full of people and there was a doubt as to where

Count Peter could sit.



"On the box. You'll sit on the box, won't you, Petya?" cried

Natasha.



Sonya too was busy all this time, but the aim of her efforts was

quite different from Natasha's. She was putting away the things that

had to be left behind and making a list of them as the countess

wished, and she tried to get as much taken away with them as possible.









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CHAPTER XVII





Before two o'clock in the afternoon the Rostovs' four carriages,

packed full and with the horses harnessed, stood at the front door.

One by one the carts with the wounded had moved out of the yard.



The caleche in which Prince Andrew was being taken attracted Sonya's

attention as it passed the front porch. With the help of a maid she

was arranging a seat for the countess in the huge high coach that

stood at the entrance.



"Whose caleche is that?" she inquired, leaning out of the carriage

window.



"Why, didn't you know, Miss?" replied the maid. "The wounded prince:

he spent the night in our house and is going with us."



"But who is it? What's his name?"



"It's our intended that was--Prince Bolkonski himself! They say he

is dying," replied the maid with a sigh.



Sonya jumped out of the coach and ran to the countess. The countess,

tired out and already dressed in shawl and bonnet for her journey, was

pacing up and down the drawing room, waiting for the household to

assemble for the usual silent prayer with closed doors before

starting. Natasha was not in the room.



"Mamma," said Sonya, "Prince Andrew is here, mortally wounded. He is

going with us."



The countess opened her eyes in dismay and, seizing Sonya's arm,

glanced around.



"Natasha?" she murmured.



At that moment this news had only one significance for both of them.

They knew their Natasha, and alarm as to what would happen if she

heard this news stifled all sympathy for the man they both liked.



"Natasha does not know yet, but he is going with us," said Sonya.



"You say he is dying?"



Sonya nodded.



The countess put her arms around Sonya and began to cry.



"The ways of God are past finding out!" she thought, feeling that

the Almighty Hand, hitherto unseen, was becoming manifest in all

that was now taking place.

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"Well, Mamma? Everything is ready. What's the matter?" asked

Natasha, as with animated face she ran into the room.



"Nothing," answered the countess. "If everything is ready let us

start."



And the countess bent over her reticule to hide her agitated face.

Sonya embraced Natasha and kissed her.



Natasha looked at her inquiringly.



"What is it? What has happened?"



"Nothing... No..."



"Is it something very bad for me? What is it?" persisted Natasha

with her quick intuition.



Sonya sighed and made no reply. The count, Petya, Madame Schoss,

Mavra Kuzminichna, and Vasilich came into the drawing room and, having

closed the doors, they all sat down and remained for some moments

silently seated without looking at one another.



The count was the first to rise, and with a loud sigh crossed

himself before the icon. All the others did the same. Then the count

embraced Mavra Kuzminichna and Vasilich, who were to remain in Moscow,

and while they caught at his hand and kissed his shoulder he patted

their backs lightly with some vaguely affectionate and comforting

words. The countess went into the oratory and there Sonya found her on

her knees before the icons that had been left here and there hanging

on the wall. (The most precious ones, with which some family tradition

was connected, were being taken with them.)



In the porch and in the yard the men whom Petya had armed with

swords and daggers, with trousers tucked inside their high boots and

with belts and girdles tightened, were taking leave of those remaining

behind.



As is always the case at a departure, much had been forgotten or put

in the wrong place, and for a long time two menservants stood one on

each side of the open door and the carriage steps waiting to help

the countess in, while maids rushed with cushions and bundles from the

house to the carriages, the caleche, the phaeton, and back again.



"They always will forget everything!" said the countess. "Don't

you know I can't sit like that?"



And Dunyasha, with clenched teeth, without replying but with an

aggrieved look on her face, hastily got into the coach to rearrange

the seat.



"Oh, those servants!" said the count, swaying his head.



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Efim, the old coachman, who was the only one the countess trusted to

drive her, sat perched up high on the box and did not so much as

glance round at what was going on behind him. From thirty years'

experience he knew it would be some time yet before the order, "Be

off, in God's name!" would be given him: and he knew that even when it

was said he would be stopped once or twice more while they sent back

to fetch something that had been forgotten, and even after that he

would again be stopped and the countess herself would lean out of

the window and beg him for the love of heaven to drive carefully

down the hill. He knew all this and therefore waited calmly for what

would happen, with more patience than the horses, especially the

near one, the chestnut Falcon, who was pawing the ground and

champing his bit. At last all were seated, the carriage steps were

folded and pulled up, the door was shut, somebody was sent for a

traveling case, and the countess leaned out and said what she had to

say. Then Efim deliberately doffed his hat and began crossing himself.

The postilion and all the other servants did the same. "Off, in

God's name!" said Efim, putting on his hat. "Start!" The postilion

started the horses, the off pole horse tugged at his collar, the

high springs creaked, and the body of the coach swayed. The footman

sprang onto the box of the moving coach which jolted as it passed

out of the yard onto the uneven roadway; the other vehicles jolted

in their turn, and the procession of carriages moved up the street. In

the carriages, the caleche, and the phaeton, all crossed themselves as

they passed the church opposite the house. Those who were to remain in

Moscow walked on either side of the vehicles seeing the travelers off.



Rarely had Natasha experienced so joyful a feeling as now, sitting

in the carriage beside the countess and gazing at the slowly

receding walls of forsaken, agitated Moscow. Occasionally she leaned

out of the carriage window and looked back and then forward at the

long train of wounded in front of them. Almost at the head of the line

she could see the raised hood of Prince Andrew's caleche. She did

not know who was in it, but each time she looked at the procession her

eyes sought that caleche. She knew it was right in front.



In Kudrino, from the Nikitski, Presnya, and Podnovinsk Streets

came several other trains of vehicles similar to the Rostovs', and

as they passed along the Sadovaya Street the carriages and carts

formed two rows abreast.



As they were going round the Sukharev water tower Natasha, who was

inquisitively and alertly scrutinizing the people driving or walking

past, suddenly cried out in joyful surprise:



"Dear me! Mamma, Sonya, look, it's he!"



"Who? Who?"



"Look! Yes, on my word, it's Bezukhov!" said Natasha, putting her

head out of the carriage and staring at a tall, stout man in a

coachman's long coat, who from his manner of walking and moving was

evidently a gentleman in disguise, and who was passing under the

arch of the Sukharev tower accompanied by a small, sallow-faced,

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beardless old man in a frieze coat.



"Yes, it really is Bezukhov in a coachman's coat, with a

queer-looking old boy. Really," said Natasha, "look, look!"



"No, it's not he. How can you talk such nonsense?"



"Mamma," screamed Natasha, "I'll stake my head it's he! I assure

you! Stop, stop!" she cried to the coachman.



But the coachman could not stop, for from the Meshchanski Street

came more carts and carriages, and the Rostovs were being shouted at

to move on and not block the way.



In fact, however, though now much farther off than before, the

Rostovs all saw Pierre--or someone extraordinarily like him--in a

coachman's coat, going down the street with head bent and a serious

face beside a small, beardless old man who looked like a footman. That

old man noticed a face thrust out of the carriage window gazing at

them, and respectfully touching Pierre's elbow said something to him

and pointed to the carriage. Pierre, evidently engrossed in thought,

could not at first understand him. At length when he had understood

and looked in the direction the old man indicated, he recognized

Natasha, and following his first impulse stepped instantly and rapidly

toward the coach. But having taken a dozen steps he seemed to remember

something and stopped.



Natasha's face, leaning out of the window, beamed with quizzical

kindliness.



"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you! This is

wonderful!" she cried, holding out her hand to him. "What are you

doing? Why are you like this?"



Pierre took her outstretched hand and kissed it awkwardly as he

walked along beside her while the coach still moved on.



"What is the matter, Count?" asked the countess in a surprised and

commiserating tone.



"What? What? Why? Don't ask me," said Pierre, and looked round at

Natasha whose radiant, happy expression--of which he was conscious

without looking at her--filled him with enchantment.



"Are you remaining in Moscow, then?"



Pierre hesitated.



"In Moscow?" he said in a questioning tone. "Yes, in Moscow.

Goodby!"



"Ah, if only I were a man? I'd certainly stay with you. How

splendid!" said Natasha. "Mamma, if you'll let me, I'll stay!"



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Pierre glanced absently at Natasha and was about to say something,

but the countess interrupted him.



"You were at the battle, we heard."



"Yes, I was," Pierre answered. "There will be another battle

tomorrow..." he began, but Natasha interrupted him.



"But what is the matter with you, Count? You are not like

yourself...."



"Oh, don't ask me, don't ask me! I don't know myself. Tomorrow...

But no! Good-by, good-by!" he muttered. "It's an awful time!" and

dropping behind the carriage he stepped onto the pavement.



Natasha continued to lean out of the window for a long time, beaming

at him with her kindly, slightly quizzical, happy smile.









CHAPTER XVIII





For the last two days, ever since leaving home, Pierre had been

living in the empty house of his deceased benefactor, Bazdeev. This is

how it happened.



When he woke up on the morning after his return to Moscow and his

interview with Count Rostopchin, he could not for some time make out

where he was and what was expected of him. When he was informed that

among others awaiting him in his reception room there was a

Frenchman who had brought a letter from his wife, the Countess Helene,

he felt suddenly overcome by that sense of confusion and

hopelessness to which he was apt to succumb. He felt that everything

was now at an end, all was in confusion and crumbling to pieces,

that nobody was right or wrong, the future held nothing, and there was

no escape from this position. Smiling unnaturally and muttering to

himself, he first sat down on the sofa in an attitude of despair, then

rose, went to the door of the reception room and peeped through the

crack, returned flourishing his arms, and took up a book. His

major-domo came in a second time to say that the Frenchman who had

brought the letter from the countess was very anxious to see him if

only for a minute, and that someone from Bazdeev's widow had called to

ask Pierre to take charge of her husband's books, as she herself was

leaving for the country.



"Oh, yes, in a minute; wait... or no! No, of course... go and say

I will come directly," Pierre replied to the major-domo.



But as soon as the man had left the room Pierre took up his hat

which was lying on the table and went out of his study by the other

door. There was no one in the passage. He went along the whole

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length of this passage to the stairs and, frowning and rubbing his

forehead with both hands, went down as far as the first landing. The

hall porter was standing at the front door. From the landing where

Pierre stood there was a second staircase leading to the back

entrance. He went down that staircase and out into the yard. No one

had seen him. But there were some carriages waiting, and as soon as

Pierre stepped out of the gate the coachmen and the yard porter

noticed him and raised their caps to him. When he felt he was being

looked at he behaved like an ostrich which hides its head in a bush in

order not to be seen: he hung his head and quickening his pace went

down the street.



Of all the affairs awaiting Pierre that day the sorting of Joseph

Bazdeev's books and papers appeared to him the most necessary.



He hired the first cab he met and told the driver to go to the

Patriarch's Ponds, where the widow Bazdeev's house was.



Continually turning round to look at the rows of loaded carts that

were making their way from all sides out of Moscow, and balancing

his bulky body so as not to slip out of the ramshackle old vehicle,

Pierre, experiencing the joyful feeling of a boy escaping from school,

began to talk to his driver.



The man told him that arms were being distributed today at the

Kremlin and that tomorrow everyone would be sent out beyond the

Three Hills gates and a great battle would be fought there.



Having reached the Patriarch's Ponds Pierre found the Bazdeevs'

house, where he had not been for a long time past. He went up to the

gate. Gerasim, that sallow beardless old man Pierre had seen at

Torzhok five years before with Joseph Bazdeev, came out in answer to

his knock.



"At home?" asked Pierre.



"Owing to the present state of things Sophia Danilovna has gone to

the Torzhok estate with the children, your excellency."



"I will come in all the same, I have to look through the books,"

said Pierre.



"Be so good as to step in. Makar Alexeevich, the brother of my

late master--may the kingdom of heaven be his--has remained here,

but he is in a weak state as you know," said the old servant.



Pierre knew that Makar Alexeevich was Joseph Bazdeev's half-insane

brother and a hard drinker.



"Yes, yes, I know. Let us go in..." said Pierre and entered the

house.



A tall, bald-headed old man with a red nose, wearing a dressing gown

and with galoshes on his bare feet, stood in the anteroom. On seeing

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Pierre he muttered something angrily and went away along the passage.



"He was a very clever man but has now grown quite feeble, as your

honor sees," said Gerasim. "Will you step into the study?" Pierre

nodded. "As it was sealed up so it has remained, but Sophia

Danilovna gave orders that if anyone should come from you they were to

have the books."



Pierre went into that gloomy study which he had entered with such

trepidation in his benefactor's lifetime. The room, dusty and

untouched since the death of Joseph Bazdeev was now even gloomier.



Gerasim opened one of the shutters and left the room on tiptoe.

Pierre went round the study, approached the cupboard in which the

manuscripts were kept, and took out what had once been one of the most

important, the holy of holies of the order. This was the authentic

Scotch Acts with Bazdeev's notes and explanations. He sat down at

the dusty writing table, and, having laid the manuscripts before

him, opened them out, closed them, finally pushed them away, and

resting his head on his hand sank into meditation.



Gerasim looked cautiously into the study several times and saw

Pierre always sitting in the same attitude.



More than two hours passed and Gerasim took the liberty of making

a slight noise at the door to attract his attention, but Pierre did

not hear him.



"Is the cabman to be discharged, your honor?"



"Oh yes!" said Pierre, rousing himself and rising hurriedly. "Look

here," he added, taking Gerasim by a button of his coat and looking

down at the old man with moist, shining, and ecstatic eyes, "I say, do

you know that there is going to be a battle tomorrow?"



"We heard so," replied the man.



"I beg you not to tell anyone who I am, and to do what I ask you."



"Yes, your excellency," replied Gerasim. "Will you have something to

eat?"



"No, but I want something else. I want peasant clothes and a

pistol," said Pierre, unexpectedly blushing.



"Yes, your excellency," said Gerasim after thinking for a moment.



All the rest of that day Pierre spent alone in his benefactor's

study, and Gerasim heard him pacing restlessly from one corner to

another and talking to himself. And he spent the night on a bed made

up for him there.



Gerasim, being a servant who in his time had seen many strange

things, accepted Pierre's taking up his residence in the house without

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surprise, and seemed pleased to have someone to wait on. That same

evening--without even asking himself what they were wanted for--he

procured a coachman's coat and cap for Pierre, and promised to get him

the pistol next day. Makar Alexeevich came twice that evening

shuffling along in his galoshes as far as the door and stopped and

looked ingratiatingly at Pierre. But as soon as Pierre turned toward

him he wrapped his dressing gown around him with a shamefaced and

angry look and hurried away. It was when Pierre (wearing the

coachman's coat which Gerasim had procured for him and had disinfected

by steam) was on his way with the old man to buy the pistol at the

Sukharev market that he met the Rostovs.









CHAPTER XIX





Kutuzov's order to retreat through Moscow to the Ryazan road was

issued at night on the first of September.



The first troops started at once, and during the night they

marched slowly and steadily without hurry. At daybreak, however, those

nearing the town at the Dorogomilov bridge saw ahead of them masses of

soldiers crowding and hurrying across the bridge, ascending on the

opposite side and blocking the streets and alleys, while endless

masses of troops were bearing down on them from behind, and an

unreasoning hurry and alarm overcame them. They all rushed forward

to the bridge, onto it, and to the fords and the boats. Kutuzov

himself had driven round by side streets to the other side of Moscow.



By ten o'clock in the morning of the second of September, only the

rear guard remained in the Dorogomilov suburb, where they had ample

room. The main army was on the other side of Moscow or beyond it.



At that very time, at ten in the morning of the second of September,

Napoleon was standing among his troops on the Poklonny Hill looking at

the panorama spread out before him. From the twenty-sixth of August to

the second of September, that is from the battle of Borodino to the

entry of the French into Moscow, during the whole of that agitating,

memorable week, there had been the extraordinary autumn weather that

always comes as a surprise, when the sun hangs low and gives more heat

than in spring, when everything shines so brightly in the rare clear

atmosphere that the eyes smart, when the lungs are strengthened and

refreshed by inhaling the aromatic autumn air, when even the nights

are warm, and when in those dark warm nights, golden stars startle and

delight us continually by falling from the sky.



At ten in the morning of the second of September this weather

still held.



The brightness of the morning was magical. Moscow seen from the

Poklonny Hill lay spaciously spread out with her river, her gardens,

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and her churches, and she seemed to be living her usual life, her

cupolas glittering like stars in the sunlight.



The view of the strange city with its peculiar architecture, such as

he had never seen before, filled Napoleon with the rather envious

and uneasy curiosity men feel when they see an alien form of life that

has no knowledge of them. This city was evidently living with the full

force of its own life. By the indefinite signs which, even at a

distance, distinguish a living body from a dead one, Napoleon from the

Poklonny Hill perceived the throb of life in the town and felt, as

it were, the breathing of that great and beautiful body.



Every Russian looking at Moscow feels her to be a mother; every

foreigner who sees her, even if ignorant of her significance as the

mother city, must feel her feminine character, and Napoleon felt it.



"Cette ville asiatique aux innombrables eglises, Moscou la sainte.

La voila done enfin, cette fameuse ville! Il etait temps,"* said he,

and dismounting he ordered a plan of Moscow to be spread out before

him, and summoned Lelorgne d'Ideville, the interpreter.





*"That Asiatic city of the innumerable churches, holy Moscow! Here

it is then at last, that famous city. It was high time."





"A town captured by the enemy is like a maid who has lost her

honor," thought he (he had said so to Tuchkov at Smolensk). From

that point of view he gazed at the Oriental beauty he had not seen

before. It seemed strange to him that his long-felt wish, which had

seemed unattainable, had at last been realized. In the clear morning

light he gazed now at the city and now at the plan, considering its

details, and the assurance of possessing it agitated and awed him.



"But could it be otherwise?" he thought. "Here is this capital at my

feet. Where is Alexander now, and of what is he thinking? A strange,

beautiful, and majestic city; and a strange and majestic moment! In

what light must I appear to them!" thought he, thinking of his troops.

"Here she is, the reward for all those fainthearted men," he

reflected, glancing at those near him and at the troops who were

approaching and forming up. "One word from me, one movement of my

hand, and that ancient capital of the Tsars would perish. But my

clemency is always ready to descend upon the vanquished. I must be

magnanimous and truly great. But no, it can't be true that I am in

Moscow," he suddenly thought. "Yet here she is lying at my feet,

with her golden domes and crosses scintillating and twinkling in the

sunshine. But I shall spare her. On the ancient monuments of barbarism

and despotism I will inscribe great words of justice and mercy....

It is just this which Alexander will feel most painfully, I know him."

(It seemed to Napoleon that the chief import of what was taking

place lay in the personal struggle between himself and Alexander.)

"From the height of the Kremlin--yes, there is the Kremlin, yes--I

will give them just laws; I will teach them the meaning of true

civilization, I will make generations of boyars remember their

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conqueror with love. I will tell the deputation that I did not, and do

not, desire war, that I have waged war only against the false policy

of their court; that I love and respect Alexander and that in Moscow I

will accept terms of peace worthy of myself and of my people. I do not

wish to utilize the fortunes of war to humiliate an honored monarch.

'Boyars,' I will say to them, 'I do not desire war, I desire the peace

and welfare of all my subjects.' However, I know their presence will

inspire me, and I shall speak to them as I always do: clearly,

impressively, and majestically. But can it be true that I am in

Moscow? Yes, there she lies."



"Qu'on m'amene les boyars,"* said he to his suite.





*"Bring the boyars to me."





A general with a brilliant suite galloped off at once to fetch the

boyars.



Two hours passed. Napoleon had lunched and was again standing in the

same place on the Poklonny Hill awaiting the deputation. His speech to

the boyars had already taken definite shape in his imagination. That

speech was full of dignity and greatness as Napoleon understood it.



He was himself carried away by the tone of magnanimity he intended

to adopt toward Moscow. In his imagination he appointed days for

assemblies at the palace of the Tsars, at which Russian notables and

his own would mingle. He mentally appointed a governor, one who

would win the hearts of the people. Having learned that there were

many charitable institutions in Moscow he mentally decided that he

would shower favors on them all. He thought that, as in Africa he

had to put on a burnoose and sit in a mosque, so in Moscow he must

be beneficent like the Tsars. And in order finally to touch the hearts

of the Russians--and being like all Frenchmen unable to imagine

anything sentimental without a reference to ma chere, ma tendre, ma

pauvre mere* --he decided that he would place an inscription on all

these establishments in large letters: "This establishment is

dedicated to my dear mother." Or no, it should be simply: Maison de ma

Mere,*[2] he concluded. "But am I really in Moscow? Yes, here it

lies before me, but why is the deputation from the city so long in

appearing?" he wondered.





*"My dear, my tender, my poor mother."



*[2] "House of my Mother."





Meanwhile an agitated consultation was being carried on in

whispers among his generals and marshals at the rear of his suite.

Those sent to fetch the deputation had returned with the news that

Moscow was empty, that everyone had left it. The faces of those who

were not conferring together were pale and perturbed. They were not

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alarmed by the fact that Moscow had been abandoned by its

inhabitants (grave as that fact seemed), but by the question how to

tell the Emperor--without putting him in the terrible position of

appearing ridiculous--that he had been awaiting the boyars so long

in vain: that there were drunken mobs left in Moscow but no one

else. Some said that a deputation of some sort must be scraped

together, others disputed that opinion and maintained that the Emperor

should first be carefully and skillfully prepared, and then told the

truth.



"He will have to be told, all the same," said some gentlemen of

the suite. "But, gentlemen..."



The position was the more awkward because the Emperor, meditating

upon his magnanimous plans, was pacing patiently up and down before

the outspread map, occasionally glancing along the road to Moscow from

under his lifted hand with a bright and proud smile.



"But it's impossible..." declared the gentlemen of the suite,

shrugging their shoulders but not venturing to utter the implied word-

le ridicule...



At last the Emperor, tired of futile expectation, his actor's

instinct suggesting to him that the sublime moment having been too

long drawn out was beginning to lose its sublimity, gave a sign with

his hand. A single report of a signaling gun followed, and the troops,

who were already spread out on different sides of Moscow, moved into

the city through Tver, Kaluga, and Dorogomilov gates. Faster and

faster, vying with one another, they moved at the double or at a trot,

vanishing amid the clouds of dust they raised and making the air

ring with a deafening roar of mingling shouts.



Drawn on by the movement of his troops Napoleon rode with them as

far as the Dorogomilov gate, but there again stopped and,

dismounting from his horse, paced for a long time by the

Kammer-Kollezski rampart, awaiting the deputation.









CHAPTER XX



Meanwhile Moscow was empty. There were still people in it, perhaps a

fiftieth part of its former inhabitants had remained, but it was

empty. It was empty in the sense that a dying queenless hive is empty.



In a queenless hive no life is left though to a superficial glance

it seems as much alive as other hives.



The bees circle round a queenless hive in the hot beams of the

midday sun as gaily as around the living hives; from a distance it

smells of honey like the others, and bees fly in and out in the same

way. But one has only to observe that hive to realize that there is no

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longer any life in it. The bees do not fly in the same way, the

smell and the sound that meet the beekeeper are not the same. To the

beekeeper's tap on the wall of the sick hive, instead of the former

instant unanimous humming of tens of thousands of bees with their

abdomens threateningly compressed, and producing by the rapid

vibration of their wings an aerial living sound, the only reply is a

disconnected buzzing from different parts of the deserted hive. From

the alighting board, instead of the former spirituous fragrant smell

of honey and venom, and the warm whiffs of crowded life, comes an odor

of emptiness and decay mingling with the smell of honey. There are

no longer sentinels sounding the alarm with their abdomens raised, and

ready to die in defense of the hive. There is no longer the measured

quiet sound of throbbing activity, like the sound of boiling water,

but diverse discordant sounds of disorder. In and out of the hive long

black robber bees smeared with honey fly timidly and shiftily. They do

not sting, but crawl away from danger. Formerly only bees laden with

honey flew into the hive, and they flew out empty; now they fly out

laden. The beekeeper opens the lower part of the hive and peers in.

Instead of black, glossy bees--tamed by toil, clinging to one

another's legs and drawing out the wax, with a ceaseless hum of labor-

that used to hang in long clusters down to the floor of the hive,

drowsy shriveled bees crawl about separately in various directions

on the floor and walls of the hive. Instead of a neatly glued floor,

swept by the bees with the fanning of their wings, there is a floor

littered with bits of wax, excrement, dying bees scarcely moving their

legs, and dead ones that have not been cleared away.



The beekeeper opens the upper part of the hive and examines the

super. Instead of serried rows of bees sealing up every gap in the

combs and keeping the brood warm, he sees the skillful complex

structures of the combs, but no longer in their former state of

purity. All is neglected and foul. Black robber bees are swiftly and

stealthily prowling about the combs, and the short home bees,

shriveled and listless as if they were old, creep slowly about without

trying to hinder the robbers, having lost all motive and all sense

of life. Drones, bumblebees, wasps, and butterflies knock awkwardly

against the walls of the hive in their flight. Here and there among

the cells containing dead brood and honey an angry buzzing can

sometimes be heard. Here and there a couple of bees, by force of habit

and custom cleaning out the brood cells, with efforts beyond their

strength laboriously drag away a dead bee or bumblebee without knowing

why they do it. In another corner two old bees are languidly fighting,

or cleaning themselves, or feeding one another, without themselves

knowing whether they do it with friendly or hostile intent. In a third

place a crowd of bees, crushing one another, attack some victim and

fight and smother it, and the victim, enfeebled or killed, drops

from above slowly and lightly as a feather, among the heap of corpses.

The keeper opens the two center partitions to examine the brood cells.

In place of the former close dark circles formed by thousands of

bees sitting back to back and guarding the high mystery of generation,

he sees hundreds of dull, listless, and sleepy shells of bees. They

have almost all died unawares, sitting in the sanctuary they had

guarded and which is now no more. They reek of decay and death. Only a

few of them still move, rise, and feebly fly to settle on the

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enemy's hand, lacking the spirit to die stinging him; the rest are

dead and fall as lightly as fish scales. The beekeeper closes the

hive, chalks a mark on it, and when he has time tears out its contents

and burns it clean.



So in the same way Moscow was empty when Napoleon, weary, uneasy,

and morose, paced up and down in front of the Kammer-Kollezski

rampart, awaiting what to his mind was a necessary, if but formal,

observance of the proprieties--a deputation.



In various corners of Moscow there still remained a few people

aimlessly moving about, following their old habits and hardly aware of

what they were doing.



When with due circumspection Napoleon was informed that Moscow was

empty, he looked angrily at his informant, turned away, and silently

continued to walk to and fro.



"My carriage!" he said.



He took his seat beside the aide-de-camp on duty and drove into

the suburb. "Moscow deserted!" he said to himself. "What an incredible

event!"



He did not drive into the town, but put up at an inn in the

Dorogomilov suburb.



The coup de theatre had not come off.









CHAPTER XXI





The Russian troops were passing through Moscow from two o'clock at

night till two in the afternoon and bore away with them the wounded

and the last of the inhabitants who were leaving.



The greatest crush during the movement of the troops took place at

the Stone, Moskva, and Yauza bridges.



While the troops, dividing into two parts when passing around the

Kremlin, were thronging the Moskva and the Stone bridges, a great many

soldiers, taking advantage of the stoppage and congestion, turned back

from the bridges and slipped stealthily and silently past the church

of Vasili the Beatified and under the Borovitski gate, back up the

hill to the Red Square where some instinct told them they could easily

take things not belonging to them. Crowds of the kind seen at cheap

sales filled all the passages and alleys of the Bazaar. But there were

no dealers with voices of ingratiating affability inviting customers

to enter; there were no hawkers, nor the usual motley crowd of

female purchasers--but only soldiers, in uniforms and overcoats though

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without muskets, entering the Bazaar empty-handed and silently

making their way out through its passages with bundles. Tradesmen

and their assistants (of whom there were but few) moved about among

the soldiers quite bewildered. They unlocked their shops and locked

them up again, and themselves carried goods away with the help their

assistants. On the square in front of the Bazaar were drummers beating

the muster call. But the roll of the drums did not make the looting

soldiers run in the direction of the drum as formerly, but made

them, on the contrary, run farther away. Among the soldiers in the

shops and passages some men were to be seen in gray coats, with

closely shaven heads. Two officers, one with a scarf over his

uniform and mounted on a lean, dark-gray horse, the other in an

overcoat and on foot, stood at the corner of Ilyinka Street,

talking. A third officer galloped up to them.



"The general orders them all to be driven out at once, without fail.

This is outrageous! Half the men have dispersed."



"Where are you off to?... Where?..." he shouted to three infantrymen

without muskets who, holding up the skirts of their overcoats, were

slipping past him into the Bazaar passage. "Stop, you rascals!"



"But how are you going to stop them?" replied another officer.

"There is no getting them together. The army should push on before the

rest bolt, that's all!"



"How can one push on? They are stuck there, wedged on the bridge,

and don't move. Shouldn't we put a cordon round to prevent the rest

from running away?"



"Come, go in there and drive them out!" shouted the senior officer.



The officer in the scarf dismounted, called up a drummer, and went

with him into the arcade. Some soldiers started running away in a

group. A shopkeeper with red pimples on his cheeks near the nose,

and a calm, persistent, calculating expression on his plump face,

hurriedly and ostentatiously approached the officer, swinging his

arms.



"Your honor!" said he. "Be so good as to protect us! We won't grudge

trifles, you are welcome to anything--we shall be delighted!

Pray!... I'll fetch a piece of cloth at once for such an honorable

gentleman, or even two pieces with pleasure. For we feel how it is;

but what's all this--sheer robbery! If you please, could not guards be

placed if only to let us close the shop...."



Several shopkeepers crowded round the officer.



"Eh, what twaddle!" said one of them, a thin, stern-looking man.

"When one's head is gone one doesn't weep for one's hair! Take what

any of you like!" And flourishing his arm energetically he turned

sideways to the officer.



"It's all very well for you, Ivan Sidorych, to talk," said the first

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tradesman angrily. "Please step inside, your honor!"



"Talk indeed!" cried the thin one. "In my three shops here I have

a hundred thousand rubles' worth of goods. Can they be saved when

the army has gone? Eh, what people! 'Against God's might our hands

can't fight.'"



"Come inside, your honor!" repeated the tradesman, bowing.



The officer stood perplexed and his face showed indecision.



"It's not my business!" he exclaimed, and strode on quickly down one

of the passages.



From one open shop came the sound of blows and vituperation, and

just as the officer came up to it a man in a gray coat with a shaven

head was flung out violently.



This man, bent double, rushed past the tradesman and the officer.

The officer pounced on the soldiers who were in the shops, but at that

moment fearful screams reached them from the huge crowd on the

Moskva bridge and the officer ran out into the square.



"What is it? What is it?" he asked, but his comrade was already

galloping off past Vasili the Beatified in the direction from which

the screams came.



The officer mounted his horse and rode after him. When he reached

the bridge he saw two unlimbered guns, the infantry crossing the

bridge, several overturned carts, and frightened and laughing faces

among the troops. Beside the cannon a cart was standing to which two

horses were harnessed. Four borzois with collars were pressing close

to the wheels. The cart was loaded high, and at the very top, beside a

child's chair with its legs in the air, sat a peasant woman uttering

piercing and desperate shrieks. He was told by his fellow officers

that the screams of the crowd and the shrieks of the woman were due to

the fact that General Ermolov, coming up to the crowd and learning

that soldiers were dispersing among the shops while crowds of

civilians blocked the bridge, had ordered two guns to be unlimbered

and made a show of firing at the bridge. The crowd, crushing one

another, upsetting carts, and shouting and squeezing desperately,

had cleared off the bridge and the troops were now moving forward.









CHAPTER XXII





Meanwhile, the city itself was deserted. There was hardly anyone

in the streets. The gates and shops were all closed, only here and

there round the taverns solitary shouts or drunken songs could be

heard. Nobody drove through the streets and footsteps were rarely

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heard. The Povarskaya was quite still and deserted. The huge courtyard

of the Rostovs' house was littered with wisps of hay and with dung

from the horses, and not a soul was to be seen there. In the great

drawing room of the house, which had been left with all it

contained, were two people. They were the yard porter Ignat, and the

page boy Mishka, Vasilich's grandson who had stayed in Moscow with his

grandfather. Mishka had opened the clavichord and was strumming on

it with one finger. The yard porter, his arms akimbo, stood smiling

with satisfaction before the large mirror.



"Isn't it fine, eh, Uncle Ignat?" said the boy, suddenly beginning

to strike the keyboard with both hands.



"Only fancy!" answered Ignat, surprised at the broadening grin on

his face in the mirror.



"Impudence! Impudence!" they heard behind them the voice of Mavra

Kuzminichna who had entered silently. "How he's grinning, the fat mug!

Is that what you're here for? Nothing's cleared away down there and

Vasilich is worn out. Just you wait a bit!"



Ignat left off smiling, adjusted his belt, and went out of the

room with meekly downcast eyes.



"Aunt, I did it gently," said the boy.



"I'll give you something gently, you monkey you!" cried Mavra

Kuzminichna, raising her arm threateningly. "Go and get the samovar to

boil for your grandfather."



Mavra Kuzminichna flicked the dust off the clavichord and closed it,

and with a deep sigh left the drawing room and locked its main door.



Going out into the yard she paused to consider where she should go

next--to drink tea in the servants' wing with Vasilich, or into the

storeroom to put away what still lay about.



She heard the sound of quick footsteps in the quiet street.

Someone stopped at the gate, and the latch rattled as someone tried to

open it. Mavra Kuzminichna went to the gate.



"Who do you want?"



"The count--Count Ilya Andreevich Rostov."



"And who are you?"



"An officer, I have to see him," came the reply in a pleasant,

well-bred Russian voice.



Mavra Kuzminichna opened the gate and an officer of eighteen, with

the round face of a Rostov, entered the yard.



"They have gone away, sir. Went away yesterday at vespertime,"

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said Mavra Kuzminichna cordially.



The young officer standing in the gateway, as if hesitating

whether to enter or not, clicked his tongue.



"Ah, how annoying!" he muttered. "I should have come yesterday....

Ah, what a pity."



Meanwhile, Mavra Kuzminichna was attentively and sympathetically

examining the familiar Rostov features of the young man's face, his

tattered coat and trodden-down boots.



"What did you want to see the count for?" she asked.



"Oh well... it can't be helped!" said he in a tone of vexation and

placed his hand on the gate as if to leave.



He again paused in indecision.



"You see," he suddenly said, "I am a kinsman of the count's and he

has been very kind to me. As you see" (he glanced with an amused air

and good-natured smile at his coat and boots) "my things are worn

out and I have no money, so I was going to ask the count..."



Mavra Kuzminichna did not let him finish.



"Just wait a minute, sir. One little moment," said she.



And as soon as the officer let go of the gate handle she turned and,

hurrying away on her old legs, went through the back yard to the

servants' quarters.



While Mavra Kuzminichna was running to her room the officer walked

about the yard gazing at his worn-out boots with lowered head and a

faint smile on his lips. "What a pity I've missed Uncle! What a nice

old woman! Where has she run off to? And how am I to find the

nearest way to overtake my regiment, which must by now be getting near

the Rogozhski gate?" thought he. Just then Mavra Kuzminichna

appeared from behind the corner of the house with a frightened yet

resolute look, carrying a rolled-up check kerchief in her hand.

While still a few steps from the officer she unfolded the kerchief and

took out of it a white twenty-five-ruble assignat and hastily handed

it to him.



"If his excellency had been at home, as a kinsman he would of

course... but as it is..."



Mavra Kuzminichna grew abashed and confused. The officer did not

decline, but took the note quietly and thanked her.



"If the count had been at home..." Mavra Kuzminichna went on

apologetically. "Christ be with you, sir! May God preserve you!"

said she, bowing as she saw him out.



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Swaying his head and smiling as if amused at himself, the officer

ran almost at a trot through the deserted streets toward the Yauza

bridge to overtake his regiment.



But Mavra Kuzminichna stood at the closed gate for some time with

moist eyes, pensively swaying her head and feeling an unexpected

flow of motherly tenderness and pity for the unknown young officer.









CHAPTER XXIII





From an unfinished house on the Varvarka, the ground floor of

which was a dramshop, came drunken shouts and songs. On benches

round the tables in a dirty little room sat some ten factory hands.

Tipsy and perspiring, with dim eyes and wide-open mouths, they were

all laboriously singing some song or other. They were singing

discordantly, arduously, and with great effort, evidently not

because they wished to sing, but because they wanted to show they were

drunk and on a spree. One, a tall, fair-haired lad in a clean blue

coat, was standing over the others. His face with its fine straight

nose would have been handsome had it not been for his thin,

compressed, twitching lips and dull, gloomy, fixed eyes. Evidently

possessed by some idea, he stood over those who were singing, and

solemnly and jerkily flourished above their heads his white arm with

the sleeve turned up to the elbow, trying unnaturally to spread out

his dirty fingers. The sleeve of his coat kept slipping down and he

always carefully rolled it up again with his left hand, as if it

were most important that the sinewy white arm he was flourishing

should be bare. In the midst of the song cries were heard, and

fighting and blows in the passage and porch. The tall lad waved his

arm.



"Stop it!" he exclaimed peremptorily. "There's a fight, lads!"

And, still rolling up his sleeve, he went out to the porch.



The factory hands followed him. These men, who under the

leadership of the tall lad were drinking in the dramshop that morning,

had brought the publican some skins from the factory and for this

had had drink served them. The blacksmiths from a neighboring

smithy, hearing the sounds of revelry in the tavern and supposing it

to have been broken into, wished to force their way in too and a fight

in the porch had resulted.



The publican was fighting one of the smiths at the door, and when

the workmen came out the smith, wrenching himself free from the tavern

keeper, fell face downward on the pavement.



Another smith tried to enter the doorway, pressing against the

publican with his chest.



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The lad with the turned-up sleeve gave the smith a blow in the

face and cried wildly: "They're fighting us, lads!"



At that moment the first smith got up and, scratching his bruised

face to make it bleed, shouted in a tearful voice: "Police! Murder!...

They've killed a man, lads!"



"Oh, gracious me, a man beaten to death--killed!..." screamed a

woman coming out of a gate close by.



A crowd gathered round the bloodstained smith.



"Haven't you robbed people enough--taking their last shirts?" said a

voice addressing the publican. "What have you killed a man for, you

thief?"



The tall lad, standing in the porch, turned his bleared eyes from

the publican to the smith and back again as if considering whom he

ought to fight now.



"Murderer!" he shouted suddenly to the publican. "Bind him, lads!"



"I daresay you would like to bind me!" shouted the publican, pushing

away the men advancing on him, and snatching his cap from his head

he flung it on the ground.



As if this action had some mysterious and menacing significance, the

workmen surrounding the publican paused in indecision.



"I know the law very well, mates! I'll take the matter to the

captain of police. You think I won't get to him? Robbery is not

permitted to anybody now a days!" shouted the publican, picking up his

cap.



"Come along then! Come along then!" the publican and the tall

young fellow repeated one after the other, and they moved up the

street together.



The bloodstained smith went beside them. The factory hands and

others followed behind, talking and shouting.



At the corner of the Moroseyka, opposite a large house with closed

shutters and bearing a bootmaker's signboard, stood a score of thin,

worn-out, gloomy-faced bootmakers, wearing overalls and long

tattered coats.



"He should pay folks off properly," a thin workingman, with frowning

brows and a straggly beard, was saying.



"But he's sucked our blood and now he thinks he's quit of us. He's

been misleading us all the week and now that he's brought us to this

pass he's made off."



On seeing the crowd and the bloodstained man the workman ceased

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speaking, and with eager curiosity all the bootmakers joined the

moving crowd.



"Where are all the folks going?"



"Why, to the police, of course!"



"I say, is it true that we have been beaten?" "And what did you

think? Look what folks are saying."



Questions and answers were heard. The publican, taking advantage

of the increased crowd, dropped behind and returned to his tavern.



The tall youth, not noticing the disappearance of his foe, waved his

bare arm and went on talking incessantly, attracting general attention

to himself. It was around him that the people chiefly crowded,

expecting answers from him to the questions that occupied all their

minds.



"He must keep order, keep the law, that's what the government is

there for. Am I not right, good Christians?" said the tall youth, with

a scarcely perceptible smile. "He thinks there's no government! How

can one do without government? Or else there would be plenty who'd rob

us."



"Why talk nonsense?" rejoined voices in the crowd. "Will they give

up Moscow like this? They told you that for fun, and you believed

it! Aren't there plenty of troops on the march? Let him in, indeed!

That's what the government is for. You'd better listen to what

people are saying," said some of the mob pointing to the tall youth.



By the wall of China-Town a smaller group of people were gathered

round a man in a frieze coat who held a paper in his hand.



"An ukase, they are reading an ukase! Reading an ukase!" cried

voices in the crowd, and the people rushed toward the reader.



The man in the frieze coat was reading the broadsheet of August 31

When the crowd collected round him he seemed confused, but at the

demand of the tall lad who had pushed his way up to him, he began in a

rather tremulous voice to read the sheet from the beginning.



"Early tomorrow I shall go to his Serene Highness," he read

("Sirin Highness," said the tall fellow with a triumphant smile on his

lips and a frown on his brow), "to consult with him to act, and to aid

the army to exterminate these scoundrels. We too will take part..."

the reader went on, and then paused ("Do you see," shouted the youth

victoriously, "he's going to clear up the whole affair for

you...."), "in destroying them, and will send these visitors to the

devil. I will come back to dinner, and we'll set to work. We will

do, completely do, and undo these scoundrels."



The last words were read out in the midst of complete silence. The

tall lad hung his head gloomily. It was evident that no one had

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understood the last part. In particular, the words "I will come back

to dinner," evidently displeased both reader and audience. The

people's minds were tuned to a high pitch and this was too simple

and needlessly comprehensible--it was what any one of them might

have said and therefore was what an ukase emanating from the highest

authority should not say.



They all stood despondent and silent. The tall youth moved his

lips and swayed from side to side.



"We should ask him... that's he himself?"... "Yes, ask him

indeed!... Why not? He'll explain"... voices in the rear of the

crowd were suddenly heard saying, and the general attention turned

to the police superintendent's trap which drove into the square

attended by two mounted dragoons.



The superintendent of police, who had that morning by Count

Rostopchin's orders to burn the barges and had in connection with that

matter acquired a large sum of money which was at that moment in his

pocket, on seeing a crowd bearing down upon him told his coachman to

stop.



"What people are these?" he shouted to the men, who were moving

singly and timidly in the direction of his trap.



"What people are these?" he shouted again, receiving no answer.



"Your honor..." replied the shopman in the frieze coat, "your honor,

in accord with the proclamation of his highest excellency the count,

they desire to serve, not sparing their lives, and it is not any

kind of riot, but as his highest excellence said..."



"The count has not left, he is here, and an order will be issued

concerning you," said the superintendent of police. "Go on!" he

ordered his coachman.



The crowd halted, pressing around those who had heard what the

superintendent had said, and looking at the departing trap.



The superintendent of police turned round at that moment with a

scared look, said something to his coachman, and his horses

increased their speed.



"It's a fraud, lads! Lead the way to him, himself!" shouted the tall

youth. "Don't let him go, lads! Let him answer us! Keep him!"

shouted different people and the people dashed in pursuit of the trap.



Following the superintendent of police and talking loudly the

crowd went in the direction of the Lubyanka Street.



"There now, the gentry and merchants have gone away and left us to

perish. Do they think we're dogs?" voices in the crowd were heard

saying more and more frequently.



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CHAPTER XXIV





On the evening of the first of September, after his interview with

Kutuzov, Count Rostopchin had returned to Moscow mortified and

offended because he had not been invited to attend the council of war,

and because Kutuzov had paid no attention to his offer to take part in

the defense of the city; amazed also at the novel outlook revealed

to him at the camp, which treated the tranquillity of the capital

and its patriotic fervor as not merely secondary but quite

irrelevant and unimportant matters. Distressed, offended, and

surprised by all this, Rostopchin had returned to Moscow. After supper

he lay down on a sofa without undressing, and was awakened soon

after midnight by a courier bringing him a letter from Kutuzov. This

letter requested the count to send police officers to guide the troops

through the town, as the army was retreating to the Ryazan road beyond

Moscow. This was not news to Rostopchin. He had known that Moscow

would be abandoned not merely since his interview the previous day

with Kutuzov on the Poklonny Hill but ever since the battle of

Borodino, for all the generals who came to Moscow after that battle

had said unanimously that it was impossible to fight another battle,

and since then the government property had been removed every night,

and half the inhabitants had left the city with Rostopchin's own

permission. Yet all the same this information astonished and irritated

the count, coming as it did in the form of a simple note with an order

from Kutuzov, and received at night, breaking in on his beauty sleep.



When later on in his memoirs Count Rostopchin explained his

actions at this time, he repeatedly says that he was then actuated

by two important considerations: to maintain tranquillity in Moscow

and expedite the departure of the inhabitants. If one accepts this

twofold aim all Rostopchin's actions appear irreproachable. "Why

were the holy relics, the arms, ammunition, gunpowder, and stores of

corn not removed? Why were thousands of inhabitants deceived into

believing that Moscow would not be given up--and thereby ruined?"

"To presence the tranquillity of the city," explains Count Rostopchin.

"Why were bundles of useless papers from the government offices, and

Leppich's balloon and other articles removed?" "To leave the town

empty," explains Count Rostopchin. One need only admit that public

tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification.



All the horrors of the reign of terror were based only on solicitude

for public tranquillity.



On what, then, was Count Rostopchin's fear for the tranquillity of

Moscow based in 1812? What reason was there for assuming any

probability of an uprising in the city? The inhabitants were leaving

it and the retreating troops were filling it. Why should that cause

the masses to riot?



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Neither in Moscow nor anywhere in Russia did anything resembling

an insurrection ever occur when the enemy entered a town. More than

ten thousand people were still in Moscow on the first and second of

September, and except for a mob in the governor's courtyard, assembled

there at his bidding, nothing happened. It is obvious that there would

have been even less reason to expect a disturbance among the people if

after the battle of Borodino, when the surrender of Moscow became

certain or at least probable, Rostopchin instead of exciting the

people by distributing arms and broadsheets had taken steps to

remove all the holy relics, the gunpowder, munitions, and money, and

had told the population plainly that the town would be abandoned.



Rostopchin, though he had patriotic sentiments, was a sanguine and

impulsive man who had always moved in the highest administrative

circles and had no understanding at all of the people he supposed

himself to be guiding. Ever since the enemy's entry into Smolensk he

had in imagination been playing the role of director of the popular

feeling of "the heart of Russia." Not only did it seem to him (as to

all administrators) that he controlled the external actions of

Moscow's inhabitants, but he also thought he controlled their mental

attitude by means of his broadsheets and posters, written in a

coarse tone which the people despise in their own class and do not

understand from those in authority. Rostopchin was so pleased with the

fine role of leader of popular feeling, and had grown so used to it,

that the necessity of relinquishing that role and abandoning Moscow

without any heroic display took him unawares and he suddenly felt

the ground slip away from under his feet, so that he positively did

not know what to do. Though he knew it was coming, he did not till the

last moment wholeheartedly believe that Moscow would be abandoned, and

did not prepare for it. The inhabitants left against his wishes. If

the government offices were removed, this was only done on the

demand of officials to whom the count yielded reluctantly. He was

absorbed in the role he had created for himself. As is often the

case with those gifted with an ardent imagination, though he had

long known that Moscow would be abandoned he knew it only with his

intellect, he did not believe it in his heart and did not adapt

himself mentally to this new position of affairs.



All his painstaking and energetic activity (in how far it was useful

and had any effect on the people is another question) had been

simply directed toward arousing in the masses his own feeling of

patriotic hatred of the French.



But when events assumed their true historical character, when

expressing hatred for the French in words proved insufficient, when it

was not even possible to express that hatred by fighting a battle,

when self-confidence was of no avail in relation to the one question

before Moscow, when the whole population streamed out of Moscow as one

man, abandoning their belongings and proving by that negative action

all the depth of their national feeling, then the role chosen by

Rostopchin suddenly appeared senseless. He unexpectedly felt himself

ridiculous, weak, and alone, with no ground to stand on.



When, awakened from his sleep, he received that cold, peremptory

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note from Kutuzov, he felt the more irritated the more he felt himself

to blame. All that he had been specially put in charge of, the state

property which he should have removed, was still in Moscow and it

was no longer possible to take the whole of it away.



"Who is to blame for it? Who has let things come to such a pass?" he

ruminated. "Not I, of course. I had everything ready. I had Moscow

firmly in hand. And this is what they have let it come to! Villains!

Traitors!" he thought, without clearly defining who the villains and

traitors were, but feeling it necessary to hate those traitors whoever

they might be who were to blame for the false and ridiculous

position in which he found himself.



All that night Count Rostopchin issued orders, for which people came

to him from all parts of Moscow. Those about him had never seen the

count so morose and irritable.



"Your excellency, the Director of the Registrar's Department has

sent for instructions... From the Consistory, from the Senate, from

the University, from the Foundling Hospital, the Suffragan has sent...

asking for information.... What are your orders about the Fire

Brigade? From the governor of the prison... from the superintendent of

the lunatic asylum..." All night long such announcements were

continually being received by the count.



To all these inquiries he gave brief and angry replies indicating

that orders from him were not now needed, that the whole affair,

carefully prepared by him, had now been ruined by somebody, and that

that somebody would have to bear the whole responsibility for all that

might happen.



"Oh, tell that blockhead," he said in reply to the question from the

Registrar's Department, "that he should remain to guard his documents.

Now why are you asking silly questions about the Fire Brigade? They

have horses, let them be off to Vladimir, and not leave them to the

French."



"Your excellency, the superintendent of the lunatic asylum has come:

what are your commands?"



"My commands? Let them go away, that's all.... And let the

lunatics out into the town. When lunatics command our armies God

evidently means these other madmen to be free."



In reply to an inquiry about the convicts in the prison, Count

Rostopchin shouted angrily at the governor:



"Do you expect me to give you two battalions--which we have not got-

for a convoy? Release them, that's all about it!"



"Your excellency, there are some political prisoners, Meshkov,

Vereshchagin..."



"Vereshchagin! Hasn't he been hanged yet?" shouted Rostopchin.

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"Bring him to me!"









CHAPTER XXV





Toward nine o'clock in the morning, when the troops were already

moving through Moscow, nobody came to the count any more for

instructions. Those who were able to get away were going of their

own accord, those who remained behind decided for themselves what they

must do.



The count ordered his carriage that he might drive to Sokolniki, and

sat in his study with folded hands, morose, sallow, and taciturn.



In quiet and untroubled times it seems to every administrator that

it is only by his efforts that the whole population under his rule

is kept going, and in this consciousness of being indispensable

every administrator finds the chief reward of his labor and efforts.

While the sea of history remains calm the ruler-administrator in his

frail bark, holding on with a boat hook to the ship of the people

and himself moving, naturally imagines that his efforts move the

ship he is holding on to. But as soon as a storm arises and the sea

begins to heave and the ship to move, such a delusion is no longer

possible. The ship moves independently with its own enormous motion,

the boat hook no longer reaches the moving vessel, and suddenly the

administrator, instead of appearing a ruler and a source of power,

becomes an insignificant, useless, feeble man.



Rostopchin felt this, and it was this which exasperated him.



The superintendent of police, whom the crowd had stopped, went in to

see him at the same time as an adjutant who informed the count that

the horses were harnessed. They were both pale, and the superintendent

of police, after reporting that he had executed the instructions he

had received, informed the count that an immense crowd had collected

in the courtyard and wished to see him.



Without saying a word Rostopchin rose and walked hastily to his

light, luxurious drawing room, went to the balcony door, took hold

of the handle, let it go again, and went to the window from which he

had a better view of the whole crowd. The tall lad was standing in

front, flourishing his arm and saying something with a stern look. The

blood stained smith stood beside him with a gloomy face. A drone of

voices was audible through the closed window.



"Is my carriage ready?" asked Rostopchin, stepping back from the

window.



"It is, your excellency," replied the adjutant.



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Rostopchin went again to the balcony door.



"But what do they want?" he asked the superintendent of police.



"Your excellency, they say they have got ready, according to your

orders, to go against the French, and they shouted something about

treachery. But it is a turbulent crowd, your excellency--I hardly

managed to get away from it. Your excellency, I venture to suggest..."



"You may go. I don't need you to tell me what to do!" exclaimed

Rostopchin angrily.



He stood by the balcony door looking at the crowd.



"This is what they have done with Russia! This is what they have

done with me!" thought he, full of an irrepressible fury that welled

up within him against the someone to whom what was happening might

be attributed. As often happens with passionate people, he was

mastered by anger but was still seeking an object on which to vent it.

"Here is that mob, the dregs of the people," he thought as he gazed at

the crowd: "this rabble they have roused by their folly! They want a

victim," he thought as he looked at the tall lad flourishing his

arm. And this thought occurred to him just because he himself

desired a victim, something on which to vent his rage.



"Is the carriage ready?" he asked again.



"Yes, your excellency. What are your orders about Vereshchagin? He

is waiting at the porch," said the adjutant.



"Ah!" exclaimed Rostopchin, as if struck by an unexpected

recollection.



And rapidly opening the door he went resolutely out onto the

balcony. The talking instantly ceased, hats and caps were doffed,

and all eyes were raised to the count.



"Good morning, lads!" said the count briskly and loudly. "Thank

you for coming. I'll come out to you in a moment, but we must first

settle with the villain. We must punish the villain who has caused the

ruin of Moscow. Wait for me!"



And the count stepped as briskly back into the room and slammed

the door behind him.



A murmur of approbation and satisfaction ran through the crowd.

"He'll settle with all the villains, you'll see! And you said the

French... He'll show you what law is!" the mob were saying as if

reproving one another for their lack of confidence.



A few minutes later an officer came hurriedly out of the front door,

gave an order, and the dragoons formed up in line. The crowd moved

eagerly from the balcony toward the porch. Rostopchin, coming out

there with quick angry steps, looked hastily around as if seeking

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someone.



"Where is he?" he inquired. And as he spoke he saw a young man

coming round the corner of the house between two dragoons. He had a

long thin neck, and his head, that had been half shaved, was again

covered by short hair. This young man was dressed in a threadbare blue

cloth coat lined with fox fur, that had once been smart, and dirty

hempen convict trousers, over which were pulled his thin, dirty,

trodden-down boots. On his thin, weak legs were heavy chains which

hampered his irresolute movements.



"Ah!" said Rostopchin, hurriedly turning away his eyes from the

young man in the fur-lined coat and pointing to the bottom step of the

porch. "Put him there."



The young man in his clattering chains stepped clumsily to the

spot indicated, holding away with one finger the coat collar which

chafed his neck, turned his long neck twice this way and that, sighed,

and submissively folded before him his thin hands, unused to work.



For several seconds while the young man was taking his place on

the step the silence continued. Only among the back rows of the

people, who were all pressing toward the one spot, could sighs,

groans, and the shuffling of feet be heard.



While waiting for the young man to take his place on the step

Rostopchin stood frowning and rubbing his face with his hand.



"Lads!" said he, with a metallic ring in his voice. "This man,

Vereshchagin, is the scoundrel by whose doing Moscow is perishing."



The young man in the fur-lined coat, stooping a little, stood in a

submissive attitude, his fingers clasped before him. His emaciated

young face, disfigured by the half-shaven head, hung down

hopelessly. At the count's first words he raised it slowly and

looked up at him as if wishing to say something or at least to meet

his eye. But Rostopchin did not look at him. A vein in the young man's

long thin neck swelled like a cord and went blue behind the ear, and

suddenly his face flushed.



All eyes were fixed on him. He looked at the crowd, and rendered

more hopeful by the expression he read on the faces there, he smiled

sadly and timidly, and lowering his head shifted his feet on the step.



"He has betrayed his Tsar and his country, he had gone over to

Bonaparte. He alone of all the Russians has disgraced the Russian

name, he has caused Moscow to perish," said Rostopchin in a sharp,

even voice, but suddenly he glanced down at Vereshchagin who continued

to stand in the same submissive attitude. As if inflamed by the sight,

he raised his arm and addressed the people, almost shouting:



"Deal with him as you think fit! I hand him over to you."



The crowd remained silent and only pressed closer and closer to

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one another. To keep one another back, to breathe in that stifling

atmosphere, to be unable to stir, and to await something unknown,

uncomprehended, and terrible, was becoming unbearable. Those

standing in front, who had seen and heard what had taken place

before them, all stood with wide open eyes and mouths, straining

with all their strength, and held back the crowd that was pushing

behind them.



"Beat him!... Let the traitor perish and not disgrace the Russian

name!" shouted Rostopchin. "Cut him down. I command it."



Hearing not so much the words as the angry tone of Rostopchin's

voice, the crowd moaned and heaved forward, but again paused.



"Count!" exclaimed the timid yet theatrical voice of Vereshchagin in

the midst of the momentary silence that ensued, "Count! One God is

above us both...." He lifted his head and again the thick vein in

his thin neck filled with blood and the color rapidly came and went in

his face.



He did not finish what he wished to say.



"Cut him down! I command it..." shouted Rostopchin, suddenly growing

pale like Vereshchagin.



"Draw sabers!" cried the dragoon officer, drawing his own.



Another still stronger wave flowed through the crowd and reaching

the front ranks carried it swaying to the very steps of the porch. The

tall youth, with a stony look on his face, and rigid and uplifted arm,

stood beside Vereshchagin.



"Saber him!" the dragoon officer almost whispered.



And one of the soldiers, his face all at once distorted with fury,

struck Vereshchagin on the head with the blunt side of his saber.



"Ah!" cried Vereshchagin in meek surprise, looking round with a

frightened glance as if not understanding why this was done to him.

A similar moan of surprise and horror ran through the crowd. "O Lord!"

exclaimed a sorrowful voice.



But after the exclamation of surprise that had escaped from

Vereshchagin he uttered a plaintive cry of pain, and that cry was

fatal. The barrier of human feeling, strained to the utmost, that

had held the crowd in check suddenly broke. The crime had begun and

must now be completed. The plaintive moan of reproach was drowned by

the threatening and angry roar of the crowd. Like the seventh and last

wave that shatters a ship, that last irresistible wave burst from

the rear and reached the front ranks, carrying them off their feet and

engulfing them all. The dragoon was about to repeat his blow.

Vereshchagin with a cry of horror, covering his head with his hands,

rushed toward the crowd. The tall youth, against whom he stumbled,

seized his thin neck with his hands and, yelling wildly, fell with him

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under the feet of the pressing, struggling crowd.



Some beat and tore at Vereshchagin, others at the tall youth. And

the screams of those that were being trampled on and of those who

tried to rescue the tall lad only increased the fury of the crowd.

It was a long time before the dragoons could extricate the bleeding

youth, beaten almost to death. And for a long time, despite the

feverish haste with which the mob tried to end the work that had

been begun, those who were hitting, throttling, and tearing at

Vereshchagin were unable to kill him, for the crowd pressed from all

sides, swaying as one mass with them in the center and rendering it

impossible for them either to kill him or let him go.



"Hit him with an ax, eh!... Crushed?... Traitor, he sold

Christ.... Still alive... tenacious... serves him right! Torture

serves a thief right. Use the hatchet!... What--still alive?"



Only when the victim ceased to struggle and his cries changed to a

long-drawn, measured death rattle did the crowd around his

prostrate, bleeding corpse begin rapidly to change places. Each one

came up, glanced at what had been done, and with horror, reproach, and

astonishment pushed back again.



"O Lord! The people are like wild beasts! How could he be alive?"

voices in the crowd could be heard saying. "Quite a young fellow

too... must have been a merchant's son. What men!... and they say he's

not the right one.... How not the right one?... O Lord! And there's

another has been beaten too--they say he's nearly done for.... Oh, the

people... Aren't they afraid of sinning?..." said the same mob now,

looking with pained distress at the dead body with its long, thin,

half-severed neck and its livid face stained with blood and dust.



A painstaking police officer, considering the presence of a corpse

in his excellency's courtyard unseemly, told the dragoons to take it

away. Two dragoons took it by its distorted legs and dragged it

along the ground. The gory, dust-stained, half-shaven head with its

long neck trailed twisting along the ground. The crowd shrank back

from it.



At the moment when Vereshchagin fell and the crowd closed in with

savage yells and swayed about him, Rostopchin suddenly turned pale

and, instead of going to the back entrance where his carriage

awaited him, went with hurried steps and bent head, not knowing

where and why, along the passage leading to the rooms on the ground

floor. The count's face was white and he could not control the

feverish twitching of his lower jaw.



"This way, your excellency... Where are you going?... This way,

please..." said a trembling, frightened voice behind him.



Count Rostopchin was unable to reply and, turning obediently, went

in the direction indicated. At the back entrance stood his caleche.

The distant roar of the yelling crowd was audible even there. He

hastily took his seat and told the coachman to drive him to his

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country house in Sokolniki.



When they reached the Myasnitski Street and could no longer hear the

shouts of the mob, the count began to repent. He remembered with

dissatisfaction the agitation and fear he had betrayed before his

subordinates. "The mob is terrible--disgusting," he said to himself in

French. "They are like wolves whom nothing but flesh can appease."

"Count! One God is above us both!"--Vereshchagin's words suddenly

recurred to him, and a disagreeable shiver ran down his back. But this

was only a momentary feeling and Count Rostopchin smiled

disdainfully at himself. "I had other duties," thought he. "The people

had to be appeased. Many other victims have perished and are perishing

for the public good"--and he began thinking of his social duties to

his family and to the city entrusted to him, and of himself--not

himself as Theodore Vasilyevich Rostopchin (he fancied that Theodore

Vasilyevich Rostopchin was sacrificing himself for the public good)

but himself as governor, the representative of authority and of the

Tsar. "Had I been simply Theodore Vasilyevich my course of action

would have been quite different, but it was my duty to safeguard my

life and dignity as commander in chief."



Lightly swaying on the flexible springs of his carriage and no

longer hearing the terrible sounds of the crowd, Rostopchin grew

physically calm and, as always happens, as soon as he became

physically tranquil his mind devised reasons why he should be mentally

tranquil too. The thought which tranquillized Rostopchin was not a new

one. Since the world began and men have killed one another no one

has ever committed such a crime against his fellow man without

comforting himself with this same idea. This idea is le bien public,

the hypothetical welfare of other people.



To a man not swayed by passion that welfare is never certain, but he

who commits such a crime always knows just where that welfare lies.

And Rostopchin now knew it.



Not only did his reason not reproach him for what he had done, but

he even found cause for self-satisfaction in having so successfully

contrived to avail himself of a convenient opportunity to punish a

criminal and at the same time pacify the mob.



"Vereshchagin was tried and condemned to death," thought

Rostopchin (though the Senate had only condemned Vereshchagin to

hard labor), "he was a traitor and a spy. I could not let him go

unpunished and so I have killed two birds with one stone: to appease

the mob I gave them a victim and at the same time punished a

miscreant."



Having reached his country house and begun to give orders about

domestic arrangements, the count grew quite tranquil.



Half an hour later he was driving with his fast horses across the

Sokolniki field, no longer thinking of what had occurred but

considering what was to come. He was driving to the Yauza bridge where

he had heard that Kutuzov was. Count Rostopchin was mentally preparing

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the angry and stinging reproaches he meant to address to Kutuzov for

his deception. He would make that foxy old courtier feel that the

responsibility for all the calamities that would follow the

abandonment of the city and the ruin of Russia (as Rostopchin regarded

it) would fall upon his doting old head. Planning beforehand what he

would say to Kutuzov, Rostopchin turned angrily in his caleche and

gazed sternly from side to side.



The Sokolniki field was deserted. Only at the end of it, in front of

the almshouse and the lunatic asylum, could be seen some people in

white and others like them walking singly across the field shouting

and gesticulating.



One of these was running to cross the path of Count Rostopchin's

carriage, and the count himself, his coachman, and his dragoons looked

with vague horror and curiosity at these released lunatics and

especially at the one running toward them.



Swaying from side to side on his long, thin legs in his fluttering

dressing gown, this lunatic was running impetuously, his gaze fixed on

Rostopchin, shouting something in a hoarse voice and making signs to

him to stop. The lunatic's solemn, gloomy face was thin and yellow,

with its beard growing in uneven tufts. His black, agate pupils with

saffron-yellow whites moved restlessly near the lower eyelids.



"Stop! Pull up, I tell you!" he cried in a piercing voice, and again

shouted something breathlessly with emphatic intonations and gestures.



Coming abreast of the caleche he ran beside it.



"Thrice have they slain me, thrice have I risen from the dead.

They stoned me, crucified me... I shall rise... shall rise... shall

rise. They have torn my body. The kingdom of God will be overthrown...

Thrice will I overthrow it and thrice re-establish it!" he cried,

raising his voice higher and higher.



Count Rostopchin suddenly grew pale as he had done when the crowd

closed in on Vereshchagin. He turned away. "Go fas... faster!" he

cried in a trembling voice to his coachman. The caleche flew over

the ground as fast as the horses could draw it, but for a long time

Count Rostopchin still heard the insane despairing screams growing

fainter in the distance, while his eyes saw nothing but the

astonished, frightened, bloodstained face of "the traitor" in the

fur-lined coat.



Recent as that mental picture was, Rostopchin already felt that it

had cut deep into his heart and drawn blood. Even now he felt

clearly that the gory trace of that recollection would not pass with

time, but that the terrible memory would, on the contrary, dwell in

his heart ever more cruelly and painfully to the end of his life. He

seemed still to hear the sound of his own words: "Cut him down! I

command it...."



"Why did I utter those words? It was by some accident I said

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them.... I need not have said them," he thought. "And then nothing

would have happened." He saw the frightened and then infuriated face

of the dragoon who dealt the blow, the look of silent, timid

reproach that boy in the fur-lined coat had turned upon him. "But I

did not do it for my own sake. I was bound to act that way.... The

mob, the traitor... the public welfare," thought he.



Troops were still crowding at the Yauza bridge. It was hot. Kutuzov,

dejected and frowning, sat on a bench by the bridge toying with his

whip in the sand when a caleche dashed up noisily. A man in a

general's uniform with plumes in his hat went up to Kutuzov and said

something in French. It was Count Rostopchin. He told Kutuzov that

he had come because Moscow, the capital, was no more and only the army

remained.



"Things would have been different if your Serene Highness had not

told me that you would not abandon Moscow without another battle;

all this would not have happened," he said.



Kutuzov looked at Rostopchin as if, not grasping what was said to

him, he was trying to read something peculiar written at that moment

on the face of the man addressing him. Rostopchin grew confused and

became silent. Kutuzov slightly shook his head and not taking his

penetrating gaze from Rostopchin's face muttered softly:



"No! I shall not give up Moscow without a battle!"



Whether Kutuzov was thinking of something entirely different when he

spoke those words, or uttered them purposely, knowing them to be

meaningless, at any rate Rostopchin made no reply and hastily left

him. And strange to say, the Governor of Moscow, the proud Count

Rostopchin, took up a Cossack whip and went to the bridge where he

began with shouts to drive on the carts that blocked the way.









CHAPTER XXVI





Toward four o'clock in the afternoon Murat's troops were entering

Moscow. In front rode a detachment of Wurttemberg hussars and behind

them rode the King of Naples himself accompanied by a numerous suite.



About the middle of the Arbat Street, near the Church of the

Miraculous Icon of St. Nicholas, Murat halted to await news from the

advanced detachment as to the condition in which they had found the

citadel, le Kremlin.



Around Murat gathered a group of those who had remained in Moscow.

They all stared in timid bewilderment at the strange, long-haired

commander dressed up in feathers and gold.



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"Is that their Tsar himself? He's not bad!" low voices could be

heard saying.



An interpreter rode up to the group.



"Take off your cap... your caps!" These words went from one to

another in the crowd. The interpreter addressed an old porter and

asked if it was far to the Kremlin. The porter, listening in

perplexity to the unfamiliar Polish accent and not realizing that

the interpreter was speaking Russian, did not understand what was

being said to him and slipped behind the others.



Murat approached the interpreter and told him to ask where the

Russian army was. One of the Russians understood what was asked and

several voices at once began answering the interpreter. A French

officer, returning from the advanced detachment, rode up to Murat

and reported that the gates of the citadel had been barricaded and

that there was probably an ambuscade there.



"Good!" said Murat and, turning to one of the gentlemen in his

suite, ordered four light guns to be moved forward to fire at the

gates.



The guns emerged at a trot from the column following Murat and

advanced up the Arbat. When they reached the end of the Vozdvizhenka

Street they halted and drew in the Square. Several French officers

superintended the placing of the guns and looked at the Kremlin

through field glasses.



The bells in the Kremlin were ringing for vespers, and this sound

troubled the French. They imagined it to be a call to arms. A few

infantrymen ran to the Kutafyev Gate. Beams and wooden screens had

been put there, and two musket shots rang out from under the gate as

soon as an officer and men began to run toward it. A general who was

standing by the guns shouted some words of command to the officer, and

the latter ran back again with his men.



The sound of three more shots came from the gate.



One shot struck a French soldier's foot, and from behind the screens

came the strange sound of a few voices shouting. Instantly as at a

word of command the expression of cheerful serenity on the faces of

the French general, officers, and men changed to one of determined

concentrated readiness for strife and suffering. To all of them from

the marshal to the least soldier, that place was not the Vozdvizhenka,

Mokhavaya, or Kutafyev Street, nor the Troitsa Gate (places familiar

in Moscow), but a new battlefield which would probably prove

sanguinary. And all made ready for that battle. The cries from the

gates ceased. The guns were advanced, the artillerymen blew the ash

off their linstocks, and an officer gave the word "Fire!" This was

followed by two whistling sounds of canister shot, one after

another. The shot rattled against the stone of the gate and upon the

wooden beams and screens, and two wavering clouds of smoke rose over

the Square.

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A few instants after the echo of the reports resounding over the

stone-built Kremlin had died away the French heard a strange sound

above their head. Thousands of crows rose above the walls and

circled in the air, cawing and noisily flapping their wings.

Together with that sound came a solitary human cry from the gateway

and amid the smoke appeared the figure of a bareheaded man in a

peasant's coat. He grasped a musket and took aim at the French.

"Fire!" repeated the officer once more, and the reports of a musket

and of two cannon shots were heard simultaneously. The gate again

hidden by smoke.



Nothing more stirred behind the screens and the French infantry

soldiers and officers advanced to the gate. In the gateway lay three

wounded and four dead. Two men in peasant coats ran away at the foot

of the wall, toward the Znamenka.



"Clear that away!" said the officer, pointing to the beams and the

corpses, and the French soldiers, after dispatching the wounded, threw

the corpses over the parapet.



Who these men were nobody knew. "Clear that away!" was all that

was said of them, and they were thrown over the parapet and removed

later on that they might not stink. Thiers alone dedicates a few

eloquent lines to their memory: "These wretches had occupied the

sacred citadel, having supplied themselves with guns from the arsenal,

and fired" (the wretches) "at the French. Some of them were sabered

and the Kremlin was purged of their presence."



Murat was informed that the way had been cleared. The French entered

the gates and began pitching their camp in the Senate Square. Out of

the windows of the Senate House the soldiers threw chairs into the

Square for fuel and kindled fires there.



Other detachments passed through the Kremlin and encamped along

the Moroseyka, the Lubyanka, and Pokrovka Streets. Others quartered

themselves along the Vozdvizhenka, the Nikolski, and the Tverskoy

Streets. No masters of the houses being found anywhere, the French

were not billeted on the inhabitants as is usual in towns but lived in

it as in a camp.



Though tattered, hungry, worn out, and reduced to a third of their

original number, the French entered Moscow in good marching order.

It was a weary and famished, but still a fighting and menacing army.

But it remained an army only until its soldiers had dispersed into

their different lodgings. As soon as the men of the various

regiments began to disperse among the wealthy and deserted houses, the

army was lost forever and there came into being something nondescript,

neither citizens nor soldiers but what are known as marauders. When

five weeks later these same men left Moscow, they no longer formed

an army. They were a mob of marauders, each carrying a quantity of

articles which seemed to him valuable or useful. The aim of each man

when he left Moscow was no longer, as it had been, to conquer, but

merely to keep what he had acquired. Like a monkey which puts its

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paw into the narrow neck of a jug, and having seized a handful of nuts

will not open its fist for fear of losing what it holds, and therefore

perishes, the French when they left Moscow had inevitably to perish

because they carried their loot with them, yet to abandon what they

had stolen was as impossible for them as it is for the monkey to

open its paw and let go of its nuts. Ten minutes after each regiment

had entered a Moscow district, not a soldier or officer was left.

Men in military uniforms and Hessian boots could be seen through the

windows, laughing and walking through the rooms. In cellars and

storerooms similar men were busy among the provisions, and in the

yards unlocking or breaking open coach house and stable doors,

lighting fires in kitchens and kneading and baking bread with

rolled-up sleeves, and cooking; or frightening, amusing, or

caressing women and children. There were many such men both in the

shops and houses--but there was no army.



Order after order was issued by the French commanders that day

forbidding the men to disperse about the town, sternly forbidding

any violence to the inhabitants or any looting, and announcing a

roll call for that very evening. But despite all these measures the

men, who had till then constituted an army, flowed all over the

wealthy, deserted city with its comforts and plentiful supplies. As

a hungry herd of cattle keeps well together when crossing a barren

field, but gets out of hand and at once disperses uncontrollably as

soon as it reaches rich pastures, so did the army disperse all over

the wealthy city.



No residents were left in Moscow, and the soldiers--like water

percolating through sand--spread irresistibly through the city in

all directions from the Kremlin into which they had first marched. The

cavalry, on entering a merchant's house that had been abandoned and

finding there stabling more than sufficient for their horses, went on,

all the same, to the next house which seemed to them better. Many of

them appropriated several houses, chalked their names on them, and

quarreled and even fought with other companies for them. Before they

had had time to secure quarters the soldiers ran out into the

streets to see the city and, hearing that everything had been

abandoned, rushed to places where valuables were to be had for the

taking. The officers followed to check the soldiers and were

involuntarily drawn into doing the same. In Carriage Row carriages had

been left in the shops, and generals flocked there to select

caleches and coaches for themselves. The few inhabitants who had

remained invited commanding officers to their houses, hoping thereby

to secure themselves from being plundered. There were masses of wealth

and there seemed no end to it. All around the quarters occupied by the

French were other regions still unexplored and unoccupied where,

they thought, yet greater riches might be found. And Moscow engulfed

the army ever deeper and deeper. When water is spilled on dry ground

both the dry ground and the water disappear and mud results; and in

the same way the entry of the famished army into the rich and deserted

city resulted in fires and looting and the destruction of both the

army and the wealthy city.





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The French attributed the Fire of Moscow au patriotisme feroce de

Rostopchine,* the Russians to the barbarity of the French. In reality,

however, it was not, and could not be, possible to explain the burning

of Moscow by making any individual, or any group of people,

responsible for it. Moscow was burned because it found itself in a

position in which any town built of wood was bound to burn, quite

apart from whether it had, or had not, a hundred and thirty inferior

fire engines. Deserted Moscow had to burn as inevitably as a heap of

shavings has to burn on which sparks continually fall for several

days. A town built of wood, where scarcely a day passes without

conflagrations when the house owners are in residence and a police

force is present, cannot help burning when its inhabitants have left

it and it is occupied by soldiers who smoke pipes, make campfires of

the Senate chairs in the Senate Square, and cook themselves meals

twice a day. In peacetime it is only necessary to billet troops in the

villages of any district and the number of fires in that district

immediately increases. How much then must the probability of fire be

increased in an abandoned, wooden town where foreign troops are

quartered. "Le patriotisme feroce de Rostopchine" and the barbarity of

the French were not to blame in the matter. Moscow was set on fire

by the soldiers' pipes, kitchens, and campfires, and by the

carelessness of enemy soldiers occupying houses they did not own. Even

if there was any arson (which is very doubtful, for no one had any

reason to burn the houses--in any case a troublesome and dangerous

thing to do), arson cannot be regarded as the cause, for the same

thing would have happened without any incendiarism.





*To Rostopchin's ferocious patriotism.





However tempting it might be for the French to blame Rostopchin's

ferocity and for Russians to blame the scoundrel Bonaparte, or later

on to place an heroic torch in the hands of their own people, it is

impossible not to see that there could be no such direct cause of

the fire, for Moscow had to burn as every village, factory, or house

must burn which is left by its owners and in which strangers are

allowed to live and cook their porridge. Moscow was burned by its

inhabitants, it is true, but by those who had abandoned it and not

by those who remained in it. Moscow when occupied by the enemy did not

remain intact like Berlin, Vienna, and other towns, simply because its

inhabitants abandoned it and did not welcome the French with bread and

salt, nor bring them the keys of the city.









CHAPTER XXVII





The absorption of the French by Moscow, radiating starwise as it

did, only reached the quarter where Pierre was staying by the

evening of the second of September.

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After the last two days spent in solitude and unusual circumstances,

Pierre was in a state bordering on insanity. He was completely

obsessed by one persistent thought. He did not know how or when this

thought had taken such possession of him, but he remembered nothing of

the past, understood nothing of the present, and all he saw and

heard appeared to him like a dream.



He had left home only to escape the intricate tangle of life's

demands that enmeshed him, and which in his present condition he was

unable to unravel. He had gone to Joseph Alexeevich's house, on the

plea of sorting the deceased's books and papers, only in search of

rest from life's turmoil, for in his mind the memory of Joseph

Alexeevich was connected with a world of eternal, solemn, and calm

thoughts, quite contrary to the restless confusion into which he

felt himself being drawn. He sought a quiet refuge, and in Joseph

Alexeevich's study he really found it. When he sat with his elbows

on the dusty writing table in the deathlike stillness of the study,

calm and significant memories of the last few days rose one after

another in his imagination, particularly of the battle of Borodino and

of that vague sense of his own insignificance and insincerity compared

with the truth, simplicity, and strength of the class of men he

mentally classed as they. When Gerasim roused him from his reverie the

idea occurred to him of taking part in the popular defense of Moscow

which he knew was projected. And with that object he had asked Gerasim

to get him a peasant's coat and a pistol, confiding to him his

intentions of remaining in Joseph Alexeevich's house and keeping his

name secret. Then during the first day spent in inaction and

solitude (he tried several times to fix his attention on the Masonic

manuscripts, but was unable to do so) the idea that had previously

occurred to him of the cabalistic significance of his name in

connection with Bonaparte's more than once vaguely presented itself.

But the idea that he, L'russe Besuhof, was destined to set a limit

to the power of the Beast was as yet only one of the fancies that

often passed through his mind and left no trace behind.



When, having bought the coat merely with the object of taking part

among the people in the defense of Moscow, Pierre had met the

Rostovs and Natasha had said to him: "Are you remaining in

Moscow?... How splendid!" the thought flashed into his mind that it

really would be a good thing, even if Moscow were taken, for him to

remain there and do what he was predestined to do.



Next day, with the sole idea of not sparing himself and not

lagging in any way behind them, Pierre went to the Three Hills gate.

But when he returned to the house convinced that Moscow would not be

defended, he suddenly felt that what before had seemed to him merely a

possibility had now become absolutely necessary and inevitable. He

must remain in Moscow, concealing his name, and must meet Napoleon and

kill him, and either perish or put an end to the misery of all Europe-

which it seemed to him was solely due to Napoleon.



Pierre knew all the details of the attempt on Bonaparte's life in

1809 by a German student in Vienna, and knew that the student had been

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shot. And the risk to which he would expose his life by carrying out

his design excited him still more.



Two equally strong feelings drew Pierre irresistibly to this

purpose. The first was a feeling of the necessity of sacrifice and

suffering in view of the common calamity, the same feeling that had

caused him to go to Mozhaysk on the twenty-fifth and to make his way

to the very thick of the battle and had now caused him to run away

from his home and, in place of the luxury and comfort to which he

was accustomed, to sleep on a hard sofa without undressing and eat the

same food as Gerasim. The other was that vague and quite Russian

feeling of contempt for everything conventional, artificial, and

human--for everything the majority of men regard as the greatest

good in the world. Pierre had first experienced this strange and

fascinating feeling at the Sloboda Palace, when he had suddenly felt

that wealth, power, and life--all that men so painstakingly acquire

and guard--if it has any worth has so only by reason the joy with

which it can all be renounced.



It was the feeling that induces a volunteer recruit to spend his

last penny on drink, and a drunken man to smash mirrors or glasses for

no apparent reason and knowing that it will cost him all the money

he possesses: the feeling which causes a man to perform actions

which from an ordinary point of view are insane, to test, as it

were, his personal power and strength, affirming the existence of a

higher, nonhuman criterion of life.



From the very day Pierre had experienced this feeling for the

first time at the Sloboda Palace he had been continuously under its

influence, but only now found full satisfaction for it. Moreover, at

this moment Pierre was supported in his design and prevented from

renouncing it by what he had already done in that direction. If he

were now to leave Moscow like everyone else, his flight from home, the

peasant coat, the pistol, and his announcement to the Rostovs that

he would remain in Moscow would all become not merely meaningless

but contemptible and ridiculous, and to this Pierre was very

sensitive.



Pierre's physical condition, as is always the case, corresponded

to his mental state. The unaccustomed coarse food, the vodka he

drank during those days, the absence of wine and cigars, his dirty

unchanged linen, two almost sleepless nights passed on a short sofa

without bedding--all this kept him in a state of excitement

bordering on insanity.



It was two o'clock in the afternoon. The French had already

entered Moscow. Pierre knew this, but instead of acting he only

thought about his undertaking, going over its minutest details in

his mind. In his fancy he did not clearly picture to himself either

the striking of the blow or the death of Napoleon, but with

extraordinary vividness and melancholy enjoyment imagined his own

destruction and heroic endurance.



"Yes, alone, for the sake of all, I must do it or perish!" he

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thought. "Yes, I will approach... and then suddenly... with pistol

or dagger? But that is all the same! 'It is not I but the hand of

Providence that punishes thee,' I shall say," thought he, imagining

what he would say when killing Napoleon. "Well then, take me and

execute me!" he went on, speaking to himself and bowing his head

with a sad but firm expression.



While Pierre, standing in the middle of the room, was talking to

himself in this way, the study door opened and on the threshold

appeared the figure of Makar Alexeevich, always so timid before but

now quite transformed.



His dressing gown was unfastened, his face red and distorted. He was

obviously drunk. On seeing Pierre he grew confused at first, but

noticing embarrassment on Pierre's face immediately grew bold and,

staggering on his thin legs, advanced into the middle of the room.



"They're frightened," he said confidentially in a hoarse voice. "I

say I won't surrender, I say... Am I not right, sir?"



He paused and then suddenly seeing the pistol on the table seized it

with unexpected rapidity and ran out into the corridor.



Gerasim and the porter, who had followed Makar Alexeevich, stopped

him in the vestibule and tried to take the pistol from him. Pierre,

coming out into the corridor, looked with pity and repulsion at the

half-crazy old man. Makar Alexeevich, frowning with exertion, held

on to the pistol and screamed hoarsely, evidently with some heroic

fancy in his head.



"To arms! Board them! No, you shan't get it," he yelled.



"That will do, please, that will do. Have the goodness--please, sir,

to let go! Please, sir..." pleaded Gerasim, trying carefully to

steer Makar Alexeevich by the elbows back to the door.



"Who are you? Bonaparte!..." shouted Makar Alexeevich.



"That's not right, sir. Come to your room, please, and rest. Allow

me to have the pistol."



"Be off, thou base slave! Touch me not! See this?" shouted Makar

Alexeevich, brandishing the pistol. "Board them!"



"Catch hold!" whispered Gerasim to the porter.



They seized Makar Alexeevich by the arms and dragged him to the

door.



The vestibule was filled with the discordant sounds of a struggle

and of a tipsy, hoarse voice.



Suddenly a fresh sound, a piercing feminine scream, reverberated

from the porch and the cook came running into the vestibule.

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"It's them! Gracious heavens! O Lord, four of them, horsemen!" she

cried.



Gerasim and the porter let Makar Alexeevich go, and in the now

silent corridor the sound of several hands knocking at the front

door could be heard.









CHAPTER XXVIII





Pierre, having decided that until he had carried out his design he

would disclose neither his identity nor his knowledge of French, stood

at the half-open door of the corridor, intending to conceal himself as

soon as the French entered. But the French entered and still Pierre

did not retire--an irresistible curiosity kept him there.



There were two of them. One was an officer--a tall, soldierly,

handsome man--the other evidently a private or an orderly,

sunburned, short, and thin, with sunken cheeks and a dull

expression. The officer walked in front, leaning on a stick and

slightly limping. When he had advanced a few steps he stopped,

having apparently decided that these were good quarters, turned

round to the soldiers standing at the entrance, and in a loud voice of

command ordered them to put up the horses. Having done that, the

officer, lifting his elbow with a smart gesture, stroked his

mustache and lightly touched his hat.



"Bonjour, la compagnie!"* said he gaily, smiling and looking about

him.





*"Good day, everybody!"





No one gave any reply.



"Vous etes le bourgeois?"* the officer asked Gerasim.





*"Are you the master here?"





Gerasim gazed at the officer with an alarmed and inquiring look.



"Quartier, quartier, logement!" said the officer, looking down at

the little man with a condescending and good-natured smile. "Les

francais sont de bons enfants. Que diable! Voyons! Ne nous fachons

pas, mon vieux!"* added he, clapping the scared and silent Gerasim

on the shoulder. "Well, does no one speak French in this

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establishment?" he asked again in French, looking around and meeting

Pierre's eyes. Pierre moved away from the door.





*"Quarters, quarters, lodgings! The French are good fellows. What

the devil! There, don't let us be cross, old fellow!"





Again the officer turned to Gerasim and asked him to show him the

rooms in the house.



"Master, not here--don't understand... me, you..." said Gerasim,

trying to render his words more comprehensible by contorting them.



Still smiling, the French officer spread out his hands before

Gerasim's nose, intimating that he did not understand him either,

and moved, limping, to the door at which Pierre was standing. Pierre

wished to go away and conceal himself, but at that moment he saw Makar

Alexeevich appearing at the open kitchen door with the pistol in his

hand. With a madman's cunning, Makar Alexeevich eyed the Frenchman,

raised his pistol, and took aim.



"Board them!" yelled the tipsy man, trying to press the trigger.

Hearing the yell the officer turned round, and at the same moment

Pierre threw himself on the drunkard. Just when Pierre snatched at and

struck up the pistol Makar Alexeevich at last got his fingers on the

trigger, there was a deafening report, and all were enveloped in a

cloud of smoke. The Frenchman turned pale and rushed to the door.



Forgetting his intention of concealing his knowledge of French,

Pierre, snatching away the pistol and throwing it down, ran up to

the officer and addressed him in French.



"You are not wounded?" he asked.



"I think not," answered the Frenchman, feeling himself over. "But

I have had a lucky escape this time," he added, pointing to the

damaged plaster of the wall. "Who is that man?" said he, looking

sternly at Pierre.



"Oh, I am really in despair at what has occurred," said Pierre

rapidly, quite forgetting the part he had intended to play. "He is

an unfortunate madman who did not know what he was doing."



The officer went up to Makar Alexeevich and took him by the collar.



Makar Alexeevich was standing with parted lips, swaying, as if about

to fall asleep, as he leaned against the wall.



"Brigand! You shall pay for this," said the Frenchman, letting go of

him. "We French are merciful after victory, but we do not pardon

traitors," he added, with a look of gloomy dignity and a fine

energetic gesture.



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Pierre continued, in French, to persuade the officer not to hold

that drunken imbecile to account. The Frenchman listened in silence

with the same gloomy expression, but suddenly turned to Pierre with

a smile. For a few seconds he looked at him in silence. His handsome

face assumed a melodramatically gentle expression and he held out

his hand.



"You have saved my life. You are French," said he.



For a Frenchman that deduction was indubitable. Only a Frenchman

could perform a great deed, and to save his life--the life of M.

Ramballe, captain of the 13th Light Regiment--was undoubtedly a very

great deed.



But however indubitable that conclusion and the officer's conviction

based upon it, Pierre felt it necessary to disillusion him.



"I am Russian," he said quickly.



"Tut, tut, tut! Tell that to others," said the officer, waving his

finger before his nose and smiling. "You shall tell me all about

that presently. I am delighted to meet a compatriot. Well, and what

are we to do with this man?" he added, addressing himself to Pierre as

to a brother.



Even if Pierre were not a Frenchman, having once received that

loftiest of human appellations he could not renounce it, said the

officer's look and tone. In reply to his last question Pierre again

explained who Makar Alexeevich was and how just before their arrival

that drunken imbecile had seized the loaded pistol which they had

not had time to recover from him, and begged the officer to let the

deed go unpunished.



The Frenchman expanded his chest and made a majestic gesture with

his arm.



"You have saved my life! You are French. You ask his pardon? I grant

it you. Lead that man away!" said he quickly and energetically, and

taking the arm of Pierre whom he had promoted to be a Frenchman for

saving his life, he went with him into the room.



The soldiers in the yard, hearing the shot, came into the passage

asking what had happened, and expressed their readiness to punish

the culprits, but the officer sternly checked them.



"You will be called in when you are wanted," he said.



The soldiers went out again, and the orderly, who had meanwhile

had time to visit the kitchen, came up to his officer.



"Captain, there is soup and a leg of mutton in the kitchen," said

he. "Shall I serve them up?"



"Yes, and some wine," answered the captain.

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CHAPTER XXIX





When the French officer went into the room with Pierre the latter

again thought it his duty to assure him that he was not French and

wished to go away, but the officer would not hear of it. He was so

very polite, amiable, good-natured, and genuinely grateful to Pierre

for saving his life that Pierre had not the heart to refuse, and sat

down with him in the parlor--the first room they entered. To

Pierre's assurances that he was not a Frenchman, the captain,

evidently not understanding how anyone could decline so flattering

an appellation, shrugged his shoulders and said that if Pierre

absolutely insisted on passing for a Russian let it be so, but for all

that he would be forever bound to Pierre by gratitude for saving his

life.



Had this man been endowed with the slightest capacity for perceiving

the feelings of others, and had he at all understood what Pierre's

feelings were, the latter would probably have left him, but the

man's animated obtuseness to everything other than himself disarmed

Pierre.



"A Frenchman or a Russian prince incognito," said the officer,

looking at Pierre's fine though dirty linen and at the ring on his

finger. "I owe my life to you and offer you my friendship. A Frenchman

never forgets either an insult or a service. I offer you my

friendship. That is all I can say."



There was so much good nature and nobility (in the French sense of

the word) in the officer's voice, in the expression of his face and in

his gestures, that Pierre, unconsciously smiling in response to the

Frenchman's smile, pressed the hand held out to him.



"Captain Ramballe, of the 13th Light Regiment, Chevalier of the

Legion of Honor for the affair on the seventh of September," he

introduced himself, a self-satisfied irrepressible smile puckering his

lips under his mustache. "Will you now be so good as to tell me with

whom I have the honor of conversing so pleasantly, instead of being in

the ambulance with that maniac's bullet in my body?"



Pierre replied that he could not tell him his name and, blushing,

began to try to invent a name and to say something about his reason

for concealing it, but the Frenchman hastily interrupted him.



"Oh, please!" said he. "I understand your reasons. You are an

officer... a superior officer perhaps. You have borne arms against us.

That's not my business. I owe you my life. That is enough for me. I am

quite at your service. You belong to the gentry?" he concluded with

a shade of inquiry in his tone. Pierre bent his head. "Your

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baptismal name, if you please. That is all I ask. Monsieur Pierre, you

say.... That's all I want to know."



When the mutton and an omelet had been served and a samovar and

vodka brought, with some wine which the French had taken from a

Russian cellar and brought with them, Ramballe invited Pierre to share

his dinner, and himself began to eat greedily and quickly like a

healthy and hungry man, munching his food rapidly with his strong

teeth, continually smacking his lips, and repeating--"Excellent!

Delicious!" His face grew red and was covered with perspiration.

Pierre was hungry and shared the dinner with pleasure. Morel, the

orderly, brought some hot water in a saucepan and placed a bottle of

claret in it. He also brought a bottle of kvass, taken from the

kitchen for them to try. That beverage was already known to the French

and had been given a special name. They called it limonade de cochon

(pig's lemonade), and Morel spoke well of the limonade de cochon he

had found in the kitchen. But as the captain had the wine they had

taken while passing through Moscow, he left the kvass to Morel and

applied himself to the bottle of Bordeaux. He wrapped the bottle up to

its neck in a table napkin and poured out wine for himself and for

Pierre. The satisfaction of his hunger and the wine rendered the

captain still more lively and he chatted incessantly all through

dinner.



"Yes, my dear Monsieur Pierre, I owe you a fine votive candle for

saving me from that maniac.... You see, I have bullets enough in my

body already. Here is one I got at Wagram" (he touched his side)

"and a second at Smolensk"--he showed a scar on his cheek--"and this

leg which as you see does not want to march, I got that on the seventh

at the great battle of la Moskowa. Sacre Dieu! It was splendid! That

deluge of fire was worth seeing. It was a tough job you set us

there, my word! You may be proud of it! And on my honor, in spite of

the cough I caught there, I should be ready to begin again. I pity

those who did not see it."



"I was there," said Pierre.



"Bah, really? So much the better! You are certainly brave foes.

The great redoubt held out well, by my pipe!" continued the Frenchman.

"And you made us pay dear for it. I was at it three times--sure as I

sit here. Three times we reached the guns and three times we were

thrown back like cardboard figures. Oh, it was beautiful, Monsieur

Pierre! Your grenadiers were splendid, by heaven! I saw them close

up their ranks six times in succession and march as if on parade. Fine

fellows! Our King of Naples, who knows what's what, cried 'Bravo!' Ha,

ha! So you are one of us soldiers!" he added, smiling, after a

momentary pause. "So much the better, so much the better, Monsieur

Pierre! Terrible in battle... gallant... with the fair" (he winked and

smiled), "that's what the French are, Monsieur Pierre, aren't they?"



The captain was so naively and good-humoredly gay, so real, and so

pleased with himself that Pierre almost winked back as he looked

merrily at him. Probably the word "gallant" turned the captain's

thoughts to the state of Moscow.

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"Apropos, tell me please, is it true that the women have all left

Moscow? What a queer idea! What had they to be afraid of?"



"Would not the French ladies leave Paris if the Russians entered

it?" asked Pierre.



"Ha, ha, ha!" The Frenchman emitted a merry, sanguine chuckle,

patting Pierre on the shoulder. "What a thing to say!" he exclaimed.

"Paris?... But Paris, Paris..."



"Paris--the capital of the world," Pierre finished his remark for

him.



The captain looked at Pierre. He had a habit of stopping short in

the middle of his talk and gazing intently with his laughing, kindly

eyes.



"Well, if you hadn't told me you were Russian, I should have wagered

that you were Parisian! You have that... I don't know what, that..."

and having uttered this compliment, he again gazed at him in silence.



"I have been in Paris. I spent years there," said Pierre.



"Oh yes, one sees that plainly. Paris!... A man who doesn't know

Paris is a savage. You can tell a Parisian two leagues off. Paris is

Talma, la Duchenois, Potier, the Sorbonne, the boulevards," and

noticing that his conclusion was weaker than what had gone before,

he added quickly: "There is only one Paris in the world. You have been

to Paris and have remained Russian. Well, I don't esteem you the

less for it."



Under the influence of the wine he had drunk, and after the days

he had spent alone with his depressing thoughts, Pierre

involuntarily enjoyed talking with this cheerful and good-natured man.



"To return to your ladies--I hear they are lovely. What a wretched

idea to go and bury themselves in the steppes when the French army

is in Moscow. What a chance those girls have missed! Your peasants,

now--that's another thing; but you civilized people, you ought to know

us better than that. We took Vienna, Berlin, Madrid, Naples, Rome,

Warsaw, all the world's capitals.... We are feared, but we are

loved. We are nice to know. And then the Emperor..." he began, but

Pierre interrupted him.



"The Emperor," Pierre repeated, and his face suddenly became sad and

embarrassed, "is the Emperor...?"



"The Emperor? He is generosity, mercy, justice, order, genius-

that's what the Emperor is! It is I, Ramballe, who tell you so.... I

assure you I was his enemy eight years ago. My father was an

emigrant count.... But that man has vanquished me. He has taken hold

of me. I could not resist the sight of the grandeur and glory with

which he has covered France. When I understood what he wanted--when

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I saw that he was preparing a bed of laurels for us, you know, I

said to myself: 'That is a monarch,' and I devoted myself to him! So

there! Oh yes, mon cher, he is the greatest man of the ages past or

future."



"Is he in Moscow?" Pierre stammered with a guilty look.



The Frenchman looked at his guilty face and smiled.



"No, he will make his entry tomorrow," he replied, and continued his

talk.



Their conversation was interrupted by the cries of several voices at

the gate and by Morel, who came to say that some Wurttemberg hussars

had come and wanted to put up their horses in the yard where the

captain's horses were. This difficulty had arisen chiefly because

the hussars did not understand what was said to them in French.



The captain had their senior sergeant called in, and in a stern

voice asked him to what regiment he belonged, who was his commanding

officer, and by what right he allowed himself to claim quarters that

were already occupied. The German who knew little French, answered the

two first questions by giving the names of his regiment and of his

commanding officer, but in reply to the third question which he did

not understand said, introducing broken French into his own German,

that he was the quartermaster of the regiment and his commander had

ordered him to occupy all the houses one after another. Pierre, who

knew German, translated what the German said to the captain and gave

the captain's reply to the Wurttemberg hussar in German. When he had

understood what was said to him, the German submitted and took his men

elsewhere. The captain went out into the porch and gave some orders in

a loud voice.



When he returned to the room Pierre was sitting in the same place as

before, with his head in his hands. His face expressed suffering. He

really was suffering at that moment. When the captain went out and

he was left alone, suddenly he came to himself and realized the

position he was in. It was not that Moscow had been taken or that

the happy conquerors were masters in it and were patronizing him.

Painful as that was it was not that which tormented Pierre at the

moment. He was tormented by the consciousness of his own weakness. The

few glasses of wine he had drunk and the conversation with this

good-natured man had destroyed the mood of concentrated gloom in which

he had spent the last few days and which was essential for the

execution of his design. The pistol, dagger, and peasant coat were

ready. Napoleon was to enter the town next day. Pierre still

considered that it would be a useful and worthy action to slay the

evildoer, but now he felt that he would not do it. He did not know

why, but he felt a foreboding that he would not carry out his

intention. He struggled against the confession of his weakness but

dimly felt that he could not overcome it and that his former gloomy

frame of mind, concerning vengeance, killing, and self-sacrifice,

had been dispersed like dust by contact with the first man he met.



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The captain returned to the room, limping slightly and whistling a

tune.



The Frenchman's chatter which had previously amused Pierre now

repelled him. The tune he was whistling, his gait, and the gesture

with which he twirled his mustache, all now seemed offensive. "I

will go away immediately. I won't say another word to him," thought

Pierre. He thought this, but still sat in the same place. A strange

feeling of weakness tied him to the spot; he wished to get up and go

away, but could not do so.



The captain, on the other hand, seemed very cheerful. He paced up

and down the room twice. His eyes shone and his mustache twitched as

if he were smiling to himself at some amusing thought.



"The colonel of those Wurttembergers is delightful," he suddenly

said. "He's a German, but a nice fellow all the same.... But he's a

German." He sat down facing Pierre. "By the way, you know German,

then?"



Pierre looked at him in silence.



"What is the German for 'shelter'?"



"Shelter?" Pierre repeated. "The German for shelter is Unterkunft."



"How do you say it?" the captain asked quickly and doubtfully.



"Unterkunft," Pierre repeated.



"Onterkoff," said the captain and looked at Pierre for some

seconds with laughing eyes. "These Germans are first-rate fools, don't

you think so, Monsieur Pierre?" he concluded.



"Well, let's have another bottle of this Moscow Bordeaux, shall

we? Morel will warm us up another little bottle. Morel!" he called out

gaily.



Morel brought candles and a bottle of wine. The captain looked at

Pierre by the candlelight and was evidently struck by the troubled

expression on his companion's face. Ramballe, with genuine distress

and sympathy in his face, went up to Pierre and bent over him.



"There now, we're sad," said he, touching Pierre's hand. "Have I

upset you? No, really, have you anything against me?" he asked Pierre.

"Perhaps it's the state of affairs?"



Pierre did not answer, but looked cordially into the Frenchman's

eyes whose expression of sympathy was pleasing to him.



"Honestly, without speaking of what I owe you, I feel friendship for

you. Can I do anything for you? Dispose of me. It is for life and

death. I say it with my hand on my heart!" said he, striking his

chest.

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"Thank you," said Pierre.



The captain gazed intently at him as he had done when he learned

that "shelter" was Unterkunft in German, and his face suddenly

brightened.



"Well, in that case, I drink to our friendship!" he cried gaily,

filling two glasses with wine.



Pierre took one of the glasses and emptied it. Ramballe emptied

his too, again pressed Pierre's hand, and leaned his elbows on the

table in a pensive attitude.



"Yes, my dear friend," he began, "such is fortune's caprice. Who

would have said that I should be a soldier and a captain of dragoons

in the service of Bonaparte, as we used to call him? Yet here I am

in Moscow with him. I must tell you, mon cher," he continued in the

sad and measured tones of a man who intends to tell a long story,

"that our name is one of the most ancient in France."



And with a Frenchman's easy and naive frankness the captain told

Pierre the story of his ancestors, his childhood, youth, and

manhood, and all about his relations and his financial and family

affairs, "ma pauvre mere" playing of course an important part in the

story.



"But all that is only life's setting, the real thing is love-

love! Am I not right, Monsieur Pierre?" said he, growing animated.

"Another glass?"



Pierre again emptied his glass and poured himself out a third.



"Oh, women, women!" and the captain, looking with glistening eyes at

Pierre, began talking of love and of his love affairs.



There were very many of these, as one could easily believe,

looking at the officer's handsome, self-satisfied face, and noting the

eager enthusiasm with which he spoke of women. Though all Ramballe's

love stories had the sensual character which Frenchmen regard as the

special charm and poetry of love, yet he told his story with such

sincere conviction that he alone had experienced and known all the

charm of love and he described women so alluringly that Pierre

listened to him with curiosity.



It was plain that l'amour which the Frenchman was so fond of was not

that low and simple kind that Pierre had once felt for his wife, nor

was it the romantic love stimulated by himself that he experienced for

Natasha. (Ramballe despised both these kinds of love equally: the

one he considered the "love of clodhoppers" and the other the "love of

simpletons.") L'amour which the Frenchman worshiped consisted

principally in the unnaturalness of his relation to the woman and in a

combination of incongruities giving the chief charm to the feeling.



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Thus the captain touchingly recounted the story of his love for a

fascinating marquise of thirty-five and at the same time for a

charming, innocent child of seventeen, daughter of the bewitching

marquise. The conflict of magnanimity between the mother and the

daughter, ending in the mother's sacrificing herself and offering

her daughter in marriage to her lover, even now agitated the

captain, though it was the memory of a distant past. Then he recounted

an episode in which the husband played the part of the lover, and

he--the lover--assumed the role of the husband, as well as several

droll incidents from his recollections of Germany, where "shelter"

is called Unterkunft and where the husbands eat sauerkraut and the

young girls are "too blonde."



Finally, the latest episode in Poland still fresh in the captain's

memory, and which he narrated with rapid gestures and glowing face,

was of how he had saved the life of a Pole (in general, the saving

of life continually occurred in the captain's stories) and the Pole

had entrusted to him his enchanting wife (parisienne de coeur) while

himself entering the French service. The captain was happy, the

enchanting Polish lady wished to elope with him, but, prompted by

magnanimity, the captain restored the wife to the husband, saying as

he did so: "I have saved your life, and I save your honor!" Having

repeated these words the captain wiped his eyes and gave himself a

shake, as if driving away the weakness which assailed him at this

touching recollection.



Listening to the captain's tales, Pierre--as often happens late in

the evening and under the influence of wine--followed all that was

told him, understood it all, and at the same time followed a train

of personal memories which, he knew not why, suddenly arose in his

mind. While listening to these love stories his own love for Natasha

unexpectedly rose to his mind, and going over the pictures of that

love in his imagination he mentally compared them with Ramballe's

tales. Listening to the story of the struggle between love and duty,

Pierre saw before his eyes every minutest detail of his last meeting

with the object of his love at the Sukharev water tower. At the time

of that meeting it had not produced an effect upon him--he had not

even once recalled it. But now it seemed to him that that meeting

had had in it something very important and poetic.



"Peter Kirilovich, come here! We have recognized you," he now seemed

to hear the words she had uttered and to see before him her eyes,

her smile, her traveling hood, and a stray lock of her hair... and

there seemed to him something pathetic and touching in all this.



Having finished his tale about the enchanting Polish lady, the

captain asked Pierre if he had ever experienced a similar impulse to

sacrifice himself for love and a feeling of envy of the legitimate

husband.



Challenged by this question Pierre raised his head and felt a need

to express the thoughts that filled his mind. He began to explain that

he understood love for a women somewhat differently. He said that in

all his life he had loved and still loved only one woman, and that she

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could never be his.



"Tiens!" said the captain.



Pierre then explained that he had loved this woman from his earliest

years, but that he had not dared to think of her because she was too

young, and because he had been an illegitimate son without a name.

Afterwards when he had received a name and wealth he dared not think

of her because he loved her too well, placing her far above everything

in the world, and especially therefore above himself.



When he had reached this point, Pierre asked the captain whether

he understood that.



The captain made a gesture signifying that even if he did not

understand it he begged Pierre to continue.



"Platonic love, clouds..." he muttered.



Whether it was the wine he had drunk, or an impulse of frankness, or

the thought that this man did not, and never would, know any of

those who played a part in his story, or whether it was all these

things together, something loosened Pierre's tongue. Speaking

thickly and with a faraway look in his shining eyes, he told the whole

story of his life: his marriage, Natasha's love for his best friend,

her betrayal of him, and all his own simple relations with her.

Urged on by Ramballe's questions he also told what he had at first

concealed--his own position and even his name.



More than anything else in Pierre's story the captain was

impressed by the fact that Pierre was very rich, had two mansions in

Moscow, and that he had abandoned everything and not left the city,

but remained there concealing his name and station.



When it was late at night they went out together into the street.

The night was warm and light. To the left of the house on the Pokrovka

a fire glowed--the first of those that were beginning in Moscow. To

the right and high up in the sky was the sickle of the waning moon and

opposite to it hung that bright comet which was connected in

Pierre's heart with his love. At the gate stood Gerasim, the cook, and

two Frenchmen. Their laughter and their mutually incomprehensible

remarks in two languages could be heard. They were looking at the glow

seen in the town.



There was nothing terrible in the one small, distant fire in the

immense city.



Gazing at the high starry sky, at the moon, at the comet, and at the

glow from the fire, Pierre experienced a joyful emotion. "There now,

how good it is, what more does one need?" thought he. And suddenly

remembering his intention he grew dizzy and felt so faint that he

leaned against the fence to save himself from falling.



Without taking leave of his new friend, Pierre left the gate with

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unsteady steps and returning to his room lay down on the sofa and

immediately fell asleep.









CHAPTER XXX





The glow of the first fire that began on the second of September was

watched from the various roads by the fugitive Muscovites and by the

retreating troops, with many different feelings.



The Rostov party spent the night at Mytishchi, fourteen miles from

Moscow. They had started so late on the first of September, the road

had been so blocked by vehicles and troops, so many things had been

forgotten for which servants were sent back, that they had decided

to spend that night at a place three miles out of Moscow. The next

morning they woke late and were again delayed so often that they

only got as far as Great Mytishchi. At ten o'clock that evening the

Rostov family and the wounded traveling with them were all distributed

in the yards and huts of that large village. The Rostovs' servants and

coachmen and the orderlies of the wounded officers, after attending to

their masters, had supper, fed the horses, and came out into the

porches.



In a neighboring hut lay Raevski's adjutant with a fractured

wrist. The awful pain he suffered made him moan incessantly and

piteously, and his moaning sounded terrible in the darkness of the

autumn night. He had spent the first night in the same yard as the

Rostovs. The countess said she had been unable to close her eyes on

account of his moaning, and at Mytishchi she moved into a worse hut

simply to be farther away from the wounded man.



In the darkness of the night one of the servants noticed, above

the high body of a coach standing before the porch, the small glow

of another fire. One glow had long been visible and everybody knew

that it was Little Mytishchi burning--set on fire by Mamonov's

Cossacks.



"But look here, brothers, there's another fire!" remarked an

orderly.



All turned their attention to the glow.



"But they told us Little Mytishchi had been set on fire by Mamonov's

Cossacks."



"But that's not Mytishchi, it's farther away."



"Look, it must be in Moscow!"



Two of the gazers went round to the other side of the coach and

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sat down on its steps.



"It's more to the left, why, Little Mytishchi is over there, and

this is right on the other side."



Several men joined the first two.



"See how it's flaring," said one. "That's a fire in Moscow: either

in the Sushchevski or the Rogozhski quarter."



No one replied to this remark and for some time they all gazed

silently at the spreading flames of the second fire in the distance.



Old Daniel Terentich, the count's valet (as he was called), came

up to the group and shouted at Mishka.



"What are you staring at, you good-for-nothing?... The count will be

calling and there's nobody there; go and gather the clothes together."



"I only ran out to get some water," said Mishka.



"But what do you think, Daniel Terentich? Doesn't it look as if that

glow were in Moscow?" remarked one of the footmen.



Daniel Terentich made no reply, and again for a long time they

were all silent. The glow spread, rising and failing, farther and

farther still.



"God have mercy.... It's windy and dry..." said another voice.



"Just look! See what it's doing now. O Lord! You can even see the

crows flying. Lord have mercy on us sinners!"



"They'll put it out, no fear!"



"Who's to put it out?" Daniel Terentich, who had hitherto been

silent, was heard to say. His voice was calm and deliberate. "Moscow

it is, brothers," said he. "Mother Moscow, the white..." his voice

faltered, and he gave way to an old man's sob.



And it was as if they had all only waited for this to realize the

significance for them of the glow they were watching. Sighs were

heard, words of prayer, and the sobbing of the count's old valet.









CHAPTER XXXI





The valet, returning to the cottage, informed the count that

Moscow was burning. The count donned his dressing gown and went out to

look. Sonya and Madame Schoss, who had not yet undressed, went out

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with him. Only Natasha and the countess remained in the room. Petya

was no longer with the family, he had gone on with his regiment

which was making for Troitsa.



The countess, on hearing that Moscow was on fire, began to cry.

Natasha, pale, with a fixed look, was sitting on the bench under the

icons just where she had sat down on arriving and paid no attention to

her father's words. She was listening to the ceaseless moaning of

the adjutant, three houses off.



"Oh, how terrible," said Sonya returning from the yard chilled and

frightened. "I believe the whole of Moscow will burn, there's an awful

glow! Natasha, do look! You can see it from the window," she said to

her cousin, evidently wishing to distract her mind.



But Natasha looked at her as if not understanding what was said to

her and again fixed her eyes on the corner of the stove. She had

been in this condition of stupor since the morning, when Sonya, to the

surprise and annoyance of the countess, had for some unaccountable

reason found it necessary to tell Natasha of Prince Andrew's wound and

of his being with their party. The countess had seldom been so angry

with anyone as she was with Sonya. Sonya had cried and begged to be

forgiven and now, as if trying to atone for her fault, paid

unceasing attention to her cousin.



"Look, Natasha, how dreadfully it is burning!" said she.



"What's burning?" asked Natasha. "Oh, yes, Moscow."



And as if in order not to offend Sonya and to get rid of her, she

turned her face to the window, looked out in such a way that it was

evident that she could not see anything, and again settled down in her

former attitude.



"But you didn't see it!"



"Yes, really I did," Natasha replied in a voice that pleaded to be

left in peace.



Both the countess and Sonya understood that, naturally, neither

Moscow nor the burning of Moscow nor anything else could seem of

importance to Natasha.



The count returned and lay down behind the partition. The countess

went up to her daughter and touched her head with the back of her hand

as she was wont to do when Natasha was ill, then touched her

forehead with her lips as if to feel whether she was feverish, and

finally kissed her.



"You are cold. You are trembling all over. You'd better lie down,"

said the countess.



"Lie down? All right, I will. I'll lie down at once," said Natasha.



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When Natasha had been told that morning that Prince Andrew was

seriously wounded and was traveling with their party, she had at first

asked many questions: Where was he going? How was he wounded? Was it

serious? And could she see him? But after she had been told that she

could not see him, that he was seriously wounded but that his life was

not in danger, she ceased to ask questions or to speak at all,

evidently disbelieving what they told her, and convinced that say what

she might she would still be told the same. All the way she had sat

motionless in a corner of the coach with wide open eyes, and the

expression in them which the countess knew so well and feared so much,

and now she sat in the same way on the bench where she had seated

herself on arriving. She was planning something and either deciding or

had already decided something in her mind. The countess knew this, but

what it might be she did not know, and this alarmed and tormented her.



"Natasha, undress, darling; lie down on my bed."



A bed had been made on a bedstead for the countess only. Madame

Schoss and the two girls were to sleep on some hay on the floor.



"No, Mamma, I will lie down here on the floor," Natasha replied

irritably and she went to the window and opened it. Through the open

window the moans of the adjutant could be heard more distinctly. She

put her head out into the damp night air, and the countess saw her

slim neck shaking with sobs and throbbing against the window frame.

Natasha knew it was not Prince Andrew who was moaning. She knew Prince

Andrew was in the same yard as themselves and in a part of the hut

across the passage; but this dreadful incessant moaning made her

sob. The countess exchanged a look with Sonya.



"Lie down, darling; lie down, my pet," said the countess, softly

touching Natasha's shoulders. "Come, lie down."



"Oh, yes... I'll lie down at once," said Natasha, and began

hurriedly undressing, tugging at the tapes of her petticoat.



When she had thrown off her dress and put on a dressing jacket,

she sat down with her foot under her on the bed that had been made

up on the floor, jerked her thin and rather short plait of hair to the

front, and began replaiting it. Her long, thin, practiced fingers

rapidly unplaited, replaited, and tied up her plait. Her head moved

from side to side from habit, but her eyes, feverishly wide, looked

fixedly before her. When her toilet for the night was finished she

sank gently onto the sheet spread over the hay on the side nearest the

door.



"Natasha, you'd better lie in the middle," said Sonya.



"I'll stay here," muttered Natasha. "Do lie down," she added

crossly, and buried her face in the pillow.



The countess, Madame Schoss, and Sonya undressed hastily and lay

down. The small lamp in front of the icons was the only light left

in the room. But in the yard there was a light from the fire at Little

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Mytishchi a mile and a half away, and through the night came the noise

of people shouting at a tavern Mamonov's Cossacks had set up across

the street, and the adjutant's unceasing moans could still be heard.



For a long time Natasha listened attentively to the sounds that

reached her from inside and outside the room and did not move. First

she heard her mother praying and sighing and the creaking of her bed

under her, then Madame Schoss' familiar whistling snore and Sonya's

gentle breathing. Then the countess called to Natasha. Natasha did not

answer.



"I think she's asleep, Mamma," said Sonya softly.



After short silence the countess spoke again but this time no one

replied.



Soon after that Natasha heard her mother's even breathing. Natasha

did not move, though her little bare foot, thrust out from under the

quilt, was growing cold on the bare floor.



As if to celebrate a victory over everybody, a cricket chirped in

a crack in the wall. A cock crowed far off and another replied near

by. The shouting in the tavern had died down; only the moaning of

the adjutant was heard. Natasha sat up.



"Sonya, are you asleep? Mamma?" she whispered.



No one replied. Natasha rose slowly and carefully, crossed

herself, and stepped cautiously on the cold and dirty floor with her

slim, supple, bare feet. The boards of the floor creaked. Stepping

cautiously from one foot to the other she ran like a kitten the few

steps to the door and grasped the cold door handle.



It seemed to her that something heavy was beating rhythmically

against all the walls of the room: it was her own heart, sinking

with alarm and terror and overflowing with love.



She opened the door and stepped across the threshold and onto the

cold, damp earthen floor of the passage. The cold she felt refreshed

her. With her bare feet she touched a sleeping man, stepped over

him, and opened the door into the part of the hut where Prince

Andrew lay. It was dark in there. In the farthest corner, on a bench

beside a bed on which something was lying, stood a tallow candle

with a long, thick, and smoldering wick.



From the moment she had been told that of Prince Andrew's wound

and his presence there, Natasha had resolved to see him. She did not

know why she had to, she knew the meeting would be painful, but felt

the more convinced that it was necessary.



All day she had lived only in hope of seeing him that night. But now

that the moment had come she was filled with dread of what she might

see. How was he maimed? What was left of him? Was he like that

incessant moaning of the adjutant's? Yes, he was altogether like that.

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In her imagination he was that terrible moaning personified. When

she saw an indistinct shape in the corner, and mistook his knees

raised under the quilt for his shoulders, she imagined a horrible body

there, and stood still in terror. But an irresistible impulse drew her

forward. She cautiously took one step and then another, and found

herself in the middle of a small room containing baggage. Another man-

Timokhin--was lying in a corner on the benches beneath the icons,

and two others--the doctor and a valet--lay on the floor.



The valet sat up and whispered something. Timokhin, kept awake by

the pain in his wounded leg, gazed with wide-open eyes at this strange

apparition of a girl in a white chemise, dressing jacket, and

nightcap. The valet's sleepy, frightened exclamation, "What do you

want? What's the matter?" made Natasha approach more swiftly to what

was lying in the corner. Horribly unlike a man as that body looked,

she must see him. She passed the valet, the snuff fell from the candle

wick, and she saw Prince Andrew clearly with his arms outside the

quilt, and such as she had always seen him.



He was the same as ever, but the feverish color of his face, his

glittering eyes rapturously turned toward her, and especially his

neck, delicate as a child's, revealed by the turn-down collar of his

shirt, gave him a peculiarly innocent, childlike look, such as she had

never seen on him before. She went up to him and with a swift,

flexible, youthful movement dropped on her knees.



He smiled and held out his hand to her.









CHAPTER XXXII





Seven days had passed since Prince Andrew found himself in the

ambulance station on the field of Borodino. His feverish state and the

inflammation of his bowels, which were injured, were in the doctor's

opinion sure to carry him off. But on the seventh day he ate with

pleasure a piece of bread with some tea, and the doctor noticed that

his temperature was lower. He had regained consciousness that morning.

The first night after they left Moscow had been fairly warm and he had

remained in the caleche, but at Mytishchi the wounded man himself

asked to be taken out and given some tea. The pain caused by his

removal into the hut had made him groan aloud and again lose

consciousness. When he had been placed on his camp bed he lay for a

long time motionless with closed eyes. Then he opened them and

whispered softly: "And the tea?" His remembering such a small detail

of everyday life astonished the doctor. He felt Prince Andrew's pulse,

and to his surprise and dissatisfaction found it had improved. He

was dissatisfied because he knew by experience that if his patient did

not die now, he would do so a little later with greater suffering.

Timokhin, the red-nosed major of Prince Andrew's regiment, had

joined him in Moscow and was being taken along with him, having been

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wounded in the leg at the battle of Borodino. They were accompanied by

a doctor, Prince Andrew's valet, his coachman, and two orderlies.



They gave Prince Andrew some tea. He drank it eagerly, looking

with feverish eyes at the door in front of him as if trying to

understand and remember something.



"I don't want any more. Is Timokhin here?" he asked.



Timokhin crept along the bench to him.



"I am here, your excellency."



"How's your wound?"



"Mine, sir? All right. But how about you?"



Prince Andrew again pondered as if trying to remember something.



"Couldn't one get a book?" he asked.



"What book?"



"The Gospels. I haven't one."



The doctor promised to procure it for him and began to ask how he

was feeling. Prince Andrew answered all his questions reluctantly

but reasonably, and then said he wanted a bolster placed under him

as he was uncomfortable and in great pain. The doctor and valet lifted

the cloak with which he was covered and, making wry faces at the

noisome smell of mortifying flesh that came from the wound, began

examining that dreadful place. The doctor was very much displeased

about something and made a change in the dressings, turning the

wounded man over so that he groaned again and grew unconscious and

delirious from the agony. He kept asking them to get him the book

and put it under him.



"What trouble would it be to you?" he said. "I have not got one.

Please get it for me and put it under for a moment," he pleaded in a

piteous voice.



The doctor went into the passage to wash his hands.



"You fellows have no conscience," said he to the valet who was

pouring water over his hands. "For just one moment I didn't look after

you... It's such pain, you know, that I wonder how he can bear it."



"By the Lord Jesus Christ, I thought we had put something under

him!" said the valet.



The first time Prince Andrew understood where he was and what was

the matter with him and remembered being wounded and how was when he

asked to be carried into the hut after his caleche had stopped at

Mytishchi. After growing confused from pain while being carried into

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the hut he again regained consciousness, and while drinking tea once

more recalled all that had happened to him, and above all vividly

remembered the moment at the ambulance station when, at the sight of

the sufferings of a man he disliked, those new thoughts had come to

him which promised him happiness. And those thoughts, though now vague

and indefinite, again possessed his soul. He remembered that he had

now a new source of happiness and that this happiness had something to

do with the Gospels. That was why he asked for a copy of them. The

uncomfortable position in which they had put him and turned him over

again confused his thoughts, and when he came to himself a third

time it was in the complete stillness of the night. Everybody near him

was sleeping. A cricket chirped from across the passage; someone was

shouting and singing in the street; cockroaches rustled on the

table, on the icons, and on the walls, and a big fly flopped at the

head of the bed and around the candle beside him, the wick of which

was charred and had shaped itself like a mushroom.



His mind was not in a normal state. A healthy man usually thinks of,

feels, and remembers innumerable things simultaneously, but has the

power and will to select one sequence of thoughts or events on which

to fix his whole attention. A healthy man can tear himself away from

the deepest reflections to say a civil word to someone who comes in

and can then return again to his own thoughts. But Prince Andrew's

mind was not in a normal state in that respect. All the powers of

his mind were more active and clearer than ever, but they acted

apart from his will. Most diverse thoughts and images occupied him

simultaneously. At times his brain suddenly began to work with a

vigor, clearness, and depth it had never reached when he was in

health, but suddenly in the midst of its work it would turn to some

unexpected idea and he had not the strength to turn it back again.



"Yes, a new happiness was revealed to me of which man cannot be

deprived," he thought as he lay in the semi-darkness of the quiet hut,

gazing fixedly before him with feverish wide open eyes. "A happiness

lying beyond material forces, outside the material influences that act

on man--a happiness of the soul alone, the happiness of loving.

Every man can understand it, but to conceive it and enjoin it was

possible only for God. But how did God enjoin that law? And why was

the Son...?"



And suddenly the sequence of these thoughts broke off, and Prince

Andrew heard (without knowing whether it was a delusion or reality)

a soft whispering voice incessantly and rhythmically repeating

"piti-piti-piti," and then "titi," and then again "piti-piti-piti,"

and "ti-ti" once more. At the same time he felt that above his face,

above the very middle of it, some strange airy structure was being

erected out of slender needles or splinters, to the sound of this

whispered music. He felt that he had to balance carefully (though it

was difficult) so that this airy structure should not collapse; but

nevertheless it kept collapsing and again slowly rising to the sound

of whispered rhythmic music--"it stretches, stretches, spreading out

and stretching," said Prince Andrew to himself. While listening to

this whispering and feeling the sensation of this drawing out and

the construction of this edifice of needles, he also saw by glimpses a

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red halo round the candle, and heard the rustle of the cockroaches and

the buzzing of the fly that flopped against his pillow and his face.

Each time the fly touched his face it gave him a burning sensation and

yet to his surprise it did not destroy the structure, though it

knocked against the very region of his face where it was rising. But

besides this there was something else of importance. It was

something white by the door--the statue of a sphinx, which also

oppressed him.



"But perhaps that's my shirt on the table," he thought, "and

that's my legs, and that is the door, but why is it always

stretching and drawing itself out, and 'piti-piti-piti' and 'ti-ti'

and 'piti-piti-piti'...? That's enough, please leave off!" Prince

Andrew painfully entreated someone. And suddenly thoughts and feelings

again swam to the surface of his mind with peculiar clearness and

force.



"Yes--love," he thought again quite clearly. "But not love which

loves for something, for some quality, for some purpose, or for some

reason, but the love which I--while dying--first experienced when I

saw my enemy and yet loved him. I experienced that feeling of love

which is the very essence of the soul and does not require an

object. Now again I feel that bliss. To love one's neighbors, to

love one's enemies, to love everything, to love God in all His

manifestations. It is possible to love someone dear to you with

human love, but an enemy can only be loved by divine love. That is why

I experienced such joy when I felt that I loved that man. What has

become of him? Is he alive?...



"When loving with human love one may pass from love to hatred, but

divine love cannot change. No, neither death nor anything else can

destroy it. It is the very essence of the soul. Yet how many people

have I hated in my life? And of them all, I loved and hated none as

I did her." And he vividly pictured to himself Natasha, not as he

had done in the past with nothing but her charms which gave him

delight, but for the first time picturing to himself her soul. And

he understood her feelings, her sufferings, shame, and remorse. He now

understood for the first time all the cruelty of his rejection of her,

the cruelty of his rupture with her. "If only it were possible for

me to see her once more! Just once, looking into those eyes to say..."





"Piti-piti-piti and ti-ti and piti-piti-piti boom!" flopped the

fly... And his attention was suddenly carried into another world, a

world of reality and delirium in which something particular was

happening. In that world some structure was still being erected and

did not fall, something was still stretching out, and the candle

with its red halo was still burning, and the same shirtlike sphinx lay

near the door; but besides all this something creaked, there was a

whiff of fresh air, and a new white sphinx appeared, standing at the

door. And that sphinx had the pale face and shining eyes of the very

Natasha of whom he had just been thinking.



"Oh, how oppressive this continual delirium is," thought Prince

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Andrew, trying to drive that face from his imagination. But the face

remained before him with the force of reality and drew nearer.

Prince Andrew wished to return that former world of pure thought,

but he could not, and delirium drew him back into its domain. The soft

whispering voice continued its rhythmic murmur, something oppressed

him and stretched out, and the strange face was before him. Prince

Andrew collected all his strength in an effort to recover his

senses, he moved a little, and suddenly there was a ringing in his

ears, a dimness in his eyes, and like a man plunged into water he lost

consciousness. When he came to himself, Natasha, that same living

Natasha whom of all people he most longed to love with this new pure

divine love that had been revealed to him, was kneeling before him. He

realized that it was the real living Natasha, and he was not surprised

but quietly happy. Natasha, motionless on her knees (she was unable to

stir), with frightened eyes riveted on him, was restraining her

sobs. Her face was pale and rigid. Only in the lower part of it

something quivered.



Prince Andrew sighed with relief, smiled, and held out his hand.



"You?" he said. "How fortunate!"



With a rapid but careful movement Natasha drew nearer to him on

her knees and, taking his hand carefully, bent her face over it and

began kissing it, just touching it lightly with her lips.



"Forgive me!" she whispered, raising her head and glancing at him.

"Forgive me!"



"I love you," said Prince Andrew.



"Forgive...!"



"Forgive what?" he asked.



"Forgive me for what I ha-ve do-ne!" faltered Natasha in a

scarcely audible, broken whisper, and began kissing his hand more

rapidly, just touching it with her lips.



"I love you more, better than before," said Prince Andrew, lifting

her face with his hand so as to look into her eyes.



Those eyes, filled with happy tears, gazed at him timidly,

compassionately, and with joyous love. Natasha's thin pale face,

with its swollen lips, was more than plain--it was dreadful. But

Prince Andrew did not see that, he saw her shining eyes which were

beautiful. They heard the sound of voices behind them.



Peter the valet, who was now wide awake, had roused the doctor.

Timokhin, who had not slept at all because of the pain in his leg, had

long been watching all that was going on, carefully covering his

bare body with the sheet as he huddled up on his bench.



"What's this?" said the doctor, rising from his bed. "Please go

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away, madam!"



At that moment a maid sent by the countess, who had noticed her

daughter's absence, knocked at the door.



Like a somnambulist aroused from her sleep Natasha went out of the

room and, returning to her hut, fell sobbing on her bed.





From that time, during all the rest of the Rostovs' journey, at

every halting place and wherever they spent a night, Natasha never

left the wounded Bolkonski, and the doctor had to admit that he had

not expected from a young girl either such firmness or such skill in

nursing a wounded man.



Dreadful as the countess imagined it would be should Prince Andrew

die in her daughter's arms during the journey--as, judging by what the

doctor said, it seemed might easily happen--she could not oppose

Natasha. Though with the intimacy now established between the

wounded man and Natasha the thought occurred that should he recover

their former engagement would be renewed, no one--least of all Natasha

and Prince Andrew--spoke of this: the unsettled question of life and

death, which hung not only over Bolkonski but over all Russia, shut

out all other considerations.









CHAPTER XXXIII





On the third of September Pierre awoke late. His head was aching,

the clothes in which he had slept without undressing felt

uncomfortable on his body, and his mind had a dim consciousness of

something shameful he had done the day before. That something shameful

was his yesterday's conversation with Captain Ramballe.



It was eleven by the clock, but it seemed peculiarly dark out of

doors. Pierre rose, rubbed his eyes, and seeing the pistol with an

engraved stock which Gerasim had replaced on the writing table, he

remembered where he was and what lay before him that very day.



"Am I not too late?" he thought. "No, probably he won't make his

entry into Moscow before noon."



Pierre did not allow himself to reflect on what lay before him,

but hastened to act.



After arranging his clothes, he took the pistol and was about to

go out. But it then occurred to him for the first time that he

certainly could not carry the weapon in his hand through the

streets. It was difficult to hide such a big pistol even under his

wide coat. He could not carry it unnoticed in his belt or under his

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arm. Besides, it had been discharged, and he had not had time to

reload it. "No matter, dagger will do," he said to himself, though

when planning his design he had more than once come to the

conclusion that the chief mistake made by the student in 1809 had been

to try to kill Napoleon with a dagger. But as his chief aim

consisted not in carrying out his design, but in proving to himself

that he would not abandon his intention and was doing all he could

to achieve it, Pierre hastily took the blunt jagged dagger in a

green sheath which he had bought at the Sukharev market with the

pistol, and hid it under his waistcoat.



Having tied a girdle over his coat and pulled his cap low on his

head, Pierre went down the corridor, trying to avoid making a noise or

meeting the captain, and passed out into the street.



The conflagration, at which he had looked with so much

indifference the evening before, had greatly increased during the

night. Moscow was on fire in several places. The buildings in Carriage

Row, across the river, in the Bazaar and the Povarskoy, as well as the

barges on the Moskva River and the timber yards by the Dorogomilov

Bridge, were all ablaze.



Pierre's way led through side streets to the Povarskoy and from

there to the church of St. Nicholas on the Arbat, where he had long

before decided that the deed should should be done. The gates of

most of the houses were locked and the shutters up. The streets and

lanes were deserted. The air was full of smoke and the smell of

burning. Now and then he met Russians with anxious and timid faces,

and Frenchmen with an air not of the city but of the camp, walking

in the middle of the streets. Both the Russians and the French

looked at Pierre with surprise. Besides his height and stoutness,

and the strange morose look of suffering in his face and whole figure,

the Russians stared at Pierre because they could not make out to

what class he could belong. The French followed him with

astonishment in their eyes chiefly because Pierre, unlike all the

other Russians who gazed at the French with fear and curiosity, paid

no attention to them. At the gate of one house three Frenchmen, who

were explaining something to some Russians who did not understand

them, stopped Pierre asking if he did not know French.



Pierre shook his head and went on. In another side street a sentinel

standing beside a green caisson shouted at him, but only when the

shout was threateningly repeated and he heard the click of the man's

musket as he raised it did Pierre understand that he had to pass on

the other side of the street. He heard nothing and saw nothing of what

went on around him. He carried his resolution within himself in terror

and haste, like something dreadful and alien to him, for, after the

previous night's experience, he was afraid of losing it. But he was

not destined to bring his mood safely to his destination. And even had

he not been hindered by anything on the way, his intention could not

now have been carried out, for Napoleon had passed the Arbat more than

four hours previously on his way from the Dorogomilov suburb to the

Kremlin, and was now sitting in a very gloomy frame of mind in a royal

study in the Kremlin, giving detailed and exact orders as to

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measures to be taken immediately to extinguish the fire, to prevent

looting, and to reassure the inhabitants. But Pierre did not know

this; he was entirely absorbed in what lay before him, and was

tortured--as those are who obstinately undertake a task that is

impossible for them not because of its difficulty but because of its

incompatibility with their natures--by the fear of weakening at the

decisive moment and so losing his self-esteem.



Though he heard and saw nothing around him he found his way by

instinct and did not go wrong in the side streets that led to the

Povarskoy.



As Pierre approached that street the smoke became denser and denser-

he even felt the heat of the fire. Occasionally curly tongues of flame

rose from under the roofs of the houses. He met more people in the

streets and they were more excited. But Pierre, though he felt that

something unusual was happening around him, did not realize that he

was approaching the fire. As he was going along a foot path across a

wide-open space adjoining the Povarskoy on one side and the gardens of

Prince Gruzinski's house on the other, Pierre suddenly heard the

desperate weeping of a woman close to him. He stopped as if

awakening from a dream and lifted his head.



By the side of the path, on the dusty dry grass, all sorts of

household goods lay in a heap: featherbeds, a samovar, icons, and

trunks. On the ground, beside the trunks, sat a thin woman no longer

young, with long, prominent upper teeth, and wearing a black cloak and

cap. This woman, swaying to and fro and muttering something, was

choking with sobs. Two girls of about ten and twelve, dressed in dirty

short frocks and cloaks, were staring at their mother with a look of

stupefaction on their pale frightened faces. The youngest child, a boy

of about seven, who wore an overcoat and an immense cap evidently

not his own, was crying in his old nurse's arms. A dirty, barefooted

maid was sitting on a trunk, and, having undone her pale-colored

plait, was pulling it straight and sniffing at her singed hair. The

woman's husband, a short, round-shouldered man in the undress

uniform of a civilian official, with sausage-shaped whiskers and

showing under his square-set cap the hair smoothly brushed forward

over his temples, with expressionless face was moving the trunks,

which were placed one on another, and was dragging some garments

from under them.



As soon as she saw Pierre, the woman almost threw herself at his

feet.



"Dear people, good Christians, save me, help me, dear friends...

help us, somebody," she muttered between her sobs. "My girl... My

daughter! My youngest daughter is left behind. She's burned! Ooh!

Was it for this I nursed you.... Ooh!"



"Don't, Mary Nikolievna!" said her husband to her in a low voice,

evidently only to justify himself before the stranger. "Sister must

have taken her, or else where can she be?" he added.



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"Monster! Villain!" shouted the woman angrily, suddenly ceasing to

weep. "You have no heart, you don't feel for your own child! Another

man would have rescued her from the fire. But this is a monster and

neither a man nor a father! You, honored sir, are a noble man," she

went on, addressing Pierre rapidly between her sobs. "The fire broke

out alongside, and blew our way, the maid called out 'Fire!' and we

rushed to collect our things. We ran out just as we were.... This is

what we have brought away.... The icons, and my dowry bed, all the

rest is lost. We seized the children. But not Katie! Ooh! O

Lord!..." and again she began to sob. "My child, my dear one!

Burned, burned!"



"But where was she left?" asked Pierre.



From the expression of his animated face the woman saw that this man

might help her.



"Oh, dear sir!" she cried, seizing him by the legs. "My

benefactor, set my heart at ease.... Aniska, go, you horrid girl, show

him the way!" she cried to the maid, angrily opening her mouth and

still farther exposing her long teeth.



"Show me the way, show me, I... I'll do it," gasped Pierre rapidly.



The dirty maidservant stepped from behind the trunk, put up her

plait, sighed, and went on her short, bare feet along the path. Pierre

felt as if he had come back to life after a heavy swoon. He held his

head higher, his eyes shone with the light of life, and with swift

steps he followed the maid, overtook her, and came out on the

Povarskoy. The whole street was full of clouds of black smoke. Tongues

of flame here and there broke through that cloud. A great number of

people crowded in front of the conflagration. In the middle of the

street stood a French general saying something to those around him.

Pierre, accompanied by the maid, was advancing to the spot where the

general stood, but the French soldiers stopped him.



"On ne passe pas!"* cried a voice.





*"You can't pass!





"This way, uncle," cried the girl. "We'll pass through the side

street, by the Nikulins'!"



Pierre turned back, giving a spring now and then to keep up with

her. She ran across the street, turned down a side street to the left,

and, passing three houses, turned into a yard on the right.



"It's here, close by," said she and, running across the yard, opened

a gate in a wooden fence and, stopping, pointed out to him a small

wooden wing of the house, which was burning brightly and fiercely. One

of its sides had fallen in, another was on fire, and bright flames

issued from the openings of the windows and from under the roof.

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As Pierre passed through the fence gate, he was enveloped by hot air

and involuntarily stopped.



"Which is it? Which is your house?" he asked.



"Ooh!" wailed the girl, pointing to the wing. "That's it, that was

our lodging. You've burned to death, our treasure, Katie, my

precious little missy! Ooh!" lamented Aniska, who at the sight of

the fire felt that she too must give expression to her feelings.



Pierre rushed to the wing, but the heat was so great that he

involuntarily passed round in a curve and came upon the large house

that was as yet burning only at one end, just below the roof, and

around which swarmed a crowd of Frenchmen. At first Pierre did not

realize what these men, who were dragging something out, were about;

but seeing before him a Frenchman hitting a peasant with a blunt saber

and trying to take from him a fox-fur coat, he vaguely understood that

looting was going on there, but he had no time to dwell on that idea.



The sounds of crackling and the din of falling walls and ceilings,

the whistle and hiss of the flames, the excited shouts of the

people, and the sight of the swaying smoke, now gathering into thick

black clouds and now soaring up with glittering sparks, with here

and there dense sheaves of flame (now red and now like golden fish

scales creeping along the walls), and the heat and smoke and

rapidity of motion, produced on Pierre the usual animating effects

of a conflagration. It had a peculiarly strong effect on him because

at the sight of the fire he felt himself suddenly freed from the ideas

that had weighed him down. He felt young, bright, adroit, and

resolute. He ran round to the other side of the lodge and was about to

dash into that part of it which was still standing, when just above

his head he heard several voices shouting and then a cracking sound

and the ring of something heavy falling close beside him.



Pierre looked up and saw at a window of the large house some

Frenchmen who had just thrown out the drawer of a chest, filled with

metal articles. Other French soldiers standing below went up to the

drawer.



"What does this fellow want?" shouted one of them referring to

Pierre.



"There's a child in that house. Haven't you seen a child?" cried

Pierre.



"What's he talking about? Get along!" said several voices, and one

of the soldiers, evidently afraid that Pierre might want to take

from them some of the plate and bronzes that were in the drawer, moved

threateningly toward him.



"A child?" shouted a Frenchman from above. "I did hear something

squealing in the garden. Perhaps it's his brat that the fellow is

looking for. After all, one must be human, you know...."

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"Where is it? Where?" said Pierre.



"There! There!" shouted the Frenchman at the window, pointing to the

garden at the back of the house. "Wait a bit--I'm coming down."



And a minute or two later the Frenchman, a black-eyed fellow with

a spot on his cheek, in shirt sleeves, really did jump out of a window

on the ground floor, and clapping Pierre on the shoulder ran with

him into the garden.



"Hurry up, you others!" he called out to his comrades. "It's getting

hot."



When they reached a gravel path behind the house the Frenchman

pulled Pierre by the arm and pointed to a round, graveled space

where a three-year-old girl in a pink dress was lying under a seat.



"There is your child! Oh, a girl, so much the better!" said the

Frenchman. "Good-by, Fatty. We must be human, we are all mortal you

know!" and the Frenchman with the spot on his cheek ran back to his

comrades.



Breathless with joy, Pierre ran to the little girl and was going

to take her in his arms. But seeing a stranger the sickly,

scrofulous-looking child, unattractively like her mother, began to

yell and run away. Pierre, however, seized her and lifted her in his

arms. She screamed desperately and angrily and tried with her little

hands to pull Pierre's hands away and to bite them with her slobbering

mouth. Pierre was seized by a sense of horror and repulsion such as he

had experienced when touching some nasty little animal. But he made an

effort not to throw the child down and ran with her to the large

house. It was now, however, impossible to get back the way he had

come; the maid, Aniska, was no longer there, and Pierre with a feeling

of pity and disgust pressed the wet, painfully sobbing child to

himself as tenderly as he could and ran with her through the garden

seeking another way out.









CHAPTER XXXIV





Having run through different yards and side streets, Pierre got back

with his little burden to the Gruzinski garden at the corner of the

Povarskoy. He did not at first recognize the place from which he had

set out to look for the child, so crowded was it now with people and

goods that had been dragged out of the houses. Besides Russian

families who had taken refuge here from the fire with their

belongings, there were several French soldiers in a variety of

clothing. Pierre took no notice of them. He hurried to find the family

of that civil servant in order to restore the daughter to her mother

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and go to save someone else. Pierre felt that he had still much to

do and to do quickly. Glowing with the heat and from running, he

felt at that moment more strongly than ever the sense of youth,

animation, and determination that had come on him when he ran to

save the child. She had now become quiet and, clinging with her little

hands to Pierre's coat, sat on his arm gazing about her like some

little wild animal. He glanced at her occasionally with a slight

smile. He fancied he saw something pathetically innocent in that

frightened, sickly little face.



He did not find the civil servant or his wife where he had left

them. He walked among the crowd with rapid steps, scanning the various

faces he met. Involuntarily he noticed a Georgian or Armenian family

consisting of a very handsome old man of Oriental type, wearing a new,

cloth-covered, sheepskin coat and new boots, an old woman of similar

type, and a young woman. That very young woman seemed to Pierre the

perfection of Oriental beauty, with her sharply outlined, arched,

black eyebrows and the extraordinarily soft, bright color of her long,

beautiful, expressionless face. Amid the scattered property and the

crowd on the open space, she, in her rich satin cloak with a bright

lilac shawl on her head, suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown

out onto the snow. She was sitting on some bundles a little behind the

old woman, and looked from under her long lashes with motionless,

large, almond-shaped eyes at the ground before her. Evidently she

was aware of her beauty and fearful because of it. Her face struck

Pierre and, hurrying along by the fence, he turned several times to

look at her. When he had reached the fence, still without finding

those he sought, he stopped and looked about him.



With the child in his arms his figure was now more conspicuous

than before, and a group of Russians, both men and women, gathered

about him.



"Have you lost anyone, my dear fellow? You're of the gentry

yourself, aren't you? Whose child is it?" they asked him.



Pierre replied that the child belonged to a woman in a black coat

who had been sitting there with her other children, and he asked

whether anyone knew where she had gone.



"Why, that must be the Anferovs," said an old deacon, addressing a

pockmarked peasant woman. "Lord have mercy, Lord have mercy!" he added

in his customary bass.



"The Anferovs? No," said the woman. "They left in the morning.

That must be either Mary Nikolievna's or the Ivanovs'!"



"He says 'a woman,' and Mary Nikolievna is a lady," remarked a house

serf.



"Do you know her? She's thin, with long teeth," said Pierre.



"That's Mary Nikolievna! They went inside the garden when these

wolves swooped down," said the woman, pointing to the French soldiers.

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"O Lord, have mercy!" added the deacon.



"Go over that way, they're there. It's she! She kept on lamenting

and crying," continued the woman. "It's she. Here, this way!"



But Pierre was not listening to the woman. He had for some seconds

been intently watching what was going on a few steps away. He was

looking at the Armenian family and at two French soldiers who had gone

up to them. One of these, a nimble little man, was wearing a blue coat

tied round the waist with a rope. He had a nightcap on his head and

his feet were bare. The other, whose appearance particularly struck

Pierre, was a long, lank, round-shouldered, fair-haired man, slow in

his movements and with an idiotic expression of face. He wore a

woman's loose gown of frieze, blue trousers, and large torn Hessian

boots. The little barefooted Frenchman in the blue coat went up to the

Armenians and, saying something, immediately seized the old man by his

legs and the old man at once began pulling off his boots. The other in

the frieze gown stopped in front of the beautiful Armenian girl and

with his hands in his pockets stood staring at her, motionless and

silent.



"Here, take the child!" said Pierre peremptorily and hurriedly to

the woman, handing the little girl to her. "Give her back to them,

give her back!" he almost shouted, putting the child, who began

screaming, on the ground, and again looking at the Frenchman and the

Armenian family.



The old man was already sitting barefoot. The little Frenchman had

secured his second boot and was slapping one boot against the other.

The old man was saying something in a voice broken by sobs, but Pierre

caught but a glimpse of this, his whole attention was directed to

the Frenchman in the frieze gown who meanwhile, swaying slowly from

side to side, had drawn nearer to the young woman and taking his hands

from his pockets had seized her by the neck.



The beautiful Armenian still sat motionless and in the same

attitude, with her long lashes drooping as if she did not see or

feel what the soldier was doing to her.



While Pierre was running the few steps that separated him from the

Frenchman, the tall marauder in the frieze gown was already tearing

from her neck the necklace the young Armenian was wearing, and the

young woman, clutching at her neck, screamed piercingly.



"Let that woman alone!" exclaimed Pierre hoarsely in a furious

voice, seizing the soldier by his round shoulders and throwing him

aside.



The soldier fell, got up, and ran away. But his comrade, throwing

down the boots and drawing his sword, moved threateningly toward

Pierre.



"Voyons, Pas de betises!"* he cried.

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*"Look here, no nonsense!"





Pierre was in such a transport of rage that he remembered nothing

and his strength increased tenfold. He rushed at the barefooted

Frenchman and, before the latter had time to draw his sword, knocked

him off his feet and hammered him with his fists. Shouts of approval

were heard from the crowd around, and at the same moment a mounted

patrol of French Uhlans appeared from round the corner. The Uhlans

came up at a trot to Pierre and the Frenchman and surrounded them.

Pierre remembered nothing of what happened after that. He only

remembered beating someone and being beaten and finally feeling that

his hands were bound and that a crowd of French soldiers stood

around him and were searching him.



"Lieutenant, he has a dagger," were the first words Pierre

understood.



"Ah, a weapon?" said the officer and turned to the barefooted

soldier who had been arrested with Pierre. "All right, you can tell

all about it at the court-martial." Then he turned to Pierre. "Do

you speak French?"



Pierre looked around him with bloodshot eyes and did not reply.

His face probably looked very terrible, for the officer said something

in a whisper and four more Uhlans left the ranks and placed themselves

on both sides of Pierre.



"Do you speak French?" the officer asked again, keeping at a

distance from Pierre. "Call the interpreter."



A little man in Russian civilian clothes rode out from the ranks,

and by his clothes and manner of speaking Pierre at once knew him to

be a French salesman from one of the Moscow shops.



"He does not look like a common man," said the interpreter, after

a searching look at Pierre.



"Ah, he looks very much like an incendiary," remarked the officer.

"And ask him who he is," he added.



"Who are you?" asked the interpreter in poor Russian. "You must

answer the chief."



"I will not tell you who I am. I am your prisoner--take me!"

Pierre suddenly replied in French.



"Ah, ah!" muttered the officer with a frown. "Well then, march!"



A crowd had collected round the Uhlans. Nearest to Pierre stood

the pockmarked peasant woman with the little girl, and when the patrol

started she moved forward.

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"Where are they taking you to, you poor dear?" said she. "And the

little girl, the little girl, what am I to do with her if she's not

theirs?" said the woman.



"What does that woman want?" asked the officer.



Pierre was as if intoxicated. His elation increased at the sight

of the little girl he had saved.



"What does she want?" he murmured. "She is bringing me my daughter

whom I have just saved from the flames," said he. "Good-by!" And

without knowing how this aimless lie had escaped him, he went along

with resolute and triumphant steps between the French soldiers.



The French patrol was one of those sent out through the various

streets of Moscow by Durosnel's order to put a stop to the pillage,

and especially to catch the incendiaries who, according to the general

opinion which had that day originated among the higher French

officers, were the cause of the conflagrations. After marching through

a number of streets the patrol arrested five more Russian suspects:

a small shopkeeper, two seminary students, a peasant, and a house

serf, besides several looters. But of all these various suspected

characters, Pierre was considered to be the most suspicious of all.

When they had all been brought for the night to a large house on the

Zubov Rampart that was being used as a guardhouse, Pierre was placed

apart under strict guard.









BOOK TWELVE: 1812









CHAPTER I





In Petersburg at that time a complicated struggle was being

carried on with greater heat than ever in the highest circles, between

the parties of Rumyantsev, the French, Marya Fedorovna, the Tsarevich,

and others, drowned as usual by the buzzing of the court drones. But

the calm, luxurious life of Petersburg, concerned only about

phantoms and reflections of real life, went on in its old way and made

it hard, except by a great effort, to realize the danger and the

difficult position of the Russian people. There were the same

receptions and balls, the same French theater, the same court

interests and service interests and intrigues as usual. Only in the

very highest circles were attempts made to keep in mind the

difficulties of the actual position. Stories were whispered of how

differently the two Empresses behaved in these difficult

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circumstances. The Empress Marya, concerned for the welfare of the

charitable and educational institutions under her patronage, had given

directions that they should all be removed to Kazan, and the things

belonging to these institutions had already been packed up. The

Empress Elisabeth, however, when asked what instructions she would

be pleased to give--with her characteristic Russian patriotism had

replied that she could give no directions about state institutions for

that was the affair of the sovereign, but as far as she personally was

concerned she would be the last to quit Petersburg.



At Anna Pavlovna's on the twenty-sixth of August, the very day of

the battle of Borodino, there was a soiree, the chief feature of which

was to be the reading of a letter from His Lordship the Bishop when

sending the Emperor an icon of the Venerable Sergius. It was

regarded as a model of ecclesiastical, patriotic eloquence. Prince

Vasili himself, famed for his elocution, was to read it. (He used to

read at the Empress'.) The art of his reading was supposed to lie in

rolling out the words, quite independently of their meaning, in a loud

and singsong voice alternating between a despairing wail and a

tender murmur, so that the wail fell quite at random on one word and

the murmur on another. This reading, as was always the case at Anna

Pavlovna's soirees, had a political significance. That evening she

expected several important personages who had to be made ashamed of

their visits to the French theater and aroused to a patriotic

temper. A good many people had already arrived, but Anna Pavlovna, not

yet seeing all those whom she wanted in her drawing room, did not

let the reading begin but wound up the springs of a general

conversation.



The news of the day in Petersburg was the illness of Countess

Bezukhova. She had fallen ill unexpectedly a few days previously,

had missed several gatherings of which she was usually ornament, and

was said to be receiving no one, and instead of the celebrated

Petersburg doctors who usually attended her had entrusted herself to

some Italian doctor who was treating her in some new and unusual way.



They all knew very well that the enchanting countess' illness

arose from an inconvenience resulting from marrying two husbands at

the same time, and that the Italian's cure consisted in removing

such inconvenience; but in Anna Pavlovna's presence no one dared to

think of this or even appear to know it.



"They say the poor countess is very ill. The doctor says it is

angina pectoris."



"Angina? Oh, that's a terrible illness!"



"They say that the rivals are reconciled, thanks to the angina..."

and the word angina was repeated with great satisfaction.



"The count is pathetic, they say. He cried like a child when the

doctor told him the case was dangerous."



"Oh, it would be a terrible loss, she is an enchanting woman."

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"You are speaking of the poor countess?" said Anna Pavlovna,

coming up just then. "I sent to ask for news, and hear that she is a

little better. Oh, she is certainly the most charming woman in the

world," she went on, with a smile at her own enthusiasm. "We belong to

different camps, but that does not prevent my esteeming her as she

deserves. She is very unfortunate!" added Anna Pavlovna.



Supposing that by these words Anna Pavlovna was somewhat lifting the

veil from the secret of the countess' malady, an unwary young man

ventured to express surprise that well known doctors had not been

called in and that the countess was being attended by a charlatan

who might employ dangerous remedies.



"Your information maybe better than mine," Anna Pavlovna suddenly

and venomously retorted on the inexperienced young man, "but I know on

good authority that this doctor is a very learned and able man. He

is private physician to the Queen of Spain."



And having thus demolished the young man, Anna Pavlovna turned to

another group where Bilibin was talking about the Austrians: having

wrinkled up his face he was evidently preparing to smooth it out again

and utter one of his mots.



"I think it is delightful," he said, referring to a diplomatic

note that had been sent to Vienna with some Austrian banners

captured from the French by Wittgenstein, "the hero of Petropol" as he

was then called in Petersburg.



"What? What's that?" asked Anna Pavlovna, securing silence for the

mot, which she had heard before.



And Bilibin repeated the actual words of the diplomatic dispatch,

which he had himself composed.



"The Emperor returns these Austrian banners," said Bilibin,

"friendly banners gone astray and found on a wrong path," and his brow

became smooth again.



"Charming, charming!" observed Prince Vasili.



"The path to Warsaw, perhaps," Prince Hippolyte remarked loudly

and unexpectedly. Everybody looked at him, understanding what he

meant. Prince Hippolyte himself glanced around with amused surprise.

He knew no more than the others what his words meant. During his

diplomatic career he had more than once noticed that such utterances

were received as very witty, and at every opportunity he uttered in

that way the first words that entered his head. "It may turn out

very well," he thought, "but if not, they'll know how to arrange

matters." And really, during the awkward silence that ensued, that

insufficiently patriotic person entered whom Anna Pavlovna had been

waiting for and wished to convert, and she, smiling and shaking a

finger at Hippolyte, invited Prince Vasili to the table and bringing

him two candles and the manuscript begged him to begin. Everyone

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became silent.





"Most Gracious Sovereign and Emperor!" Prince Vasili sternly

declaimed, looking round at his audience as if to inquire whether

anyone had anything to say to the contrary. But no one said

anything. "Moscow, our ancient capital, the New Jerusalem, receives

her Christ"--he placed a sudden emphasis on the word her--"as a mother

receives her zealous sons into her arms, and through the gathering

mists, foreseeing the brilliant glory of thy rule, sings in

exultation, 'Hosanna, blessed is he that cometh!'"





Prince Vasili pronounced these last words in a tearful voice.



Bilibin attentively examined his nails, and many of those present

appeared intimidated, as if asking in what they were to blame. Anna

Pavlovna whispered the next words in advance, like an old woman

muttering the prayer at Communion: "Let the bold and insolent

Goliath..." she whispered.



Prince Vasili continued.





"Let the bold and insolent Goliath from the borders of France

encompass the realms of Russia with death-bearing terrors; humble

Faith, the sling of the Russian David, shall suddenly smite his head

in his blood-thirsty pride. This icon of the Venerable Sergius, the

servant of God and zealous champion of old of our country's weal, is

offered to Your Imperial Majesty. I grieve that my waning strength

prevents rejoicing in the sight of your most gracious presence. I

raise fervent prayers to Heaven that the Almighty may exalt the race

of the just, and mercifully fulfill the desires of Your Majesty."





"What force! What a style!" was uttered in approval both of reader

and of author.



Animated by that address Anna Pavlovna's guests talked for a long

time of the state of the fatherland and offered various conjectures as

to the result of the battle to be fought in a few days.



"You will see," said Anna Pavlovna, "that tomorrow, on the Emperor's

birthday, we shall receive news. I have a favorable presentiment!"









CHAPTER II





Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was in fact fulfilled. Next day

during the service at the palace church in honor of the Emperor's

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birthday, Prince Volkonski was called out of the church and received a

dispatch from Prince Kutuzov. It was Kutuzov's report, written from

Tatarinova on the day of the battle. Kutuzov wrote that the Russians

had not retreated a step, that the French losses were much heavier

than ours, and that he was writing in haste from the field of battle

before collecting full information. It followed that there must have

been a victory. And at once, without leaving the church, thanks were

rendered to the Creator for His help and for the victory.



Anna Pavlovna's presentiment was justified, and all that morning a

joyously festive mood reigned in the city. Everyone believed the

victory to have been complete, and some even spoke of Napoleon's

having been captured, of his deposition, and of the choice of a new

ruler for France.



It is very difficult for events to be reflected in their real

strength and completeness amid the conditions of court life and far

from the scene of action. General events involuntarily group

themselves around some particular incident. So now the courtiers'

pleasure was based as much on the fact that the news had arrived on

the Emperor's birthday as on the fact of the victory itself. It was

like a successfully arranged surprise. Mention was made in Kutuzov's

report of the Russian losses, among which figured the names of

Tuchkov, Bagration, and Kutaysov. In the Petersburg world this sad

side of the affair again involuntarily centered round a single

incident: Kutaysov's death. Everybody knew him, the Emperor liked him,

and he was young and interesting. That day everyone met with the

words:



"What a wonderful coincidence! Just during the service. But what a

loss Kutaysov is! How sorry I am!"



"What did I tell about Kutuzov?" Prince Vasili now said with a

prophet's pride. "I always said he was the only man capable of

defeating Napoleon."



But next day no news arrived from the army and the public mood

grew anxious. The courtiers suffered because of the suffering the

suspense occasioned the Emperor.



"Fancy the Emperor's position!" said they, and instead of

extolling Kutuzov as they had done the day before, they condemned

him as the cause of the Emperor's anxiety. That day Prince Vasili no

longer boasted of his protege Kutuzov, but remained silent when the

commander in chief was mentioned. Moreover, toward evening, as if

everything conspired to make Petersburg society anxious and uneasy,

a terrible piece of news was added. Countess Helene Bezukhova had

suddenly died of that terrible malady it had been so agreeable to

mention. Officially, at large gatherings, everyone said that

Countess Bezukhova had died of a terrible attack of angina pectoris,

but in intimate circles details were mentioned of how the private

physician of the Queen of Spain had prescribed small doses of a

certain drug to produce a certain effect; but Helene, tortured by

the fact that the old count suspected her and that her husband to whom

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she had written (that wretched, profligate Pierre) had not replied,

had suddenly taken a very large dose of the drug, and had died in

agony before assistance could be rendered her. It was said that Prince

Vasili and the old count had turned upon the Italian, but the latter

had produced such letters from the unfortunate deceased that they

had immediately let the matter drop.



Talk in general centered round three melancholy facts: the Emperor's

lack of news, the loss of Kutuzov, and the death of Helene.



On the third day after Kutuzov's report a country gentleman

arrived from Moscow, and news of the surrender of Moscow to the French

spread through the whole town. This was terrible! What a position

for the Emperor to be in! Kutuzov was a traitor, and Prince Vasili

during the visits of condolence paid to him on the occasion of his

daughter's death said of Kutuzov, whom he had formerly praised (it was

excusable for him in his grief to forget what he had said), that it

was impossible to expect anything else from a blind and depraved old

man.



"I only wonder that the fate of Russia could have been entrusted

to such a man."



As long as this news remained unofficial it was possible to doubt

it, but the next day the following communication was received from

Count Rostopchin:





Prince Kutuzov's adjutant has brought me a letter in which he

demands police officers to guide the army to the Ryazan road. He

writes that he is regretfully abandoning Moscow. Sire! Kutuzov's

action decides the fate of the capital and of your empire! Russia will

shudder to learn of the abandonment of the city in which her greatness

is centered and in which lie the ashes of your ancestors! I shall

follow the army. I have had everything removed, and it only remains

for me to weep over the fate of my fatherland.





On receiving this dispatch the Emperor sent Prince Volkonski to

Kutuzov with the following rescript:





Prince Michael Ilarionovich! Since the twenty-ninth of August I have

received no communication from you, yet on the first of September I

received from the commander in chief of Moscow, via Yaroslavl, the sad

news that you, with the army, have decided to abandon Moscow. You

can yourself imagine the effect this news has had on me, and your

silence increases my astonishment. I am sending this by

Adjutant-General Prince Volkonski, to hear from you the situation of

the army and the reasons that have induced you to take this melancholy

decision.









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CHAPTER III





Nine days after the abandonment of Moscow, a messenger from

Kutuzov reached Petersburg with the official announcement of that

event. This messenger was Michaud, a Frenchman who did not know

Russian, but who was quoique etranger, russe de coeur et d'ame,* as he

said of himself.





*Though a foreigner, Russian in heart and soul.





The Emperor at once received this messenger in his study at the

palace on Stone Island. Michaud, who had never seen Moscow before

the campaign and who did not know Russian, yet felt deeply moved (as

he wrote) when he appeared before notre tres gracieux souverain*

with the news of the burning of Moscow, dont les flammes eclairaient

sa route.*[2]





*Our most gracious sovereign.



*[2] Whose flames illumined his route.





Though the source of M. Michaud's chagrin must have been different

from that which caused Russians to grieve, he had such a sad face when

shown into the Emperor's study that the latter at once asked:



"Have you brought me sad news, Colonel?"



"Very sad, sire," replied Michaud, lowering his eyes with a sigh.

"The abandonment of Moscow."



"Have they surrendered my ancient capital without a battle?" asked

the Emperor quickly, his face suddenly flushing.



Michaud respectfully delivered the message Kutuzov had entrusted

to him, which was that it had been impossible to fight before

Moscow, and that as the only remaining choice was between losing the

army as well as Moscow, or losing Moscow alone, the field marshal

had to choose the latter.



The Emperor listened in silence, not looking at Michaud.



"Has the enemy entered the city?" he asked.



"Yes, sire, and Moscow is now in ashes. I left it all in flames,"

replied Michaud in a decided tone, but glancing at the Emperor he

was frightened by what he had done.



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The Emperor began to breathe heavily and rapidly, his lower lip

trembled, and tears instantly appeared in his fine blue eyes.



But this lasted only a moment. He suddenly frowned, as if blaming

himself for his weakness, and raising his head addressed Michaud in

a firm voice:



"I see, Colonel, from all that is happening, that Providence

requires great sacrifices of us... I am ready to submit myself in

all things to His will; but tell me, Michaud, how did you leave the

army when it saw my ancient capital abandoned without a battle? Did

you not notice discouragement?..."



Seeing that his most gracious ruler was calm once more, Michaud also

grew calm, but was not immediately ready to reply to the Emperor's

direct and relevant question which required a direct answer.



"Sire, will you allow me to speak frankly as befits a loyal

soldier?" he asked to gain time.



"Colonel, I always require it," replied the Emperor. "Conceal

nothing from me, I wish to know absolutely how things are."



"Sire!" said Michaud with a subtle, scarcely perceptible smile on

his lips, having now prepared a well-phrased reply, "sire, I left

the whole army, from its chiefs to the lowest soldier, without

exception in desperate and agonized terror..."



"How is that?" the Emperor interrupted him, frowning sternly. "Would

misfortune make my Russians lose heart?... Never!"



Michaud had only waited for this to bring out the phrase he had

prepared.



"Sire," he said, with respectful playfulness, "they are only

afraid lest Your Majesty, in the goodness of your heart, should

allow yourself to be persuaded to make peace. They are burning for the

combat," declared this representative of the Russian nation, "and to

prove to Your Majesty by the sacrifice of their lives how devoted they

are...."



"Ah!" said the Emperor reassured, and with a kindly gleam in his

eyes, he patted Michaud on the shoulder. "You set me at ease,

Colonel."



He bent his head and was silent for some time.



"Well, then, go back to the army," he said, drawing himself up to

his full height and addressing Michaud with a gracious and majestic

gesture, "and tell our brave men and all my good subjects wherever you

go that when I have not a soldier left I shall put myself at the

head of my beloved nobility and my good peasants and so use the last

resources of my empire. It still offers me more than my enemies

suppose," said the Emperor growing more and more animated; "but should

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it ever be ordained by Divine Providence," he continued, raising to

heaven his fine eyes shining with emotion, "that my dynasty should

cease to reign on the throne of my ancestors, then after exhausting

all the means at my command, I shall let my beard grow to here" (he

pointed halfway down his chest) "and go and eat potatoes with the

meanest of my peasants, rather than sign the disgrace of my country

and of my beloved people whose sacrifices I know how to appreciate."



Having uttered these words in an agitated voice the Emperor suddenly

turned away as if to hide from Michaud the tears that rose to his

eyes, and went to the further end of his study. Having stood there a

few moments, he strode back to Michaud and pressed his arm below the

elbow with a vigorous movement. The Emperor's mild and handsome face

was flushed and his eyes gleamed with resolution and anger.



"Colonel Michaud, do not forget what I say to you here, perhaps we

may recall it with pleasure someday... Napoleon or I," said the

Emperor, touching his breast. "We can no longer both reign together. I

have learned to know him, and he will not deceive me any more...."



And the Emperor paused, with a frown.



When he heard these words and saw the expression of firm

resolution in the Emperor's eyes, Michaud--quoique etranger, russe

de coeur et d'ame--at that solemn moment felt himself enraptured by

all that he had heard (as he used afterwards to say), and gave

expression to his own feelings and those of the Russian people whose

representative he considered himself to be, in the following words:



"Sire!" said he, "Your Majesty is at this moment signing the glory

of the nation and the salvation of Europe!"



With an inclination of the head the Emperor dismissed him.









CHAPTER IV





It is natural for us who were not living in those days to imagine

that when half Russia had been conquered and the inhabitants were

fleeing to distant provinces, and one levy after another was being

raised for the defense of the fatherland, all Russians from the

greatest to the least were solely engaged in sacrificing themselves,

saving their fatherland, or weeping over its downfall. The tales and

descriptions of that time without exception speak only of the

self-sacrifice, patriotic devotion, despair, grief, and the heroism of

the Russians. But it was not really so. It appears so to us because we

see only the general historic interest of that time and do not see all

the personal human interests that people had. Yet in reality those

personal interests of the moment so much transcend the general

interests that they always prevent the public interest from being felt

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or even noticed. Most of the people at that time paid no attention

to the general progress of events but were guided only by their

private interests, and they were the very people whose activities at

that period were most useful.



Those who tried to understand the general course of events and to

take part in it by self-sacrifice and heroism were the most useless

members of society, they saw everything upside down, and all they

did for the common good turned out to be useless and foolish--like

Pierre's and Mamonov's regiments which looted Russian villages, and

the lint the young ladies prepared and that never reached the wounded,

and so on. Even those, fond of intellectual talk and of expressing

their feelings, who discussed Russia's position at the time

involuntarily introduced into their conversation either a shade of

pretense and falsehood or useless condemnation and anger directed

against people accused of actions no one could possibly be guilty

of. In historic events the rule forbidding us to eat of the fruit of

the Tree of Knowledge is specially applicable. Only unconscious action

bears fruit, and he who plays a part in an historic event never

understands its significance. If he tries to realize it his efforts

are fruitless.



The more closely a man was engaged in the events then taking place

in Russia the less did he realize their significance. In Petersburg

and in the provinces at a distance from Moscow, ladies, and

gentlemen in militia uniforms, wept for Russia and its ancient capital

and talked of self-sacrifice and so on; but in the army which

retired beyond Moscow there was little talk or thought of Moscow,

and when they caught sight of its burned ruins no one swore to be

avenged on the French, but they thought about their next pay, their

next quarters, of Matreshka the vivandiere, and like matters.



As the war had caught him in the service, Nicholas Rostov took a

close and prolonged part in the defense of his country, but did so

casually, without any aim at self-sacrifice, and he therefore looked

at what was going on in Russia without despair and without dismally

racking his brains over it. Had he been asked what he thought of the

state of Russia, he would have said that it was not his business to

think about it, that Kutuzov and others were there for that purpose,

but that he had heard that the regiments were to be made up to their

full strength, that fighting would probably go on for a long time yet,

and that things being so it was quite likely he might be in command of

a regiment in a couple of years' time.



As he looked at the matter in this way, he learned that he was being

sent to Voronezh to buy remounts for his division, not only without

regret at being prevented from taking part in the coming battle, but

with the greatest pleasure--which he did not conceal and which his

comrades fully understood.



A few days before the battle of Borodino, Nicholas received the

necessary money and warrants, and having sent some hussars on in

advance, he set out with post horses for Voronezh.



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Only a man who has experienced it--that is, has passed some months

continuously in an atmosphere of campaigning and war--can understand

the delight Nicholas felt when he escaped from the region covered by

the army's foraging operations, provision trains, and hospitals. When-

free from soldiers, wagons, and the filthy traces of a camp--he saw

villages with peasants and peasant women, gentlemen's country

houses, fields where cattle were grazing, posthouses with

stationmasters asleep in them, he rejoiced as though seeing all this

for the first time. What for a long while specially surprised and

delighted him were the women, young and healthy, without a dozen

officers making up to each of them; women, too, who were pleased and

flattered that a passing officer should joke with them.



In the highest spirits Nicholas arrived at night at a hotel in

Voronezh, ordered things he had long been deprived of in camp, and

next day, very clean-shaven and in a full-dress uniform he had not

worn for a long time, went to present himself to the authorities.



The commander of the militia was a civilian general, an old man

who was evidently pleased with his military designation and rank. He

received Nicholas brusquely (imagining this to be characteristically

military) and questioned him with an important air, as if

considering the general progress of affairs and approving and

disapproving with full right to do so. Nicholas was in such good

spirits that this merely amused him.



From the commander of the militia he drove to the governor. The

governor was a brisk little man, very simple and affable. He indicated

the stud farms at which Nicholas might procure horses, recommended

to him a horse dealer in the town and a landowner fourteen miles out

of town who had the best horses, and promised to assist him in every

way.



"You are Count Ilya Rostov's son? My wife was a great friend of your

mother's. We are at home on Thursdays--today is Thursday, so please

come and see us quite informally," said the governor, taking leave

of him.



Immediately on leaving the governor's, Nicholas hired post horses

and, taking his squadron quartermaster with him, drove at a gallop

to the landowner, fourteen miles away, who had the stud. Everything

seemed to him pleasant and easy during that first part of his stay

in Voronezh and, as usually happens when a man is in a pleasant

state of mind, everything went well and easily.



The landowner to whom Nicholas went was a bachelor, an old

cavalryman, a horse fancier, a sportsman, the possessor of some

century-old brandy and some old Hungarian wine, who had a snuggery

where he smoked, and who owned some splendid horses.



In very few words Nicholas bought seventeen picked stallions for six

thousand rubles--to serve, as he said, as samples of his remounts.

After dining and taking rather too much of the Hungarian wine,

Nicholas--having exchanged kisses with the landowner, with whom he was

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already on the friendliest terms--galloped back over abominable roads,

in the brightest frame of mind, continually urging on the driver so as

to be in time for the governor's party.



When he had changed, poured water over his head, and scented

himself, Nicholas arrived at the governor's rather late, but with

the phrase "better late than never" on his lips.



It was not a ball, nor had dancing been announced, but everyone knew

that Catherine Petrovna would play valses and the ecossaise on the

clavichord and that there would be dancing, and so everyone had come

as to a ball.



Provincial life in 1812 went on very much as usual, but with this

difference, that it was livelier in the towns in consequence of the

arrival of many wealthy families from Moscow, and as in everything

that went on in Russia at that time a special recklessness was

noticeable, an "in for a penny, in for a pound--who cares?" spirit,

and the inevitable small talk, instead of turning on the weather and

mutual acquaintances, now turned on Moscow, the army, and Napoleon.



The society gathered together at the governor's was the best in

Voronezh.



There were a great many ladies and some of Nicholas' Moscow

acquaintances, but there were no men who could at all vie with the

cavalier of St. George, the hussar remount officer, the good-natured

and well-bred Count Rostov. Among the men was an Italian prisoner,

an officer of the French army; and Nicholas felt that the presence

of that prisoner enhanced his own importance as a Russian hero. The

Italian was, as it were, a war trophy. Nicholas felt this, it seemed

to him that everyone regarded the Italian in the same light, and he

treated him cordially though with dignity and restraint.



As soon as Nicholas entered in his hussar uniform, diffusing

around him a fragrance of perfume and wine, and had uttered the

words "better late than never" and heard them repeated several times

by others, people clustered around him; all eyes turned on him, and he

felt at once that he had entered into his proper position in the

province--that of a universal favorite: a very pleasant position,

and intoxicatingly so after his long privations. At posting

stations, at inns, and in the landowner's snuggery, maidservants had

been flattered by his notice, and here too at the governor's party

there were (as it seemed to Nicholas) an inexhaustible number of

pretty young women, married and unmarried, impatiently awaiting his

notice. The women and girls flirted with him and, from the first

day, the people concerned themselves to get this fine young

daredevil of an hussar married and settled down. Among these was the

governor's wife herself, who welcomed Rostov as a near relative and

called him "Nicholas."



Catherine Petrovna did actually play valses and the ecossaise, and

dancing began in which Nicholas still further captivated the

provincial society by his agility. His particularly free manner of

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dancing even surprised them all. Nicholas was himself rather surprised

at the way he danced that evening. He had never danced like that in

Moscow and would even have considered such a very free and easy manner

improper and in bad form, but here he felt it incumbent on him to

astonish them all by something unusual, something they would have to

accept as the regular thing in the capital though new to them in the

provinces.



All the evening Nicholas paid attention to a blue-eyed, plump and

pleasing little blonde, the wife of one of the provincial officials.

With the naive conviction of young men in a merry mood that other

men's wives were created for them, Rostov did not leave the lady's

side and treated her husband in a friendly and conspiratorial style,

as if, without speaking of it, they knew how capitally Nicholas and

the lady would get on together. The husband, however, did not seem

to share that conviction and tried to behave morosely with Rostov. But

the latter's good-natured naivete was so boundless that sometimes even

he involuntarily yielded to Nicholas' good humor. Toward the end of

the evening, however, as the wife's face grew more flushed and

animated, the husband's became more and more melancholy and solemn, as

though there were but a given amount of animation between them and

as the wife's share increased the husband's diminished.









CHAPTER V





Nicholas sat leaning slightly forward in an armchair, bending

closely over the blonde lady and paying her mythological compliments

with a smile that never left his face. Jauntily shifting the

position of his legs in their tight riding breeches, diffusing an odor

of perfume, and admiring his partner, himself, and the fine outlines

of his legs in their well-fitting Hessian boots, Nicholas told the

blonde lady that he wished to run away with a certain lady here in

Voronezh.



"Which lady?"



"A charming lady, a divine one. Her eyes" (Nicholas looked at his

partner) "are blue, her mouth coral and ivory; her figure" (he glanced

at her shoulders) "like Diana's...."



The husband came up and sullenly asked his wife what she was talking

about.



"Ah, Nikita Ivanych!" cried Nicholas, rising politely, and as if

wishing Nikita Ivanych to share his joke, he began to tell him of

his intention to elope with a blonde lady.



The husband smiled gloomily, the wife gaily. The governor's

good-natured wife came up with a look of disapproval.

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"Anna Ignatyevna wants to see you, Nicholas," said she,

pronouncing the name so that Nicholas at once understood that Anna

Ignatyevna was a very important person. "Come, Nicholas! You know

you let me call you so?"



"Oh, yes, Aunt. Who is she?"



"Anna Ignatyevna Malvintseva. She has heard from her niece how you

rescued her... Can you guess?"



"I rescued such a lot of them!" said Nicholas.



"Her niece, Princess Bolkonskaya. She is here in Voronezh with her

aunt. Oho! How you blush. Why, are...?"



"Not a bit! Please don't, Aunt!"



"Very well, very well!... Oh, what a fellow you are!"



The governor's wife led him up to a tall and very stout old lady

with a blue headdress, who had just finished her game of cards with

the most important personages of the town. This was Malvintseva,

Princess Mary's aunt on her mother's side, a rich, childless widow who

always lived in Voronezh. When Rostov approached her she was

standing settling up for the game. She looked at him and, screwing

up her eyes sternly, continued to upbraid the general who had won from

her.



"Very pleased, mon cher," she then said, holding out her hand to

Nicholas. "Pray come and see me."



After a few words about Princess Mary and her late father, whom

Malvintseva had evidently not liked, and having asked what Nicholas

knew of Prince Andrew, who also was evidently no favorite of hers, the

important old lady dismissed Nicholas after repeating her invitation

to come to see her.



Nicholas promised to come and blushed again as he bowed. At the

mention of Princess Mary he experienced a feeling of shyness and

even of fear, which he himself did not understand.



When he had parted from Malvintseva Nicholas wished to return to the

dancing, but the governor's little wife placed her plump hand on his

sleeve and, saying that she wanted to have a talk with him, led him to

her sitting room, from which those who were there immediately withdrew

so as not to be in her way.



"Do you know, dear boy," began the governor's wife with a serious

expression on her kind little face, "that really would be the match

for you: would you like me to arrange it?"



"Whom do you mean, Aunt?" asked Nicholas.



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"I will make a match for you with the princess. Catherine Petrovna

speaks of Lily, but I say, no--the princess! Do you want me to do

it? I am sure your mother will be grateful to me. What a charming girl

she is, really! And she is not at all so plain, either."



"Not at all," replied Nicholas as if offended at the idea. "As

befits a soldier, Aunt, I don't force myself on anyone or refuse

anything," he said before he had time to consider what he was saying.



"Well then, remember, this is not a joke!"



"Of course not!"



"Yes, yes," the governor's wife said as if talking to herself. "But,

my dear boy, among other things you are too attentive to the other,

the blonde. One is sorry for the husband, really...."



"Oh no, we are good friends with him," said Nicholas in the

simplicity of his heart; it did not enter his head that a pastime so

pleasant to himself might not be pleasant to someone else.



"But what nonsense I have been saying to the governor's wife!"

thought Nicholas suddenly at supper. "She will really begin to arrange

a match... and Soyna...?" And on taking leave of the governor's

wife, when she again smilingly said to him, "Well then, remember!"

he drew her aside.



"But see here, to tell the truth, Aunt..."



"What is it, my dear? Come, let's sit down here," said she.



Nicholas suddenly felt a desire and need to tell his most intimate

thoughts (which he would not have told to his mother, his sister, or

his friend) to this woman who was almost a stranger. When he

afterwards recalled that impulse to unsolicited and inexplicable

frankness which had very important results for him, it seemed to

him--as it seems to everyone in such cases--that it was merely some

silly whim that seized him: yet that burst of frankness, together with

other trifling events, had immense consequences for him and for all

his family.



"You see, Aunt, Mamma has long wanted me to marry an heiress, but

the very idea of marrying for money is repugnant to me."



"Oh yes, I understand," said the governor's wife.



"But Princess Bolkonskaya--that's another matter. I will tell you

the truth. In the first place I like her very much, I feel drawn to

her; and then, after I met her under such circumstances--so strangely,

the idea often occurred to me: 'This is fate.' Especially if you

remember that Mamma had long been thinking of it; but I had never

happened to meet her before, somehow it had always happened that we

did not meet. And as long as my sister Natasha was engaged to her

brother it was of course out of the question for me to think of

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marrying her. And it must needs happen that I should meet her just

when Natasha's engagement had been broken off... and then

everything... So you see... I never told this to anyone and never

will, only to you."



The governor's wife pressed his elbow gratefully.



"You know Sonya, my cousin? I love her, and promised to marry her,

and will do so.... So you see there can be no question about-" said

Nicholas incoherently and blushing.



"My dear boy, what a way to look at it! You know Sonya has nothing

and you yourself say your Papa's affairs are in a very bad way. And

what about your mother? It would kill her, that's one thing. And

what sort of life would it be for Sonya--if she's a girl with a heart?

Your mother in despair, and you all ruined.... No, my dear, you and

Sonya ought to understand that."



Nicholas remained silent. It comforted him to hear these arguments.



"All the same, Aunt, it is impossible," he rejoined with a sigh,

after a short pause. "Besides, would the princess have me? And

besides, she is now in mourning. How can one think of it!"



"But you don't suppose I'm going to get you married at once? There

is always a right way of doing things," replied the governor's wife.



"What a matchmaker you are, Aunt..." said Nicholas, kissing her

plump little hand.









CHAPTER VI





On reaching Moscow after her meeting with Rostov, Princess Mary

had found her nephew there with his tutor, and a letter from Prince

Andrew giving her instructions how to get to her Aunt Malvintseva at

Voronezh. That feeling akin to temptation which had tormented her

during her father's illness, since his death, and especially since her

meeting with Rostov was smothered by arrangements for the journey,

anxiety about her brother, settling in a new house, meeting new

people, and attending to her nephew's education. She was sad. Now,

after a month passed in quiet surroundings, she felt more and more

deeply the loss of her father which was associated in her mind with

the ruin of Russia. She was agitated and incessantly tortured by the

thought of the dangers to which her brother, the only intimate

person now remaining to her, was exposed. She was worried too about

her nephew's education for which she had always felt herself

incompetent, but in the depths of her soul she felt at peace--a

peace arising from consciousness of having stifled those personal

dreams and hopes that had been on the point of awakening within her

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and were related to her meeting with Rostov.



The day after her party the governor's wife came to see

Malvintseva and, after discussing her plan with the aunt, remarked

that though under present circumstances a formal betrothal was, of

course, not to be thought of, all the same the young people might be

brought together and could get to know one another. Malvintseva

expressed approval, and the governor's wife began to speak of Rostov

in Mary's presence, praising him and telling how he had blushed when

Princess Mary's name was mentioned. But Princess Mary experienced a

painful rather than a joyful feeling--her mental tranquillity was

destroyed, and desires, doubts, self-reproach, and hopes reawoke.



During the two days that elapsed before Rostov called, Princess Mary

continually thought of how she ought to behave to him. First she

decided not to come to the drawing room when he called to see her

aunt--that it would not be proper for her, in her deep mourning, to

receive visitors; then she thought this would be rude after what he

had done for her; then it occurred to her that her aunt and the

governor's wife had intentions concerning herself and Rostov--their

looks and words at times seemed to confirm this supposition--then

she told herself that only she, with her sinful nature, could think

this of them: they could not forget that situated as she was, while

still wearing deep mourning, such matchmaking would be an insult to

her and to her father's memory. Assuming that she did go down to see

him, Princess Mary imagined the words he would say to her and what she

would say to him, and these words sometimes seemed undeservedly cold

and then to mean too much. More than anything she feared lest the

confusion she felt might overwhelm her and betray her as soon as she

saw him.



But when on Sunday after church the footman announced in the drawing

room that Count Rostov had called, the princess showed no confusion,

only a slight blush suffused her cheeks and her eyes lit up with a new

and radiant light.



"You have met him, Aunt?" said she in a calm voice, unable herself

to understand that she could be outwardly so calm and natural.



When Rostov entered the room, the princess dropped her eyes for an

instant, as if to give the visitor time to greet her aunt, and then

just as Nicholas turned to her she raised her head and met his look

with shining eyes. With a movement full of dignity and grace she

half rose with a smile of pleasure, held out her slender, delicate

hand to him, and began to speak in a voice in which for the first time

new deep womanly notes vibrated. Mademoiselle Bourienne, who was in

the drawing room, looked at Princess Mary in bewildered surprise.

Herself a consummate coquette, she could not have maneuvered better on

meeting a man she wished to attract.



"Either black is particularly becoming to her or she really has

greatly improved without my having noticed it. And above all, what

tact and grace!" thought Mademoiselle Bourienne.



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Had Princess Mary been capable of reflection at that moment, she

would have been more surprised than Mademoiselle Bourienne at the

change that had taken place in herself. From the moment she recognized

that dear, loved face, a new life force took possession of her and

compelled her to speak and act apart from her own will. From the

time Rostov entered, her face became suddenly transformed. It was as

if a light had been kindled in a carved and painted lantern and the

intricate, skillful, artistic work on its sides, that previously

seemed dark, coarse, and meaningless, was suddenly shown up in

unexpected and striking beauty. For the first time all that pure,

spiritual, inward travail through which she had lived appeared on

the surface. All her inward labor, her dissatisfaction with herself,

her sufferings, her strivings after goodness, her meekness, love,

and self-sacrifice--all this now shone in those radiant eyes, in her

delicate smile, and in every trait of her gentle face.



Rostov saw all this as clearly as if he had known her whole life. He

felt that the being before him was quite different from, and better

than, anyone he had met before, and above all better than himself.



Their conversation was very simple and unimportant. They spoke of

the war, and like everyone else unconsciously exaggerated their sorrow

about it; they spoke of their last meeting--Nicholas trying to

change the subject--they talked of the governor's kind wife, of

Nicholas' relations, and of Princess Mary's.



She did not talk about her brother, diverting the conversation as

soon as her aunt mentioned Andrew. Evidently she could speak of

Russia's misfortunes with a certain artificiality, but her brother was

too near her heart and she neither could nor would speak lightly of

him. Nicholas noticed this, as he noticed every shade of Princess

Mary's character with an observation unusual to him, and everything

confirmed his conviction that she was a quite unusual and

extraordinary being. Nicholas blushed and was confused when people

spoke to him about the princess (as she did when he was mentioned) and

even when he thought of her, but in her presence he felt quite at

ease, and said not at all what he had prepared, but what, quite

appropriately, occurred to him at the moment.



When a pause occurred during his short visit, Nicholas, as is

usual when there are children, turned to Prince Andrew's little son,

caressing him and asking whether he would like to be an hussar. He

took the boy on his knee, played with him, and looked round at

Princess Mary. With a softened, happy, timid look she watched the

boy she loved in the arms of the man she loved. Nicholas also

noticed that look and, as if understanding it, flushed with pleasure

and began to kiss the boy with good natured playfulness.



As she was in mourning Princess Mary did not go out into society,

and Nicholas did not think it the proper thing to visit her again; but

all the same the governor's wife went on with her matchmaking, passing

on to Nicholas the flattering things Princess Mary said of him and

vice versa, and insisting on his declaring himself to Princess Mary.

For this purpose she arranged a meeting between the young people at

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the bishop's house before Mass.



Though Rostov told the governeor's wife that he would not make any

declaration to Princess Mary, he promised to go.



As at Tilsit Rostov had not allowed himself to doubt that what

everybody considered right was right, so now, after a short but

sincere struggle between his effort to arrange his life by his own

sense of justice, and in obedient submission to circumstances, he

chose the latter and yielded to the power he felt irresistibly

carrying him he knew not where. He knew that after his promise to

Sonya it would be what he deemed base to declare his feelings to

Princess Mary. And he knew that he would never act basely. But he also

knew (or rather felt at the bottom of his heart) that by resigning

himself now to the force of circumstances and to those who were

guiding him, he was not only doing nothing wrong, but was doing

something very important--more important than anything he had ever

done in his life.



After meeting Princess Mary, though the course of his life went on

externally as before, all his former amusements lost their charm for

him and he often thought about her. But he never thought about her

as he had thought of all the young ladies without exception whom he

had met in society, nor as he had for a long time, and at one time

rapturously, thought about Sonya. He had pictured each of those

young ladies as almost all honest-hearted young men do, that is, as

a possible wife, adapting her in his imagination to all the conditions

of married life: a white dressing gown, his wife at the tea table, his

wife's carriage, little ones, Mamma and Papa, their relations to

her, and so on--and these pictures of the future had given him

pleasure. But with Princess Mary, to whom they were trying to get

him engaged, he could never picture anything of future married life.

If he tried, his pictures seemed incongruous and false. It made him

afraid.









CHAPTER VII





The dreadful news of the battle of Borodino, of our losses in killed

and wounded, and the still more terrible news of the loss of Moscow

reached Voronezh in the middle of September. Princess Mary, having

learned of her brother's wound only from the Gazette and having no

definite news of him, prepared (so Nicholas heard, he had not seen her

again himself) to set off in search of Prince Andrew.



When he received the news of the battle of Borodino and the

abandonment of Moscow, Rostov was not seized with despair, anger,

the desire for vengeance, or any feeling of that kind, but

everything in Voronezh suddenly seemed to him dull and tiresome, and

he experienced an indefinite feeling of shame and awkwardness. The

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conversations he heard seemed to him insincere; he did not know how to

judge all these affairs and felt that only in the regiment would

everything again become clear to him. He made haste to finish buying

the horses, and often became unreasonably angry with his servant and

squadron quartermaster.



A few days before his departure a special thanksgiving, at which

Nicholas was present, was held in the cathedral for the Russian

victory. He stood a little behind the governor and held himself with

military decorum through the service, meditating on a great variety of

subjects. When the service was over the governor's wife beckoned him

to her.



"Have you seen the princess?" she asked, indicating with a

movement of her head a lady standing on the opposite side, beyond

the choir.



Nicholas immediately recognized Princess Mary not so much by the

profile he saw under her bonnet as by the feeling of solicitude,

timidity, and pity that immediately overcame him. Princess Mary,

evidently engrossed by her thoughts, was crossing herself for the last

time before leaving the church.



Nicholas looked at her face with surprise. It was the same face he

had seen before, there was the same general expression of refined,

inner, spiritual labor, but now it was quite differently lit up. There

was a pathetic expression of sorrow, prayer, and hope in it. As had

occurred before when she was present, Nicholas went up to her

without waiting to be prompted by the governor's wife and not asking

himself whether or not it was right and proper to address her here

in church, and told her he had heard of her trouble and sympathized

with his whole soul. As soon as she heard his voice a vivid glow

kindled in her face, lighting up both her sorrow and her joy.



"There is one thing I wanted to tell you, Princess," said Rostov.

"It is that if your brother, Prince Andrew Nikolievich, were not

living, it would have been at once announced in the Gazette, as he

is a colonel."



The princess looked at him, not grasping what he was saying, but

cheered by the expression of regretful sympathy on his face.



"And I have known so many cases of a splinter wound" (the Gazette

said it was a shell) "either proving fatal at once or being very

slight," continued Nicholas. "We must hope for the best, and I am

sure..."



Princess Mary interrupted him.



"Oh, that would be so dread..." she began and, prevented by

agitation from finishing, she bent her head with a movement as

graceful as everything she did in his presence and, looking up at

him gratefully, went out, following her aunt.



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That evening Nicholas did not go out, but stayed at home to settle

some accounts with the horse dealers. When he had finished that

business it was already too late to go anywhere but still too early to

go to bed, and for a long time he paced up and down the room,

reflecting on his life, a thing he rarely did.



Princess Mary had made an agreeable impression on him when he had

met her in Smolensk province. His having encountered her in such

exceptional circumstances, and his mother having at one time mentioned

her to him as a good match, had drawn his particular attention to her.

When he met her again in Voronezh the impression she made on him was

not merely pleasing but powerful. Nicholas had been struck by the

peculiar moral beauty he observed in her at this time. He was,

however, preparing to go away and it had not entered his head to

regret that he was thus depriving himself of chances of meeting her.

But that day's encounter in church had, he felt, sunk deeper than

was desirable for his peace of mind. That pale, sad, refined face,

that radiant look, those gentle graceful gestures, and especially

the deep and tender sorrow expressed in all her features agitated

him and evoked his sympathy. In men Rostov could not bear to see the

expression of a higher spiritual life (that was why he did not like

Prince Andrew) and he referred to it contemptuously as philosophy

and dreaminess, but in Princess Mary that very sorrow which revealed

the depth of a whole spiritual world foreign to him was an

irresistible attraction.



"She must be a wonderful woman. A real angel!" he said to himself.

"Why am I not free? Why was I in such a hurry with Sonya?" And he

involuntarily compared the two: the lack of spirituality in the one

and the abundance of it in the other--a spirituality he himself lacked

and therefore valued most highly. He tried to picture what would

happen were he free. How he would propose to her and how she would

become his wife. But no, he could not imagine that. He felt awed,

and no clear picture presented itself to his mind. He had long ago

pictured to himself a future with Sonya, and that was all clear and

simple just because it had all been thought out and he knew all

there was in Sonya, but it was impossible to picture a future with

Princess Mary, because he did not understand her but simply loved her.



Reveries about Sonya had had something merry and playful in them,

but to dream of Princess Mary was always difficult and a little

frightening.



"How she prayed!" he thought. "It was plain that her whole soul

was in her prayer. Yes, that was the prayer that moves mountains,

and I am sure her prayer will be answered. Why don't I pray for what I

want?" he suddenly thought. "What do I want? To be free, released from

Sonya... She was right," he thought, remembering what the governor's

wife had said: "Nothing but misfortune can come of marrying Sonya.

Muddles, grief for Mamma... business difficulties... muddles, terrible

muddles! Besides, I don't love her--not as I should. O, God! release

me from this dreadful, inextricable position!" he suddenly began to

pray. "Yes, prayer can move mountains, but one must have faith and not

pray as Natasha and I used to as children, that the snow might turn

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into sugar--and then run out into the yard to see whether it had

done so. No, but I am not praying for trifles now," he thought as he

put his pipe down in a corner, and folding his hands placed himself

before the icon. Softened by memories of Princess Mary he began to

pray as he had not done for a long time. Tears were in his eyes and in

his throat when the door opened and Lavrushka came in with some

papers.



"Blockhead! Why do you come in without being called?" cried

Nicholas, quickly changing his attitude.



"From the governor," said Lavrushka in a sleepy voice. "A courier

has arrived and there's a letter for you."



"Well, all right, thanks. You can go!"



Nicholas took the two letters, one of which was from his mother

and the other from Sonya. He recognized them by the handwriting and

opened Sonya's first. He had read only a few lines when he turned pale

and his eyes opened wide with fear and joy.



"No, it's not possible!" he cried aloud.



Unable to sit still he paced up and down the room holding the letter

and reading it. He glanced through it, then read it again, and then

again, and standing still in the middle of the room he raised his

shoulders, stretching out his hands, with his mouth wide open and

his eyes fixed. What he had just been praying for with confidence that

God would hear him had come to pass; but Nicholas was as much

astonished as if it were something extraordinary and unexpected, and

as if the very fact that it had happened so quickly proved that it had

not come from God to whom he had prayed, but by some ordinary

coincidence.



This unexpected and, as it seemed to Nicholas, quite voluntary

letter from Sonya freed him from the knot that fettered him and from

which there had seemed no escape. She wrote that the last

unfortunate events--the loss of almost the whole of the Rostovs'

Moscow property--and the countess' repeatedly expressed wish that

Nicholas should marry Princess Bolkonskaya, together with his

silence and coldness of late, had all combined to make her decide to

release him from his promise and set him completely free.





It would be too painful to me to think that I might be a cause of

sorrow or discord in the family that has been so good to me (she

wrote), and my love has no aim but the happiness of those I love;

so, Nicholas, I beg you to consider yourself free, and to be assured

that, in spite of everything, no one can love you more than does



Your Sonya





Both letters were written from Troitsa. The other, from the

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countess, described their last days in Moscow, their departure, the

fire, and the destruction of all their property. In this letter the

countess also mentioned that Prince Andrew was among the wounded

traveling with them; his state was very critical, but the doctor

said there was now more hope. Sonya and Natasha were nursing him.



Next day Nicholas took his mother's letter and went to see

Princess Mary. Neither he nor she said a word about what "Natasha

nursing him" might mean, but thanks to this letter Nicholas suddenly

became almost as intimate with the princess as if they were relations.



The following day he saw Princess Mary off on her journey to

Yaroslavl, and a few days later left to rejoin his regiment.









CHAPTER VIII





Sonya's letter written from Troitsa, which had come as an answer

to Nicholas' prayer, was prompted by this: the thought of getting

Nicholas married to an heiress occupied the old countess' mind more

and more. She knew that Sonya was the chief obstacle to this

happening, and Sonya's life in the countess' house had grown harder

and harder, especially after they had received a letter from

Nicholas telling of his meeting with Princess Mary in Bogucharovo. The

countess let no occasion slip of making humiliating or cruel allusions

to Sonya.



But a few days before they left Moscow, moved and excited by all

that was going on, she called Sonya to her and, instead of reproaching

and making demands on her, tearfully implored her to sacrifice herself

and repay all that the family had done for her by breaking off her

engagement with Nicholas.



"I shall not be at peace till you promise me this."



Sonya burst into hysterical tears and replied through her sobs

that she would do anything and was prepared for anything, but gave

no actual promise and could not bring herself to decide to do what was

demanded of her. She must sacrifice herself for the family that had

reared and brought her up. To sacrifice herself for others was Sonya's

habit. Her position in the house was such that only by sacrifice could

she show her worth, and she was accustomed to this and loved doing it.

But in all her former acts of self-sacrifice she had been happily

conscious that they raised her in her own esteem and in that of

others, and so made her more worthy of Nicholas whom she loved more

than anything in the world. But now they wanted her to sacrifice the

very thing that constituted the whole reward for her self-sacrifice

and the whole meaning of her life. And for the first time she felt

bitterness against those who had been her benefactors only to

torture her the more painfully; she felt jealous of Natasha who had

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never experienced anything of this sort, had never needed to sacrifice

herself, but made others sacrifice themselves for her and yet was

beloved by everybody. And for the first time Sonya felt that out of

her pure, quiet love for Nicholas a passionate feeling was beginning

to grow up which was stronger than principle, virtue, or religion.

Under the influence of this feeling Sonya, whose life of dependence

had taught her involuntarily to be secretive, having answered the

countess in vague general terms, avoided talking with her and resolved

to wait till she should see Nicholas, not in order to set him free but

on the contrary at that meeting to bind him to her forever.



The bustle and terror of the Rostovs' last days in Moscow stifled

the gloomy thoughts that oppressed Sonya. She was glad to find

escape from them in practical activity. But when she heard of Prince

Andrew's presence in their house, despite her sincere pity for him and

for Natasha, she was seized by a joyful and superstitious feeling that

God did not intend her to be separated from Nicholas. She knew that

Natasha loved no one but Prince Andrew and had never ceased to love

him. She knew that being thrown together again under such terrible

circumstances they would again fall in love with one another, and that

Nicholas would then not be able to marry Princess Mary as they would

be within the prohibited degrees of affinity. Despite all the terror

of what had happened during those last days and during the first

days of their journey, this feeling that Providence was intervening in

her personal affairs cheered Sonya.



At the Troitsa monastery the Rostovs first broke their journey for a

whole day.



Three large rooms were assigned to them in the monastery hostelry,

one of which was occupied by Prince Andrew. The wounded man was much

better that day and Natasha was sitting with him. In the next room sat

the count and countess respectfully conversing with the prior, who was

calling on them as old acquaintances and benefactors of the monastery.

Sonya was there too, tormented by curiosity as to what Prince Andrew

and Natasha were talking about. She heard the sound of their voices

through the door. That door opened and Natasha came out, looking

excited. Not noticing the monk, who had risen to greet her and was

drawing back the wide sleeve on his right arm, she went up to Sonya

and took her hand.



"Natasha, what are you about? Come here!" said the countess.



Natasha went up to the monk for his blessing, and advised her to

pray for aid to God and His saint.



As soon as the prior withdrew, Natasha took her friend by the hand

and went with her into the unoccupied room.



"Sonya, will he live?" she asked. "Sonya, how happy I am, and how

unhappy!... Sonya, dovey, everything is as it used to be. If only he

lives! He cannot... because... because... of" and Natasha burst into

tears.



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"Yes! I knew it! Thank God!" murmured Sonya. "He will live."



Sonya was not less agitated than her friend by the latter's fear and

grief and by her own personal feelings which she shared with no one.

Sobbing, she kissed and comforted Natasha. "If only he lives!" she

thought. Having wept, talked, and wiped away their tears, the two

friends went together to Prince Andrew's door. Natasha opened it

cautiously and glanced into the room, Sonya standing beside her at the

half-open door.



Prince Andrew was lying raised high on three pillows. His pale

face was calm, his eyes closed, and they could see his regular

breathing.



"O, Natasha!" Sonya suddenly almost screamed, catching her

companion's arm and stepping back from the door.



"What? What is it?" asked Natasha.



"It's that, that..." said Sonya, with a white face and trembling

lips.



Natasha softly closed the door and went with Sonya to the window,

not yet understanding what the latter was telling her.



"You remember," said Sonya with a solemn and frightened

expression. "You remember when I looked in the mirror for you... at

Otradnoe at Christmas? Do you remember what I saw?"



"Yes, yes!" cried Natasha opening her eyes wide, and vaguely

recalling that Sonya had told her something about Prince Andrew whom

she had seen lying down.



"You remember?" Sonya went on. "I saw it then and told everybody,

you and Dunyasha. I saw him lying on a bed," said she, making a

gesture with her hand and a lifted finger at each detail, "and that he

had his eyes closed and was covered just with a pink quilt, and that

his hands were folded," she concluded, convincing herself that the

details she had just seen were exactly what she had seen in the

mirror.



She had in fact seen nothing then but had mentioned the first

thing that came into her head, but what she had invented then seemed

to her now as real as any other recollection. She not only

remembered what she had then said--that he turned to look at her and

smiled and was covered with something red--but was firmly convinced

that she had then seen and said that he was covered with a pink

quilt and that his eyes were closed.



"Yes, yes, it really was pink!" cried Natasha, who now thought she

too remembered the word pink being used, and saw in this the most

extraordinary and mysterious part of the prediction.



"But what does it mean?" she added meditatively.

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"Oh, I don't know, it is all so strange," replied Sonya, clutching

at her head.



A few minutes later Prince Andrew rang and Natasha went to him,

but Sonya, feeling unusually excited and touched, remained at the

window thinking about the strangeness of what had occurred.





They had an opportunity that day to send letters to the army, and

the countess was writing to her son.



"Sonya!" said the countess, raising her eyes from her letter as

her niece passed, "Sonya, won't you write to Nicholas?" She spoke in a

soft, tremulous voice, and in the weary eyes that looked over her

spectacles Sonya read all that the countess meant to convey with these

words. Those eyes expressed entreaty, shame at having to ask, fear

of a refusal, and readiness for relentless hatred in case of such

refusal.



Sonya went up to the countess and, kneeling down, kissed her hand.



"Yes, Mamma, I will write," said she.



Sonya was softened, excited, and touched by all that had occurred

that day, especially by the mysterious fulfillment she had just seen

of her vision. Now that she knew that the renewal of Natasha's

relations with Prince Andrew would prevent Nicholas from marrying

Princess Mary, she was joyfully conscious of a return of that

self-sacrificing spirit in which she was accustomed to live and

loved to live. So with a joyful consciousness of performing a

magnanimous deed--interrupted several times by the tears that dimmed

her velvety black eyes--she wrote that touching letter the arrival

of which had so amazed Nicholas.









CHAPTER IX





The officer and soldiers who had arrested Pierre treated him with

hostility but yet with respect, in the guardhouse to which he was

taken. In their attitude toward him could still be felt both

uncertainty as to who he might be--perhaps a very important person-

and hostility as a result of their recent personal conflict with him.



But when the guard was relieved next morning, Pierre felt that for

the new guard--both officers and men--he was not as interesting as

he had been to his captors; and in fact the guard of the second day

did not recognize in this big, stout man in a peasant coat the

vigorous person who had fought so desperately with the marauder and

the convoy and had uttered those solemn words about saving a child;

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they saw in him only No. 17 of the captured Russians, arrested and

detained for some reason by order of the Higher Command. If they

noticed anything remarkable about Pierre, it was only his unabashed,

meditative concentration and thoughtfulness, and the way he spoke

French, which struck them as surprisingly good. In spite of this he

was placed that day with the other arrested suspects, as the

separate room he had occupied was required by an officer.



All the Russians confined with Pierre were men of the lowest class

and, recognizing him as a gentleman, they all avoided him, more

especially as he spoke French. Pierre felt sad at hearing them

making fun of him.



That evening he learned that all these prisoners (he, probably,

among them) were to be tried for incendiarism. On the third day he was

taken with the others to a house where a French general with a white

mustache sat with two colonels and other Frenchmen with scarves on

their arms. With the precision and definiteness customary in

addressing prisoners, and which is supposed to preclude human frailty,

Pierre like the others was questioned as to who he was, where he had

been, with what object, and so on.



These questions, like questions put at trials generally, left the

essence of the matter aside, shut out the possibility of that

essence's being revealed, and were designed only to form a channel

through which the judges wished the answers of the accused to flow

so as to lead to the desired result, namely a conviction. As soon as

Pierre began to say anything that did not fit in with that aim, the

channel was removed and the water could flow to waste. Pierre felt,

moreover, what the accused always feel at their trial, perplexity as

to why these questions were put to him. He had a feeling that it was

only out of condescension or a kind of civility that this device of

placing a channel was employed. He knew he was in these men's power,

that only by force had they brought him there, that force alone gave

them the right to demand answers to their questions, and that the sole

object of that assembly was to inculpate him. And so, as they had

the power and wish to inculpate him, this expedient of an inquiry

and trial seemed unnecessary. It was evident that any answer would

lead to conviction. When asked what he was doing when he was arrested,

Pierre replied in a rather tragic manner that he was restoring to

its parents a child he had saved from the flames. Why had he fought

the marauder? Pierre answered that he "was protecting a woman," and

that "to protect a woman who was being insulted was the duty of

every man; that..." They interrupted him, for this was not to the

point. Why was he in the yard of a burning house where witnesses had

seen him? He replied that he had gone out to see what was happening in

Moscow. Again they interrupted him: they had not asked where he was

going, but why he was found near the fire? Who was he? they asked,

repeating their first question, which he had declined to answer. Again

he replied that he could not answer it.



"Put that down, that's bad... very bad," sternly remarked the

general with the white mustache and red flushed face.



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On the fourth day fires broke out on the Zubovski rampart.



Pierre and thirteen others were moved to the coach house of a

merchant's house near the Crimean bridge. On his way through the

streets Pierre felt stifled by the smoke which seemed to hang over the

whole city. Fires were visible on all sides. He did not then realize

the significance of the burning of Moscow, and looked at the fires

with horror.



He passed four days in the coach house near the Crimean bridge and

during that time learned, from the talk of the French soldiers, that

all those confined there were awaiting a decision which might come any

day from the marshal. What marshal this was, Pierre could not learn

from the soldiers. Evidently for them "the marshal" represented a very

high and rather mysterious power.



These first days, before the eighth of September when the

prisoners were had up for a second examination, were the hardest of

all for Pierre.









CHAPTER X





On the eighth of September an officer--a very important one

judging by the respect the guards showed him--entered the coach

house where the prisoners were. This officer, probably someone on

the staff, was holding a paper in his hand, and called over all the

Russians there, naming Pierre as "the man who does not give his name."

Glancing indolently and indifferently at all the prisoners, he ordered

the officer in charge to have them decently dressed and tidied up

before taking them to the marshal. An hour later a squad of soldiers

arrived and Pierre with thirteen others was led to the Virgin's Field.

It was a fine day, sunny after rain, and the air was unusually pure.

The smoke did not hang low as on the day when Pierre had been taken

from the guardhouse on the Zubovski rampart, but rose through the pure

air in columns. No flames were seen, but columns of smoke rose on

all sides, and all Moscow as far as Pierre could see was one vast

charred ruin. On all sides there were waste spaces with only stoves

and chimney stacks still standing, and here and there the blackened

walls of some brick houses. Pierre gazed at the ruins and did not

recognize districts he had known well. Here and there he could see

churches that had not been burned. The Kremlin, which was not

destroyed, gleamed white in the distance with its towers and the

belfry of Ivan the Great. The domes of the New Convent of the Virgin

glittered brightly and its bells were ringing particularly clearly.

These bells reminded Pierre that it was Sunday and the feast of the

Nativity of the Virgin. But there seemed to be no one to celebrate

this holiday: everywhere were blackened ruins, and the few Russians to

be seen were tattered and frightened people who tried to hide when

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they saw the French.



It was plain that the Russian nest was ruined and destroyed, but

in place of the Russian order of life that had been destroyed,

Pierre unconsciously felt that a quite different, firm, French order

had been established over this ruined nest. He felt this in the

looks of the soldiers who, marching in regular ranks briskly and

gaily, were escorting him and the other criminals; he felt it in the

looks of an important French official in a carriage and pair driven by

a soldier, whom they met on the way. He felt it in the merry sounds of

regimental music he heard from the left side of the field, and felt

and realized it especially from the list of prisoners the French

officer had read out when he came that morning. Pierre had been

taken by one set of soldiers and led first to one and then to

another place with dozens of other men, and it seemed that they

might have forgotten him, or confused him with the others. But no: the

answers he had given when questioned had come back to him in his

designation as "the man who does not give his name," and under that

appellation, which to Pierre seemed terrible, they were now leading

him somewhere with unhesitating assurance on their faces that he and

all the other prisoners were exactly the ones they wanted and that

they were being taken to the proper place. Pierre felt himself to be

an insignificant chip fallen among the wheels of a machine whose

action he did not understand but which was working well.



He and the other prisoners were taken to the right side of the

Virgin's Field, to a large white house with an immense garden not

far from the convent. This was Prince Shcherbitov's house, where

Pierre had often been in other days, and which, as he learned from the

talk of the soldiers, was now occupied by the marshal, the Duke of

Eckmuhl (Davout).



They were taken to the entrance and led into the house one by one.

Pierre was the sixth to enter. He was conducted through a glass

gallery, an anteroom, and a hall, which were familiar to him, into a

long low study at the door of which stood an adjutant.



Davout, spectacles on nose, sat bent over a table at the further end

of the room. Pierre went close up to him, but Davout, evidently

consulting a paper that lay before him, did not look up. Without

raising his eyes, he said in a low voice:



"Who are you?"



Pierre was silent because he was incapable of uttering a word. To

him Davout was not merely a French general, but a man notorious for

his cruelty. Looking at his cold face, as he sat like a stern

schoolmaster who was prepared to wait awhile for an answer, Pierre

felt that every instant of delay might cost him his life; but he did

not know what to say. He did not venture to repeat what he had said at

his first examination, yet to disclose his rank and position was

dangerous and embarrassing. So he was silent. But before he had

decided what to do, Davout raised his head, pushed his spectacles back

on his forehead, screwed up his eyes, and looked intently at him.

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"I know that man," he said in a cold, measured tone, evidently

calculated to frighten Pierre.



The chill that had been running down Pierre's back now seized his

head as in a vise.



"You cannot know me, General, I have never seen you..."



"He is a Russian spy," Davout interrupted, addressing another

general who was present, but whom Pierre had not noticed.



Davout turned away. With an unexpected reverberation in his voice

Pierre rapidly began:



"No, monseigneur," he said, suddenly remembering that Davout was a

duke. "No, monseigneur, you cannot have known me. I am a militia

officer and have not quitted Moscow."



"Your name?" asked Davout.



"Bezukhov."



"What proof have I that you are not lying?"



"Monseigneur!" exclaimed Pierre, not in an offended but in a

pleading voice.



Davout looked up and gazed intently at him. For some seconds they

looked at one another, and that look saved Pierre. Apart from

conditions of war and law, that look established human relations

between the two men. At that moment an immense number of things passed

dimly through both their minds, and they realized that they were

both children of humanity and were brothers.



At the first glance, when Davout had only raised his head from the

papers where human affairs and lives were indicated by numbers, Pierre

was merely a circumstance, and Davout could have shot him without

burdening his conscience with an evil deed, but now he saw in him a

human being. He reflected for a moment.



"How can you show me that you are telling the truth?" said Davout

coldly.



Pierre remembered Ramballe, and named him and his regiment and the

street where the house was.



"You are not what you say," returned Davout.



In a trembling, faltering voice Pierre began adducing proofs of

the truth of his statements.



But at that moment an adjutant entered and reported something to

Davout.

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Davout brightened up at the news the adjutant brought, and began

buttoning up his uniform. It seemed that he had quite forgotten

Pierre.



When the adjutant reminded him of the prisoner, he jerked his head

in Pierre's direction with a frown and ordered him to be led away. But

where they were to take him Pierre did not know: back to the coach

house or to the place of execution his companions had pointed out to

him as they crossed the Virgin's Field.



He turned his head and saw that the adjutant was putting another

question to Davout.



"Yes, of course!" replied Davout, but what this "yes" meant,

Pierre did not know.



Pierre could not afterwards remember how he went, whether it was

far, or in which direction. His faculties were quite numbed, he was

stupefied, and noticing nothing around him went on moving his legs

as the others did till they all stopped and he stopped too. The only

thought in his mind at that time was: who was it that had really

sentenced him to death? Not the men on the commission that had first

examined him--not one of them wished to or, evidently, could have done

it. It was not Davout, who had looked at him in so human a way. In

another moment Davout would have realized that he was doing wrong, but

just then the adjutant had come in and interrupted him. The

adjutant, also, had evidently had no evil intent though he might

have refrained from coming in. Then who was executing him, killing

him, depriving him of life--him, Pierre, with all his memories,

aspirations, hopes, and thoughts? Who was doing this? And Pierre

felt that it was no one.



It was a system--a concurrence of circumstances.



A system of some sort was killing him--Pierre--depriving him of

life, of everything, annihilating him.









CHAPTER XI





From Prince Shcherbatov's house the prisoners were led straight down

the Virgin's Field, to the left of the nunnery, as far as a kitchen

garden in which a post had been set up. Beyond that post a fresh pit

had been dug in the ground, and near the post and the pit a large

crowd stood in a semicircle. The crowd consisted of a few Russians and

many of Napoleon's soldiers who were not on duty--Germans, Italians,

and Frenchmen, in a variety of uniforms. To the right and left of

the post stood rows of French troops in blue uniforms with red

epaulets and high boots and shakos.

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The prisoners were placed in a certain order, according to the

list (Pierre was sixth), and were led to the post. Several drums

suddenly began to beat on both sides of them, and at that sound Pierre

felt as if part of his soul had been torn away. He lost the power of

thinking or understanding. He could only hear and see. And he had only

one wish--that the frightful thing that had to happen should happen

quickly. Pierre looked round at his fellow prisoners and scrutinized

them.



The two first were convicts with shaven heads. One was tall and

thin, the other dark, shaggy, and sinewy, with a flat nose. The

third was a domestic serf, about forty-five years old, with grizzled

hair and a plump, well-nourished body. The fourth was a peasant, a

very handsome man with a broad, light-brown beard and black eyes.

The fifth was a factory hand, a thin, sallow-faced lad of eighteen

in a loose coat.



Pierre heard the French consulting whether to shoot them

separately or two at a time. "In couples," replied the officer in

command in a calm voice. There was a stir in the ranks of the soldiers

and it was evident that they were all hurrying--not as men hurry to do

something they understand, but as people hurry to finish a necessary

but unpleasant and incomprehensible task.



A French official wearing a scarf came up to the right of the row of

prisoners and read out the sentence in Russian and in French.



Then two pairs of Frenchmen approached the criminals and at the

officer's command took the two convicts who stood first in the row.

The convicts stopped when they reached the post and, while sacks

were being brought, looked dumbly around as a wounded beast looks at

an approaching huntsman. One crossed himself continually, the other

scratched his back and made a movement of the lips resembling a smile.

With hurried hands the soldiers blindfolded them, drawing the sacks

over their heads, and bound them to the post.



Twelve sharpshooters with muskets stepped out of the ranks with a

firm regular tread and halted eight paces from the post. Pierre turned

away to avoid seeing what was going to happen. Suddenly a crackling,

rolling noise was heard which seemed to him louder than the most

terrific thunder, and he looked round. There was some smoke, and the

Frenchmen were doing something near the pit, with pale faces and

trembling hands. Two more prisoners were led up. In the same way and

with similar looks, these two glanced vainly at the onlookers with

only a silent appeal for protection in their eyes, evidently unable to

understand or believe what was going to happen to them. They could not

believe it because they alone knew what their life meant to them,

and so they neither understood nor believed that it could be taken

from them.



Again Pierre did not wish to look and again turned away; but again

the sound as of a frightful explosion struck his ear, and at the

same moment he saw smoke, blood, and the pale, scared faces of the

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Frenchmen who were again doing something by the post, their

trembling hands impeding one another. Pierre, breathing heavily,

looked around as if asking what it meant. The same question was

expressed in all the looks that met his.



On the faces of all the Russians and of the French soldiers and

officers without exception, he read the same dismay, horror, and

conflict that were in his own heart. "But who, after all, is doing

this? They are all suffering as I am. Who then is it? Who?" flashed

for an instant through his mind.



"Sharpshooters of the 86th, forward!" shouted someone. The fifth

prisoner, the one next to Pierre, was led away--alone. Pierre did

not understand that he was saved, that he and the rest had been

brought there only to witness the execution. With ever-growing horror,

and no sense of joy or relief, he gazed at what was taking place.

The fifth man was the factory lad in the loose cloak. The moment

they laid hands on him he sprang aside in terror and clutched at

Pierre. (Pierre shuddered and shook himself free.) The lad was

unable to walk. They dragged him along, holding him up under the arms,

and he screamed. When they got him to the post he grew quiet, as if he

suddenly understood something. Whether he understood that screaming

was useless or whether he thought it incredible that men should kill

him, at any rate he took his stand at the post, waiting to be

blindfolded like the others, and like a wounded animal looked around

him with glittering eyes.



Pierre was no longer able to turn away and close his eyes. His

curiosity and agitation, like that of the whole crowd, reached the

highest pitch at this fifth murder. Like the others this fifth man

seemed calm; he wrapped his loose cloak closer and rubbed one bare

foot with the other.



When they began to blindfold him he himself adjusted the knot

which hurt the back of his head; then when they propped him against

the bloodstained post, he leaned back and, not being comfortable in

that position, straightened himself, adjusted his feet, and leaned

back again more comfortably. Pierre did not take his eyes from him and

did not miss his slightest movement.



Probably a word of command was given and was followed by the reports

of eight muskets; but try as he would Pierre could not afterwards

remember having heard the slightest sound of the shots. He only saw

how the workman suddenly sank down on the cords that held him, how

blood showed itself in two places, how the ropes slackened under the

weight of the hanging body, and how the workman sat down, his head

hanging unnaturally and one leg bent under him. Pierre ran up to the

post. No one hindered him. Pale, frightened people were doing

something around the workman. The lower jaw of an old Frenchman with a

thick mustache trembled as he untied the ropes. The body collapsed.

The soldiers dragged it awkwardly from the post and began pushing it

into the pit.



They all plainly and certainly knew that they were criminals who

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must hide the traces of their guilt as quickly as possible.



Pierre glanced into the pit and saw that the factory lad was lying

with his knees close up to his head and one shoulder higher than the

other. That shoulder rose and fell rhythmically and convulsively,

but spadefuls of earth were already being thrown over the whole

body. One of the soldiers, evidently suffering, shouted gruffly and

angrily at Pierre to go back. But Pierre did not understand him and

remained near the post, and no one drove him away.



When the pit had been filled up a command was given. Pierre was

taken back to his place, and the rows of troops on both sides of the

post made a half turn and went past it at a measured pace. The

twenty-four sharpshooters with discharged muskets, standing in the

center of the circle, ran back to their places as the companies passed

by.



Pierre gazed now with dazed eyes at these sharpshooters who ran in

couples out of the circle. All but one rejoined their companies.

This one, a young soldier, his face deadly pale, his shako pushed

back, and his musket resting on the ground, still stood near the pit

at the spot from which he had fired. He swayed like a drunken man,

taking some steps forward and back to save himself from falling. An

old, noncommissioned officer ran out of the ranks and taking him by

the elbow dragged him to his company. The crowd of Russians and

Frenchmen began to disperse. They all went away silently and with

drooping heads.



"That will teach them to start fires," said one of the Frenchmen.



Pierre glanced round at the speaker and saw that it was a soldier

who was trying to find some relief after what had been done, but was

not able to do so. Without finishing what he had begun to say he

made a hopeless movement with his arm and went away.









CHAPTER XII





After the execution Pierre was separated from the rest of the

prisoners and placed alone in a small, ruined, and befouled church.



Toward evening a noncommissioned officer entered with two soldiers

and told him that he had been pardoned and would now go to the

barracks for the prisoners of war. Without understanding what was said

to him, Pierre got up and went with the soldiers. They took him to the

upper end of the field, where there were some sheds built of charred

planks, beams, and battens, and led him into one of them. In the

darkness some twenty different men surrounded Pierre. He looked at

them without understanding who they were, why they were there, or what

they wanted of him. He heard what they said, but did not understand

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the meaning of the words and made no kind of deduction from or

application of them. He replied to questions they put to him, but

did not consider who was listening to his replies, nor how they

would understand them. He looked at their faces and figures, but

they all seemed to him equally meaningless.



From the moment Pierre had witnessed those terrible murders

committed by men who did not wish to commit them, it was as if the

mainspring of his life, on which everything depended and which made

everything appear alive, had suddenly been wrenched out and everything

had collapsed into a heap of meaningless rubbish. Though he did not

acknowledge it to himself, his faith in the right ordering of the

universe, in humanity, in his own soul, and in God, had been

destroyed. He had experienced this before, but never so strongly as

now. When similar doubts had assailed him before, they had been the

result of his own wrongdoing, and at the bottom of his heart he had

felt that relief from his despair and from those doubts was to be

found within himself. But now he felt that the universe had crumbled

before his eyes and only meaningless ruins remained, and this not by

any fault of his own. He felt that it was not in his power to regain

faith in the meaning of life.



Around him in the darkness men were standing and evidently something

about him interested them greatly. They were telling him something and

asking him something. Then they led him away somewhere, and at last he

found himself in a corner of the shed among men who were laughing

and talking on all sides.



"Well, then, mates... that very prince who..." some voice at the

other end of the shed was saying, with a strong emphasis on the word

who.



Sitting silent and motionless on a heap of straw against the wall,

Pierre sometimes opened and sometimes closed his eyes. But as soon

as he closed them he saw before him the dreadful face of the factory

lad--especially dreadful because of its simplicity--and the faces of

the murderers, even more dreadful because of their disquiet. And he

opened his eyes again and stared vacantly into the darkness around

him.



Beside him in a stooping position sat a small man of whose

presence he was first made aware by a strong smell of perspiration

which came from him every time he moved. This man was doing

something to his legs in the darkness, and though Pierre could not see

his face he felt that the man continually glanced at him. On growing

used to the darkness Pierre saw that the man was taking off his leg

bands, and the way he did it aroused Pierre's interest.



Having unwound the string that tied the band on one leg, he

carefully coiled it up and immediately set to work on the other leg,

glancing up at Pierre. While one hand hung up the first string the

other was already unwinding the band on the second leg. In this way,

having carefully removed the leg bands by deft circular motions of his

arm following one another uninterruptedly, the man hung the leg

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bands up on some pegs fixed above his head. Then he took out a

knife, cut something, closed the knife, placed it under the head of

his bed, and, seating himself comfortably, clasped his arms round

his lifted knees and fixed his eyes on Pierre. The latter was

conscious of something pleasant, comforting, and well rounded in these

deft movements, in the man's well-ordered arrangements in his

corner, and even in his very smell, and he looked at the man without

taking his eyes from him.



"You've seen a lot of trouble, sir, eh?" the little man suddenly

said.



And there was so much kindliness and simplicity in his singsong

voice that Pierre tried to reply, but his jaw trembled and he felt

tears rising to his eyes. The little fellow, giving Pierre no time

to betray his confusion, instantly continued in the same pleasant

tones:



"Eh, lad, don't fret!" said he, in the tender singsong caressing

voice old Russian peasant women employ. "Don't fret, friend--'suffer

an hour, live for an age!' that's how it is, my dear fellow. And

here we live, thank heaven, without offense. Among these folk, too,

there are good men as well as bad," said he, and still speaking, he

turned on his knees with a supple movement, got up, coughed, and

went off to another part of the shed.



"Eh, you rascal!" Pierre heard the same kind voice saying at the

other end of the shed. "So you've come, you rascal? She remembers...

Now, now, that'll do!"



And the soldier, pushing away a little dog that was jumping up at

him, returned to his place and sat down. In his hands he had something

wrapped in a rag.



"Here, eat a bit, sir," said he, resuming his former respectful tone

as he unwrapped and offered Pierre some baked potatoes. "We had soup

for dinner and the potatoes are grand!"



Pierre had not eaten all day and the smell of the potatoes seemed

extremely pleasant to him. He thanked the soldier and began to eat.



"Well, are they all right?" said the soldier with a smile. "You

should do like this."



He took a potato, drew out his clasp knife, cut the potato into

two equal halves on the palm of his hand, sprinkled some salt on it

from the rag, and handed it to Pierre.



"The potatoes are grand!" he said once more. "Eat some like that!"



Pierre thought he had never eaten anything that tasted better.



"Oh, I'm all right," said he, "but why did they shoot those poor

fellows? The last one was hardly twenty."

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"Tss, tt...!" said the little man. "Ah, what a sin... what a sin!"

he added quickly, and as if his words were always waiting ready in his

mouth and flew out involuntarily he went on: "How was it, sir, that

you stayed in Moscow?"



"I didn't think they would come so soon. I stayed accidentally,"

replied Pierre.



"And how did they arrest you, dear lad? At your house?"



"No, I went to look at the fire, and they arrested me there, and

tried me as an incendiary."



"Where there's law there's injustice," put in the little man.



"And have you been here long?" Pierre asked as he munched the last

of the potato.



"I? It was last Sunday they took me, out of a hospital in Moscow."



"Why, are you a soldier then?"



"Yes, we are soldiers of the Apsheron regiment. I was dying of

fever. We weren't told anything. There were some twenty of us lying

there. We had no idea, never guessed at all."



"And do you feel sad here?" Pierre inquired.



"How can one help it, lad? My name is Platon, and the surname is

Karataev," he added, evidently wishing to make it easier for Pierre to

address him. "They call me 'little falcon' in the regiment. How is one

to help feeling sad? Moscow--she's the mother of cities. How can one

see all this and not feel sad? But 'the maggot gnaws the cabbage,

yet dies first'; that's what the old folks used to tell us," he

added rapidly.



"What? What did you say?" asked Pierre.



"Who? I?" said Karataev. "I say things happen not as we plan but

as God judges," he replied, thinking that he was repeating what he had

said before, and immediately continued:



"Well, and you, have you a family estate, sir? And a house? So you

have abundance, then? And a housewife? And your old parents, are

they still living?" he asked.



And though it was too dark for Pierre to see, he felt that a

suppressed smile of kindliness puckered the soldier's lips as he put

these questions. He seemed grieved that Pierre had no parents,

especially that he had no mother.



"A wife for counsel, a mother-in-law for welcome, but there's none

as dear as one's own mother!" said he. "Well, and have you little

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ones?" he went on asking.



Again Pierre's negative answer seemed to distress him, and he

hastened to add:



"Never mind! You're young folks yet, and please God may still have

some. The great thing is to live in harmony...."



"But it's all the same now," Pierre could not help saying.



"Ah, my dear fellow!" rejoined Karataev, "never decline a prison

or a beggar's sack!"



He seated himself more comfortably and coughed, evidently

preparing to tell a long story.



"Well, my dear fellow, I was still living at home," he began. "We

had a well-to-do homestead, plenty of land, we peasants lived well and

our house was one to thank God for. When Father and we went out mowing

there were seven of us. We lived well. We were real peasants. It so

happened..."



And Platon Karataev told a long story of how he had gone into

someone's copse to take wood, how he had been caught by the keeper,

had been tried, flogged, and sent to serve as a soldier.



"Well, lad," and a smile changed the tone of his voice "we thought

it was a misfortune but it turned out a blessing! If it had not been

for my sin, my brother would have had to go as a soldier. But he, my

younger brother, had five little ones, while I, you see, only left a

wife behind. We had a little girl, but God took her before I went as a

soldier. I come home on leave and I'll tell you how it was, I look and

see that they are living better than before. The yard full of

cattle, the women at home, two brothers away earning wages, and only

Michael the youngest, at home. Father, he says, 'All my children are

the same to me: it hurts the same whichever finger gets bitten. But if

Platon hadn't been shaved for a soldier, Michael would have had to

go.' called us all to him and, will you believe it, placed us in front

of the icons. 'Michael,' he says, 'come here and bow down to his feet;

and you, young woman, you bow down too; and you, grandchildren, also

bow down before him! Do you understand?' he says. That's how it is,

dear fellow. Fate looks for a head. But we are always judging, 'that's

not well--that's not right!' Our luck is like water in a dragnet:

you pull at it and it bulges, but when you've drawn it out it's empty!

That's how it is."



And Platon shifted his seat on the straw.



After a short silence he rose.



"Well, I think you must be sleepy," said he, and began rapidly

crossing himself and repeating:



"Lord Jesus Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus

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Christ, holy Saint Nicholas, Frola and Lavra! Lord Jesus Christ,

have mercy on us and save us!" he concluded, then bowed to the ground,

got up, sighed, and sat down again on his heap of straw. "That's the

way. Lay me down like a stone, O God, and raise me up like a loaf," he

muttered as he lay down, pulling his coat over him.



"What prayer was that you were saying?" asked Pierre.



"Eh?" murmured Platon, who had almost fallen asleep. "What was I

saying? I was praying. Don't you pray?"



"Yes, I do," said Pierre. "But what was that you said: Frola and

Lavra?"



"Well, of course," replied Platon quickly, "the horses' saints.

One must pity the animals too. Eh, the rascal! Now you've curled up

and got warm, you daughter of a bitch!" said Karataev, touching the

dog that lay at his feet, and again turning over he fell asleep

immediately.



Sounds of crying and screaming came from somewhere in the distance

outside, and flames were visible through the cracks of the shed, but

inside it was quiet and dark. For a long time Pierre did not sleep,

but lay with eyes open in the darkness, listening to the regular

snoring of Platon who lay beside him, and he felt that the world

that had been shattered was once more stirring in his soul with a

new beauty and on new and unshakable foundations.









CHAPTER XIII





Twenty-three soldiers, three officers, and two officials were

confined in the shed in which Pierre had been placed and where he

remained for four weeks.



When Pierre remembered them afterwards they all seemed misty figures

to him except Platon Karataev, who always remained in his mind a

most vivid and precious memory and the personification of everything

Russian, kindly, and round. When Pierre saw his neighbor next

morning at dawn the first impression of him, as of something round,

was fully confirmed: Platon's whole figure--in a French overcoat

girdled with a cord, a soldier's cap, and bast shoes--was round. His

head was quite round, his back, chest, shoulders, and even his arms,

which he held as if ever ready to embrace something, were rounded, his

pleasant smile and his large, gentle brown eyes were also round.



Platon Karataev must have been fifty, judging by his stories of

campaigns he had been in, told as by an old soldier. He did not

himself know his age and was quite unable to determine it. But his

brilliantly white, strong teeth which showed in two unbroken

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semicircles when he laughed--as he often did--were all sound and good,

there was not a gray hair in his beard or on his head, and his whole

body gave an impression of suppleness and especially of firmness and

endurance.



His face, despite its fine, rounded wrinkles, had an expression of

innocence and youth, his voice was pleasant and musical. But the chief

peculiarity of his speech was its directness and appositeness. It

was evident that he never considered what he had said or was going

to say, and consequently the rapidity and justice of his intonation

had an irresistible persuasiveness.



His physical strength and agility during the first days of his

imprisonment were such that he seemed not to know what fatigue and

sickness meant. Every night before lying down, he said: "Lord, lay

me down as a stone and raise me up as a loaf!" and every morning on

getting up, he said: "I lay down and curled up, I get up and shake

myself." And indeed he only had to lie down, to fall asleep like a

stone, and he only had to shake himself, to be ready without a

moment's delay for some work, just as children are ready to play

directly they awake. He could do everything, not very well but not

badly. He baked, cooked, sewed, planed, and mended boots. He was

always busy, and only at night allowed himself conversation--of

which he was fond--and songs. He did not sing like a trained singer

who knows he is listened to, but like the birds, evidently giving vent

to the sounds in the same way that one stretches oneself or walks

about to get rid of stiffness, and the sounds were always

high-pitched, mournful, delicate, and almost feminine, and his face at

such times was very serious.



Having been taken prisoner and allowed his beard to grow, he

seemed to have thrown off all that had been forced upon him-

everything military and alien to himself--and had returned to his

former peasant habits.



"A soldier on leave--a shirt outside breeches," he would say.



He did not like talking about his life as a soldier, though he did

not complain, and often mentioned that he had not been flogged once

during the whole of his army service. When he related anything it

was generally some old and evidently precious memory of his

"Christian" life, as he called his peasant existence. The proverbs, of

which his talk was full, were for the most part not the coarse and

indecent saws soldiers employ, but those folk sayings which taken

without a context seem so insignificant, but when used appositely

suddenly acquire a significance of profound wisdom.



He would often say the exact opposite of what he had said on a

previous occasion, yet both would be right. He liked to talk and he

talked well, adorning his speech with terms of endearment and with

folk sayings which Pierre thought he invented himself, but the chief

charm of his talk lay in the fact that the commonest events--sometimes

just such as Pierre had witnessed without taking notice of them-

assumed in Karataev's a character of solemn fitness. He liked to

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hear the folk tales one of the soldiers used to tell of an evening

(they were always the same), but most of all he liked to hear

stories of real life. He would smile joyfully when listening to such

stories, now and then putting in a word or asking a question to make

the moral beauty of what he was told clear to himself. Karataev had no

attachments, friendships, or love, as Pierre understood them, but

loved and lived affectionately with everything life brought him in

contact with, particularly with man--not any particular man, but those

with whom he happened to be. He loved his dog, his comrades, the

French, and Pierre who was his neighbor, but Pierre felt that in spite

of Karataev's affectionate tenderness for him (by which he

unconsciously gave Pierre's spiritual life its due) he would not

have grieved for a moment at parting from him. And Pierre began to

feel in the same way toward Karataev.



To all the other prisoners Platon Karataev seemed a most ordinary

soldier. They called him "little falcon" or "Platosha," chaffed him

good-naturedly, and sent him on errands. But to Pierre he always

remained what he had seemed that first night: an unfathomable,

rounded, eternal personification of the spirit of simplicity and

truth.



Platon Karataev knew nothing by heart except his prayers. When he

began to speak he seemed not to know how he would conclude.



Sometimes Pierre, struck by the meaning of his words, would ask

him to repeat them, but Platon could never recall what he had said a

moment before, just as he never could repeat to Pierre the words of

his favorite song: native and birch tree and my heart is sick occurred

in it, but when spoken and not sung, no meaning could be got out of

it. He did not, and could not, understand the meaning of words apart

from their context. Every word and action of his was the manifestation

of an activity unknown to him, which was his life. But his life, as he

regarded it, had no meaning as a separate thing. It had meaning only

as part of a whole of which he was always conscious. His words and

actions flowed from him as evenly, inevitably, and spontaneously as

fragrance exhales from a flower. He could not understand the value

or significance of any word or deed taken separately.









CHAPTER XIV





When Princess Mary heard from Nicholas that her brother was with the

Rostovs at Yaroslavl she at once prepared to go there, in spite of her

aunt's efforts to dissuade her--and not merely to go herself but to

take her nephew with her. Whether it were difficult or easy,

possible or impossible, she did not ask and did not want to know: it

was her duty not only herself to be near her brother who was perhaps

dying, but to do everything possible to take his son to him, and so

she prepared to set off. That she had not heard from Prince Andrew

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himself, Princess Mary attributed to his being too weak to write or to

his considering the long journey too hard and too dangerous for her

and his son.



In a few days Princess Mary was ready to start. Her equipages were

the huge family coach in which she had traveled to Voronezh, a

semiopen trap, and a baggage cart. With her traveled Mademoiselle

Bourienne, little Nicholas and his tutor, her old nurse, three

maids, Tikhon, and a young footman and courier her aunt had sent to

accompany her.



The usual route through Moscow could not be thought of, and the

roundabout way Princess Mary was obliged to take through Lipetsk,

Ryazan, Vladimir, and Shuya was very long and, as post horses were not

everywhere obtainable, very difficult, and near Ryazan where the

French were said to have shown themselves was even dangerous.



During this difficult journey Mademoiselle Bourienne, Dessalles, and

Princess Mary's servants were astonished at her energy and firmness of

spirit. She went to bed later and rose earlier than any of them, and

no difficulties daunted her. Thanks to her activity and energy,

which infected her fellow travelers, they approached Yaroslavl by

the end of the second week.



The last days of her stay in Voronezh had been the happiest of her

life. Her love for Rostov no longer tormented or agitated her. It

filled her whole soul, had become an integral part of herself, and she

no longer struggled against it. Latterly she had become convinced that

she loved and was beloved, though she never said this definitely to

herself in words. She had become convinced of it at her last interview

with Nicholas, when he had come to tell her that her brother was

with the Rostovs. Not by a single word had Nicholas alluded to the

fact that Prince Andrew's relations with Natasha might, if he

recovered, be renewed, but Princess Mary saw by his face that he

knew and thought of this.



Yet in spite of that, his relation to her--considerate, delicate,

and loving--not only remained unchanged, but it sometimes seemed to

Princess Mary that he was even glad that the family connection between

them allowed him to express his friendship more freely. She knew

that she loved for the first and only time in her life and felt that

she was beloved, and was happy in regard to it.



But this happiness on one side of her spiritual nature did not

prevent her feeling grief for her brother with full force; on the

contrary, that spiritual tranquility on the one side made it the

more possible for her to give full play to her feeling for her

brother. That feeling was so strong at the moment of leaving

Voronezh that those who saw her off, as they looked at her careworn,

despairing face, felt sure she would fall ill on the journey. But

the very difficulties and preoccupations of the journey, which she

took so actively in hand, saved her for a while from her grief and

gave her strength.



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As always happens when traveling, Princess Mary thought only of

the journey itself, forgetting its object. But as she approached

Yaroslavl the thought of what might await her there--not after many

days, but that very evening--again presented itself to her and her

agitation increased to its utmost limit.



The courier who had been sent on in advance to find out where the

Rostovs were staying in Yaroslavl, and in what condition Prince Andrew

was, when he met the big coach just entering the town gates was

appalled by the terrible pallor of the princess' face that looked

out at him from the window.



"I have found out everything, your excellency: the Rostovs are

staying at the merchant Bronnikov's house, in the Square not far

from here, right above the Volga," said the courier.



Princess Mary looked at him with frightened inquiry, not

understanding why he did not reply to what she chiefly wanted to know:

how was her brother? Mademoiselle Bourienne put that question for her.



"How is the prince?" she asked.



"His excellency is staying in the same house with them."



"Then he is alive," thought Princess Mary, and asked in a low voice:

"How is he?"



"The servants say he is still the same."



What "still the same" might mean Princess Mary did not ask, but with

an unnoticed glance at little seven-year-old Nicholas, who was sitting

in front of her looking with pleasure at the town, she bowed her

head and did not raise it again till the heavy coach, rumbling,

shaking and swaying, came to a stop. The carriage steps clattered as

they were let down.



The carriage door was opened. On the left there was water--a great

river--and on the right a porch. There were people at the entrance:

servants, and a rosy girl with a large plait of black hair, smiling as

it seemed to Princess Mary in an unpleasantly affected way. (This

was Sonya.) Princess Mary ran up the steps. "This way, this way!" said

the girl, with the same artificial smile, and the princess found

herself in the hall facing an elderly woman of Oriental type, who came

rapidly to meet her with a look of emotion. This was the countess. She

embraced Princess Mary and kissed her.



"Mon enfant!" she muttered, "je vous aime et vous connais depuis

longtemps."*





*"My child! I love you and have known you a long time."



Despite her excitement, Princess Mary realized that this was the

countess and that it was necessary to say something to her. Hardly

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knowing how she did it, she contrived to utter a few polite phrases in

French in the same tone as those that had been addressed to her, and

asked: "How is he?"



"The doctor says that he is not in danger," said the countess, but

as she spoke she raised her eyes with a sigh, and her gesture conveyed

a contradiction of her words.



"Where is he? Can I see him--can I?" asked the princess.



"One moment, Princess, one moment, my dear! Is this his son?" said

the countess, turning to little Nicholas who was coming in with

Dessalles. "There will be room for everybody, this is a big house. Oh,

what a lovely boy!"



The countess took Princess Mary into the drawing room, where Sonya

was talking to Mademoiselle Bourienne. The countess caressed the

boy, and the old count came in and welcomed the princess. He had

changed very much since Princess Mary had last seen him. Then he had

been a brisk, cheerful, self-assured old man; now he seemed a pitiful,

bewildered person. While talking to Princess Mary he continually

looked round as if asking everyone whether he was doing the right

thing. After the destruction of Moscow and of his property, thrown out

of his accustomed groove he seemed to have lost the sense of his own

significance and to feel that there was no longer a place for him in

life.



In spite of her one desire to see her brother as soon as possible,

and her vexation that at the moment when all she wanted was to see him

they should be trying to entertain her and pretending to admire her

nephew, the princess noticed all that was going on around her and felt

the necessity of submitting, for a time, to this new order of things

which she had entered. She knew it to be necessary, and though it

was hard for her she was not vexed with these people.



"This is my niece," said the count, introducing Sonya--"You don't

know her, Princess?"



Princess Mary turned to Sonya and, trying to stifle the hostile

feeling that arose in her toward the girl, she kissed her. But she

felt oppressed by the fact that the mood of everyone around her was so

far from what was in her own heart.



"Where is he?" she asked again, addressing them all.



"He is downstairs. Natasha is with him," answered Sonya, flushing.

"We have sent to ask. I think you must be tired, Princess."



Tears of vexation showed themselves in Princess Mary's eyes. She

turned away and was about to ask the countess again how to go to

him, when light, impetuous, and seemingly buoyant steps were heard

at the door. The princess looked round and saw Natasha coming in,

almost running--that Natasha whom she had liked so little at their

meeting in Moscow long since.

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But hardly had the princess looked at Natasha's face before she

realized that here was a real comrade in her grief, and consequently a

friend. She ran to meet her, embraced her, and began to cry on her

shoulder.



As soon as Natasha, sitting at the head of Prince Andrew's bed,

heard of Princess Mary's arrival, she softly left his room and

hastened to her with those swift steps that had sounded buoyant to

Princess Mary.



There was only one expression on her agitated face when she ran into

the drawing room--that of love--boundless love for him, for her, and

for all that was near to the man she loved; and of pity, suffering for

others, and passionate desire to give herself entirely to helping

them. It was plain that at that moment there was in Natasha's heart no

thought of herself or of her own relations with Prince Andrew.



Princess Mary, with her acute sensibility, understood all this at

the first glance at Natasha's face, and wept on her shoulder with

sorrowful pleasure.



"Come, come to him, Mary," said Natasha, leading her into the

other room.



Princess Mary raised her head, dried her eyes, and turned to

Natasha. She felt that from her she would be able to understand and

learn everything.



"How..." she began her question but stopped short.



She felt that it was impossible to ask, or to answer, in words.

Natasha's face eyes would have to tell her all more clearly

and profoundly.



Natasha was gazing at her, but seemed afraid and in doubt whether to

say all she knew or not; she seemed to feel that before those luminous

eyes which penetrated into the very depths of her heart, it was

impossible not to tell the whole truth which she saw. And suddenly,

Natasha's lips twitched, ugly wrinkles gathered round her mouth, and

covering her face with her hands she burst into sobs.



Princess Mary understood.



But she still hoped, and asked, in words she herself did not trust:



"But how is his wound? What is his general condition?"



"You, you... will see," was all Natasha could say.



They sat a little while downstairs near his room till they had

left off crying and were able to go to him with calm faces.



"How has his whole illness gone? Is it long since he grew worse?

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When did this happen?" Princess Mary inquired.



Natasha told her that at first there had been danger from his

feverish condition and the pain he suffered, but at Troitsa that had

passed and the doctor had only been afraid of gangrene. That danger

had also passed. When they reached Yaroslavl the wound had begun to

fester (Natasha knew all about such things as festering) and the

doctor had said that the festering might take a normal course. Then

fever set in, but the doctor had said the fever was not very serious.



"But two days ago this suddenly happened," said Natasha,

struggling with her sobs. "I don't know why, but you will see what

he is like."



"Is he weaker? Thinner?" asked the princess.



"No, it's not that, but worse. You will see. O, Mary, he is too

good, he cannot, cannot live, because..."









CHAPTER XV





When Natasha opened Prince Andrew's door with a familiar movement

and let Princess Mary pass into the room before her, the princess felt

the sobs in her throat. Hard as she had tried to prepare herself,

and now tried to remain tranquil, she knew that she would be unable to

look at him without tears.



The princess understood what Natasha had meant by the words: "two

days ago this suddenly happened." She understood those words to mean

that he had suddenly softened and that this softening and gentleness

were signs of approaching death. As she stepped to the door she

already saw in imagination Andrew's face as she remembered it in

childhood, a gentle, mild, sympathetic face which he had rarely shown,

and which therefore affected her very strongly. She was sure he

would speak soft, tender words to her such as her father had uttered

before his death, and that she would not be able to bear it and

would burst into sobs in his presence. Yet sooner or later it had to

be, and she went in. The sobs rose higher and higher in her throat

as she more and more clearly distinguished his form and her

shortsighted eyes tried to make out his features, and then she saw his

face and met his gaze.



He was lying in a squirrel-fur dressing gown on a divan,

surrounded by pillows. He was thin and pale. In one thin,

translucently white hand he held a handkerchief, while with the

other he stroked the delicate mustache he had grown, moving his

fingers slowly. His eyes gazed at them as they entered.



On seeing his face and meeting his eyes Princess Mary's pace

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suddenly slackened, she felt her tears dry up and her sobs ceased. She

suddenly felt guilty and grew timid on catching the expression of

his face and eyes.



"But in what am I to blame?" she asked herself. And his cold,

stern look replied: "Because you are alive and thinking of the living,

while I..."



In the deep gaze that seemed to look not outwards but

inwards there was an almost hostile expression as he slowly regarded

his sister and Natasha.



He kissed his sister, holding her hand in his as was their wont.



"How are you, Mary? How did you manage to get here?" said he in a

voice as calm and aloof as his look.



Had he screamed in agony, that scream would not have struck such

horror into Princess Mary's heart as the tone of his voice.



"And have you brought little Nicholas?" he asked in the same slow,

quiet manner and with an obvious effort to remember.



"How are you now?" said Princess Mary, herself surprised at what she

was saying.



"That, my dear, you must ask the doctor," he replied, and again

making an evident effort to be affectionate, he said with his lips

only (his words clearly did not correspond to his thoughts):



"Merci, chere amie, d'etre venue."*





*"Thank you for coming, my dear."





Princess Mary pressed his hand. The pressure made him wince just

perceptibly. He was silent, and she did not know what to say. She

now understood what had happened to him two days before. In his words,

his tone, and especially in that calm, almost antagonistic look

could be felt an estrangement from everything belonging to this world,

terrible in one who is alive. Evidently only with an effort did he

understand anything living; but it was obvious that he failed to

understand, not because he lacked the power to do so but because he

understood something else--something the living did not and could

not understand--and which wholly occupied his mind.



"There, you see how strangely fate has brought us together," said

he, breaking the silence and pointing to Natasha. "She looks after

me all the time."



Princess Mary heard him and did not understand how he could say such

a thing. He, the sensitive, tender Prince Andrew, how could he say

that, before her whom he loved and who loved him? Had he expected to

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live he could not have said those words in that offensively cold tone.

If he had not known that he was dying, how could he have failed to

pity her and how could he speak like that in her presence? The only

explanation was that he was indifferent, because something else,

much more important, had been revealed to him.



The conversation was cold and disconnected and continually broke

off.



"Mary came by way of Ryazan," said Natasha.



Prince Andrew did not notice that she called his sister Mary, and

only after calling her so in his presence did Natasha notice it

herself.



"Really?" he asked.



"They told her that all Moscow has been burned down, and that..."



Natasha stopped. It was impossible to talk. It was plain that he was

making an effort to listen, but could not do so.



"Yes, they say it's burned," he said. "It's a great pity," and he

gazed straight before him, absently stroking his mustache with his

fingers.



"And so you have met Count Nicholas, Mary?" Prince Andrew suddenly

said, evidently wishing to speak pleasantly to them. "He wrote here

that he took a great liking to you," he went on simply and calmly,

evidently unable to understand all the complex significance his

words had for living people. "If you liked him too, it would be a good

thing for you to get married," he added rather more quickly, as if

pleased at having found words he had long been seeking.



Princess Mary heard his words but they had no meaning for her,

except as a proof of how far away he now was from everything living.



"Why talk of me?" she said quietly and glanced at Natasha.



Natasha, who felt her glance, did not look at her. All three were

again silent.



"Andrew, would you like..." Princess Mary suddenly said in a

trembling voice, "would you like to see little Nicholas? He is

always talking about you!"



Prince Andrew smiled just perceptibly and for the first time, but

Princess Mary, who knew his face so well, saw with horror that he

did not smile with pleasure or affection for his son, but with

quiet, gentle irony because he thought she was trying what she

believed to be the last means of arousing him.



"Yes, I shall be very glad to see him. Is he quite well?"



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When little Nicholas was brought into Prince Andrew's room he looked

at his father with frightened eyes, but did not cry, because no one

else was crying. Prince Andrew kissed him and evidently did not know

what to say to him.



When Nicholas had been led away, Princess Mary again went up to

her brother, kissed him, and unable to restrain her tears any longer

began to cry.



He looked at her attentively.



"Is it about Nicholas?" he asked.



Princess Mary nodded her head, weeping.



"Mary, you know the Gosp..." but he broke off.



"What did you say?"



"Nothing. You mustn't cry here," he said, looking at her with the

same cold expression.





When Princess Mary began to cry, he understood that she was crying

at the thought that little Nicholas would be left without a father.

With a great effort he tried to return to life and to see things

from their point of view.



"Yes, to them it must seem sad!" he thought. "But how simple it is.



"The fowls of the air sow not, neither do they reap, yet your Father

feedeth them," he said to himself and wished to say to Princess

Mary; "but no, they will take it their own way, they won't understand!

They can't understand that all those feelings they prize so--all our

feelings, all those ideas that seem so important to us, are

unnecessary. We cannot understand one another," and he remained

silent.





Prince Andrew's little son was seven. He could scarcely read, and

knew nothing. After that day he lived through many things, gaining

knowledge, observation, and experience, but had he possessed all the

faculties he afterwards acquired, he could not have had a better or

more profound understanding of the meaning of the scene he had

witnessed between his father, Mary, and Natasha, than he had then.

He understood it completely, and, leaving the room without crying,

went silently up to Natasha who had come out with him and looked shyly

at her with his beautiful, thoughtful eyes, then his uplifted, rosy

upper lip trembled and leaning his head against her he began to cry.



After that he avoided Dessalles and the countess who caressed him

and either sat alone or came timidly to Princess Mary, or to Natasha

of whom he seemed even fonder than of his aunt, and clung to them

quietly and shyly.

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When Princess Mary had left Prince Andrew she fully understood

what Natasha's face had told her. She did not speak any more to

Natasha of hopes of saving his life. She took turns with her beside

his sofa, and did not cry any more, but prayed continually, turning in

soul to that Eternal and Unfathomable, whose presence above the

dying man was now so evident.









CHAPTER XVI





Not only did Prince Andrew know he would die, but he felt that he

was dying and was already half dead. He was conscious of an

aloofness from everything earthly and a strange and joyous lightness

of existence. Without haste or agitation he awaited what was coming.

That inexorable, eternal, distant, and unknown the presence of which

he had felt continually all his life--was now near to him and, by

the strange lightness he experienced, almost comprehensible and

palpable...





Formerly he had feared the end. He had twice experienced that

terribly tormenting fear of death--the end--but now he no longer

understood that fear.



He had felt it for the first time when the shell spun like a top

before him, and he looked at the fallow field, the bushes, and the

sky, and knew that he was face to face with death. When he came to

himself after being wounded and the flower of eternal, unfettered love

had instantly unfolded itself in his soul as if freed from the bondage

of life that had restrained it, he no longer feared death and ceased

to think about it.



During the hours of solitude, suffering, and partial delirium he

spent after he was wounded, the more deeply he penetrated into the new

principle of eternal love revealed to him, the more he unconsciously

detached himself from earthly life. To love everything and everybody

and always to sacrifice oneself for love meant not to love anyone, not

to live this earthly life. And the more imbued he became with that

principle of love, the more he renounced life and the more

completely he destroyed that dreadful barrier which--in the absence of

such love--stands between life and death. When during those first days

he remembered that he would have to die, he said to himself: "Well,

what of it? So much the better!"



But after the night in Mytishchi when, half delirious, he had seen

her for whom he longed appear before him and, having pressed her

hand to his lips, had shed gentle, happy tears, love for a

particular woman again crept unobserved into his heart and once more

bound him to life. And joyful and agitating thoughts began to occupy

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his mind. Recalling the moment at the ambulance station when he had

seen Kuragin, he could not now regain the feeling he then had, but was

tormented by the question whether Kuragin was alive. And he dared

not inquire.



His illness pursued its normal physical course, but what Natasha

referred to when she said: "This suddenly happened," had occurred

two days before Princess Mary arrived. It was the last spiritual

struggle between life and death, in which death gained the victory. It

was the unexpected realization of the fact that he still valued life

as presented to him in the form of his love for Natasha, and a last,

though ultimately vanquished, attack of terror before the unknown.



It was evening. As usual after dinner he was slightly feverish,

and his thoughts were preternaturally clear. Sonya was sitting by

the table. He began to doze. Suddenly a feeling of happiness seized

him.



"Ah, she has come!" thought he.



And so it was: in Sonya's place sat Natasha who had just come in

noiselessly.



Since she had begun looking after him, he had always experienced

this physical consciousness of her nearness. She was sitting in an

armchair placed sideways, screening the light of the candle from

him, and was knitting a stocking. She had learned to knit stockings

since Prince Andrew had casually mentioned that no one nursed the sick

so well as old nurses who knit stockings, and that there is

something soothing in the knitting of stockings. The needles clicked

lightly in her slender, rapidly moving hands, and he could clearly see

the thoughtful profile of her drooping face. She moved, and the ball

rolled off her knees. She started, glanced round at him, and screening

the candle with her hand stooped carefully with a supple and exact

movement, picked up the ball, and regained her former position.



He looked at her without moving and saw that she wanted to draw a

deep breath after stooping, but refrained from doing so and breathed

cautiously.



At the Troitsa monastery they had spoken of the past, and he had

told her that if he lived he would always thank God for his wound

which had brought them together again, but after that they never spoke

of the future.



"Can it or can it not be?" he now thought as he looked at her and

listened to the light click of the steel needles. "Can fate have

brought me to her so strangely only for me to die?... Is it possible

that the truth of life has been revealed to me only to show me that

I have spent my life in falsity? I love her more than anything in

the world! But what am I to do if I love her?" he thought, and he

involuntarily groaned, from a habit acquired during his sufferings.



On hearing that sound Natasha put down the stocking, leaned nearer

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to him, and suddenly, noticing his shining eyes, stepped lightly up to

him and bent over him.



"You are not asleep?"



"No, I have been looking at you a long time. I felt you come in.

No one else gives me that sense of soft tranquillity that you do...

that light. I want to weep for joy."



Natasha drew closer to him. Her face shone with rapturous joy.



"Natasha, I love you too much! More than anything in the world."



"And I!"--She turned away for an instant. "Why too much?" she asked.



"Why too much?... Well, what do you, what do you feel in your

soul, your whole soul--shall I live? What do you think?"



"I am sure of it, sure!" Natasha almost shouted, taking hold of both

his hands with a passionate movement.



He remained silent awhile.



"How good it would be!" and taking her hand he kissed it.



Natasha felt happy and agitated, but at once remembered that this

would not do and that he had to be quiet.



"But you have not slept," she said, repressing her joy. "Try to

sleep... please!"



He pressed her hand and released it, and she went back to the candle

and sat down again in her former position. Twice she turned and looked

at him, and her eyes met his beaming at her. She set herself a task on

her stocking and resolved not to turn round till it was finished.



Soon he really shut his eyes and fell asleep. He did not sleep

long and suddenly awoke with a start and in a cold perspiration.



As he fell asleep he had still been thinking of the subject that now

always occupied his mind--about life and death, and chiefly about

death. He felt himself nearer to it.



"Love? What is love?" he thought.



"Love hinders death. Love is life. All, everything that I

understand, I understand only because I love. Everything is,

everything exists, only because I love. Everything is united by it

alone. Love is God, and to die means that I, a particle of love, shall

return to the general and eternal source." These thoughts seemed to

him comforting. But they were only thoughts. Something was lacking

in them, they were not clear, they were too one-sidedly personal and

brain-spun. And there was the former agitation and obscurity. He

fell asleep.

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He dreamed that he was lying in the room he really was in, but

that he was quite well and unwounded. Many various, indifferent, and

insignificant people appeared before him. He talked to them and

discussed something trivial. They were preparing to go away somewhere.

Prince Andrew dimly realized that all this was trivial and that he had

more important cares, but he continued to speak, surprising them by

empty witticisms. Gradually, unnoticed, all these persons began to

disappear and a single question, that of the closed door, superseded

all else. He rose and went to the door to bolt and lock it. Everything

depended on whether he was, or was not, in time to lock it. He went,

and tried to hurry, but his legs refused to move and he knew he

would not be in time to lock the door though he painfully strained all

his powers. He was seized by an agonizing fear. And that fear was

the fear of death. It stood behind the door. But just when he was

clumsily creeping toward the door, that dreadful something on the

other side was already pressing against it and forcing its way in.

Something not human--death--was breaking in through that door, and had

to be kept out. He seized the door, making a final effort to hold it

back--to lock it was no longer possible--but his efforts were weak and

clumsy and the door, pushed from behind by that terror, opened and

closed again.



Once again it pushed from outside. His last superhuman efforts

were vain and both halves of the door noiselessly opened. It

entered, and it was death, and Prince Andrew died.



But at the instant he died, Prince Andrew remembered that he was

asleep, and at the very instant he died, having made an effort, he

awoke.



"Yes, it was death! I died--and woke up. Yes, death is an

awakening!" And all at once it grew light in his soul and the veil

that had till then concealed the unknown was lifted from his spiritual

vision. He felt as if powers till then confined within him had been

liberated, and that strange lightness did not again leave him.



When, waking in a cold perspiration, he moved on the divan,

Natasha went up and asked him what was the matter. He did not answer

and looked at her strangely, not understanding.



That was what had happened to him two days before Princess Mary's

arrival. From that day, as the doctor expressed it, the wasting

fever assumed a malignant character, but what the doctor said did

not interest Natasha, she saw the terrible moral symptoms which to her

were more convincing.



From that day an awakening from life came to Prince Andrew

together with his awakening from sleep. And compared to the duration

of life it did not seem to him slower than an awakening from sleep

compared to the duration of a dream.



There was nothing terrible or violent in this comparatively slow

awakening.

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His last days and hours passed in an ordinary and simple way. Both

Princess Mary and Natasha, who did not leave him, felt this. They

did not weep or shudder and during these last days they themselves

felt that they were not attending on him (he was no longer there, he

had left them) but on what reminded them most closely of him--his

body. Both felt this so strongly that the outward and terrible side of

death did not affect them and they did not feel it necessary to foment

their grief. Neither in his presence nor out of it did they weep,

nor did they ever talk to one another about him. They felt that they

could not express in words what they understood.



They both saw that he was sinking slowly and quietly, deeper and

deeper, away from them, and they both knew that this had to be so

and that it was right.



He confessed, and received communion: everyone came to take leave of

him. When they brought his son to him, he pressed his lips to the

boy's and turned away, not because he felt it hard and sad (Princess

Mary and Natasha understood that) but simply because he thought it was

all that was required of him, but when they told him to bless the boy,

he did what was demanded and looked round as if asking whether there

was anything else he should do.



When the last convulsions of the body, which the spirit was leaving,

occurred, Princess Mary and Natasha were present.



"Is it over?" said Princess Mary when his body had for a few minutes

lain motionless, growing cold before them. Natasha went up, looked

at the dead eyes, and hastened to close them. She closed them but

did not kiss them, but clung to that which reminded her most nearly of

him--his body.



"Where has he gone? Where is he now?..."



When the body, washed and dressed, lay in the coffin on a table,

everyone came to take leave of him and they all wept.



Little Nicholas cried because his heart was rent by painful

perplexity. The countess and Sonya cried from pity for Natasha and

because he was no more. The old count cried because he felt that

before long, he, too, must take the same terrible step.



Natasha and Princess Mary also wept now, but not because of their

own personal grief; they wept with a reverent and softening emotion

which had taken possession of their souls at the consciousness of

the simple and solemn mystery of death that had been accomplished in

their presence.









BOOK THIRTEEN: 1812

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CHAPTER I





Man's mind cannot grasp the causes of events in their

completeness, but the desire to find those causes is implanted in

man's soul. And without considering the multiplicity and complexity of

the conditions any one of which taken separately may seem to be the

cause, he snatches at the first approximation to a cause that seems to

him intelligible and says: "This is the cause!" In historical events

(where the actions of men are the subject of observation) the first

and most primitive approximation to present itself was the will of the

gods and, after that, the will of those who stood in the most

prominent position--the heroes of history. But we need only

penetrate to the essence of any historic event--which lies in the

activity of the general mass of men who take part in it--to be

convinced that the will of the historic hero does not control the

actions of the mass but is itself continually controlled. It may

seem to be a matter of indifference whether we understand the

meaning of historical events this way or that; yet there is the same

difference between a man who says that the people of the West moved on

the East because Napoleon wished it and a man who says that this

happened because it had to happen, as there is between those who

declared that the earth was stationary and that the planets moved

round it and those who admitted that they did not know what upheld the

earth, but knew there were laws directing its movement and that of the

other planets. There is, and can be, no cause of an historical event

except the one cause of all causes. But there are laws directing

events, and some of these laws are known to us while we are

conscious of others we cannot comprehend. The discovery of these

laws is only possible when we have quite abandoned the

attempt to find the cause in the will of some one man, just as the

discovery of the laws of the motion of the planets was possible only

when men abandoned the conception of the fixity of the earth.



The historians consider that, next to the battle of Borodino and the

occupation of Moscow by the enemy and its destruction by fire, the

most important episode of the war of 1812 was the movement of the

Russian army from the Ryazana to the Kaluga road and to the Tarutino

camp--the so-called flank march across the Krasnaya Pakhra River. They

ascribe the glory of that achievement of genius to different men and

dispute as to whom the honor is due. Even foreign historians,

including the French, acknowledge the genius of the Russian commanders

when they speak of that flank march. But it is hard to understand

why military writers, and following them others, consider this flank

march to be the profound conception of some one man who saved Russia

and destroyed Napoleon. In the first place it is hard to understand

where the profundity and genius of this movement lay, for not much

mental effort was needed to see that the best position for an army

when it is not being attacked is where there are most provisions;

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and even a dull boy of thirteen could have guessed that the best

position for an army after its retreat from Moscow in 1812 was on

the Kaluga road. So it is impossible to understand by what reasoning

the historians reach the conclusion that this maneuver was a

profound one. And it is even more difficult to understand just why

they think that this maneuver was calculated to save Russia and

destroy the French; for this flank march, had it been preceded,

accompanied, or followed by other circumstances, might have proved

ruinous to the Russians and salutary for the French. If the position

of the Russian army really began to improve from the time of that

march, it does not at all follow that the march was the cause of it.



That flank march might not only have failed to give any advantage to

the Russian army, but might in other circumstances have led to its

destruction. What would have happened had Moscow not burned down? If

Murat had not lost sight of the Russians? If Napoleon had not remained

inactive? If the Russian army at Krasnaya Pakhra had given battle as

Bennigsen and Barclay advised? What would have happened had the French

attacked the Russians while they were marching beyond the Pakhra? What

would have happened if on approaching Tarutino, Napoleon had

attacked the Russians with but a tenth of the energy he had shown when

he attacked them at Smolensk? What would have happened had the

French moved on Petersburg?... In any of these eventualities the flank

march that brought salvation might have proved disastrous.



The third and most incomprehensible thing is that people studying

history deliberately avoid seeing that this flank march cannot be

attributed to any one man, that no one ever foresaw it, and that in

reality, like the retreat from Fili, it did not suggest itself to

anyone in its entirety, but resulted--moment by moment, step by

step, event by event--from an endless number of most diverse

circumstances and was only seen in its entirety when it had been

accomplished and belonged to the past.



At the council at Fili the prevailing thought in the minds of the

Russian commanders was the one naturally suggesting itself, namely,

a direct retreat by the Nizhni road. In proof of this there is the

fact that the majority of the council voted for such a retreat, and

above all there is the well-known conversation after the council,

between the commander in chief and Lanskoy, who was in charge of the

commissariat department. Lanskoy informed the commander in chief

that the army supplies were for the most part stored along the Oka

in the Tula and Ryazan provinces, and that if they retreated on Nizhni

the army would be separated from its supplies by the broad river

Oka, which cannot be crossed early in winter. This was the first

indication of the necessity of deviating from what had previously

seemed the most natural course--a direct retreat on Nizhni-Novgorod.

The army turned more to the south, along the Ryazan road and nearer to

its supplies. Subsequently the inactivity of the French (who even

lost sight of the Russian army), concern for the safety of the arsenal

at Tula, and especially the advantages of drawing nearer to its

supplies caused the army to turn still further south to the Tula road.

Having crossed over, by a forced march, to the Tula road beyond the

Pakhra, the Russian commanders intended to remain at Podolsk and had

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no thought of the Tarutino position; but innumerable circumstances and

the reappearance of French troops who had for a time lost touch with

the Russians, and projects of giving battle, and above all the

abundance of provisions in Kaluga province, obliged our army to turn

still more to the south and to cross from the Tula to the Kaluga

road and go to Tarutino, which was between the roads along which those

supplies lay. Just as it is impossible to say when it was decided to

abandon Moscow, so it is impossible to say precisely when, or by whom,

it was decided to move to Tarutino. Only when the army had got

there, as the result of innumerable and varying forces, did people

begin to assure themselves that they had desired this movement and

long ago foreseen its result.









CHAPTER II





The famous flank movement merely consisted in this: after the

advance of the French had ceased, the Russian army, which had been

continually retreating straight back from the invaders, deviated

from that direct course and, not finding itself pursued, was naturally

drawn toward the district where supplies were abundant.



If instead of imagining to ourselves commanders of genius leading

the Russian army, we picture that army without any leaders, it could

not have done anything but make a return movement toward Moscow,

describing an arc in the direction where most provisions were to be

found and where the country was richest.



That movement from the Nizhni to the Ryazan, Tula, and Kaluga

roads was so natural that even the Russian marauders moved in that

direction, and demands were sent from Petersburg for Kutuzov to take

his army that way. At Tarutino Kutuzov received what was almost a

reprimand from the Emperor for having moved his army along the

Ryazan road, and the Emperor's letter indicated to him the very

position he had already occupied near Kaluga.



Having rolled like a ball in the direction of the impetus given by

the whole campaign and by the battle of Borodino, the Russian army-

when the strength of that impetus was exhausted and no fresh push

was received--assumed the position natural to it.



Kutuzov's merit lay, not in any strategic maneuver of genius, as

it is called, but in the fact that he alone understood the

significance of what had happened. He alone then understood the

meaning of the French army's inactivity, he alone continued to

assert that the battle of Borodino had been a victory, he alone--who

as commander in chief might have been expected to be eager to

attack--employed his whole strength to restrain the Russian army

from useless engagements.



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The beast wounded at Borodino was lying where the fleeing hunter had

left him; but whether he was still alive, whether he was strong and

merely lying low, the hunter did not know. Suddenly the beast was

heard to moan.



The moan of that wounded beast (the French army) which betrayed

its calamitous condition was the sending of Lauriston to Kutuzov's

camp with overtures for peace.



Napoleon, with his usual assurance that whatever entered his head

was right, wrote to Kutuzov the first words that occurred to him,

though they were meaningless.





MONSIEUR LE PRINCE KOUTOUZOV: I am sending one of my

adjutants-general to discuss several interesting questions with you. I

beg your Highness to credit what he says to you, especially when he

expresses the sentiment of esteem and special regard I have long

entertained for your person. This letter having no other object, I

pray God, monsieur le Prince Koutouzov, to keep you in His holy and

gracious protection!



NAPOLEON



MOSCOW, OCTOBER 30, 1812





Kutuzov replied: "I should be cursed by posterity were I looked on

as the initiator of a settlement of any sort. Such is the present

spirit of my nation." But he continued to exert all his powers to

restrain his troops from attacking.



During the month that the French troops were pillaging in Moscow and

the Russian troops were quietly encamped at Tarutino, a change had

taken place in the relative strength of the two armies--both in spirit

and in number--as a result of which the superiority had passed to

the Russian side. Though the condition and numbers of the French

army were unknown to the Russians, as soon as that change occurred the

need of attacking at once showed itself by countless signs. These

signs were: Lauriston's mission; the abundance of provisions at

Tarutino; the reports coming in from all sides of the inactivity and

disorder of the French; the flow of recruits to our regiments; the

fine weather; the long rest the Russian soldiers had enjoyed, and

the impatience to do what they had been assembled for, which usually

shows itself in an army that has been resting; curiosity as to what

the French army, so long lost sight of, was doing; the boldness with

which our outposts now scouted close up to the French stationed at

Tarutino; the news of easy successes gained by peasants and

guerrilla troops over the French, the envy aroused by this; the desire

for revenge that lay in the heart of every Russian as long as the

French were in Moscow, and (above all) a dim consciousness in every

soldier's mind that the relative strength of the armies had changed

and that the advantage was now on our side. There was a substantial

change in the relative strength, and an advance had become inevitable.

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And at once, as a clock begins to strike and chime as soon as the

minute hand has completed a full circle, this change was shown by an

increased activity, whirring, and chiming in the higher spheres.









CHAPTER III





The Russian army was commanded by Kutuzov and his staff, and also by

the Emperor from Petersburg. Before the news of the abandonment of

Moscow had been received in Petersburg, a detailed plan of the whole

campaign had been drawn up and sent to Kutuzov for his guidance.

Though this plan had been drawn up on the supposition that Moscow

was still in our hands, it was approved by the staff and accepted as a

basis for action. Kutuzov only replied that movements arranged from

a distance were always difficult to execute. So fresh instructions

were sent for the solution of difficulties that might be

encountered, as well as fresh people who were to watch Kutuzov's

actions and report upon them.



Besides this, the whole staff of the Russian army was now

reorganized. The posts left vacant by Bagration, who had been

killed, and by Barclay, who had gone away in dudgeon, had to be

filled. Very serious consideration was given to the question whether

it would be better to put A in B's place and B in D's, or on the

contrary to put D in A's place, and so on--as if anything more than

A's or B's satisfaction depended on this.



As a result of the hostility between Kutuzov and Bennigsen, his

Chief of Staff, the presence of confidential representatives of the

Emperor, and these transfers, a more than usually complicated play

of parties was going on among the staff of the army. A was undermining

B, D was undermining C, and so on in all possible combinations and

permutations. In all these plottings the subject of intrigue was

generally the conduct of the war, which all these men believed they

were directing; but this affair of the war went on independently of

them, as it had to go: that is, never in the way people devised, but

flowing always from the essential attitude of the masses. Only in

the highest spheres did all these schemes, crossings, and

interminglings appear to be a true reflection of what had to happen.





Prince Michael Ilarionovich! (wrote the Emperor on the second of

October in a letter that reached Kutuzov after the battle at Tarutino)

Since September 2 Moscow has been in the hands of the enemy. Your last

reports were written on the twentieth, and during all this time not

only has no action been taken against the enemy or for the relief of

the ancient capital, but according to your last report you have even

retreated farther. Serpukhov is already occupied by an enemy

detachment and Tula with its famous arsenal so indispensable to the

army, is in danger. From General Wintzingerode's reports, I see that

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an enemy corps of ten thousand men is moving on the Petersburg road.

Another corps of several thousand men is moving on Dmitrov. A third

has advanced along the Vladimir road, and a fourth, rather

considerable detachment is stationed between Ruza and Mozhaysk.

Napoleon himself was in Moscow as late as the twenty-fifth. In view of

all this information, when the enemy has scattered his forces in large

detachments, and with Napoleon and his Guards in Moscow, is it

possible that the enemy's forces confronting you are so considerable

as not to allow of your taking the offensive? On the contrary, he is

probably pursuing you with detachments, or at most with an army

corps much weaker than the army entrusted to you. It would seem

that, availing yourself of these circumstances, you might

advantageously attack a weaker one and annihilate him, or at least

oblige him to retreat, retaining in our hands an important part of the

provinces now occupied by the enemy, and thereby averting danger

from Tula and other towns in the interior. You will be responsible

if the enemy is able to direct a force of any size against

Petersburg to threaten this capital in which it has not been

possible to retain many troops; for with the army entrusted to you,

and acting with resolution and energy, you have ample means to avert

this fresh calamity. Remember that you have still to answer to our

offended country for the loss of Moscow. You have experienced my

readiness to reward you. That readiness will not weaken in me, but I

and Russia have a right to expect from you all the zeal, firmness, and

success which your intellect, military talent, and the courage of

the troops you command justify us in expecting.





But by the time this letter, which proved that the real relation

of the forces had already made itself felt in Petersburg, was

dispatched, Kutuzov had found himself unable any longer to restrain

the army he commanded from attacking and a battle had taken place.



On the second of October a Cossack, Shapovalov, who was out

scouting, killed one hare and wounded another. Following the wounded

hare he made his way far into the forest and came upon the left

flank of Murat's army, encamped there without any precautions. The

Cossack laughingly told his comrades how he had almost fallen into the

hands of the French. A cornet, hearing the story, informed his

commander.



The Cossack was sent for and questioned. The Cossack officers wished

to take advantage of this chance to capture some horses, but one of

the superior officers, who was acquainted with the higher authorities,

reported the incident to a general on the staff. The state of

things on the staff had of late been exceedingly strained. Ermolov had

been to see Bennigsen a few days previously and had entreated him to

use his influence with the commander in chief to induce him to take

the offensive.



"If I did not know you I should think you did not want what you

are asking for. I need only advise anything and his Highness is sure

to do the opposite," replied Bennigsen.



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The Cossack's report, confirmed by horse patrols who were sent

out, was the final proof that events had matured. The tightly coiled

spring was released, the clock began to whirr and the chimes to

play. Despite all his supposed power, his intellect, his experience,

and his knowledge of men, Kutuzov--having taken into consideration the

Cossack's report, a note from Bennigsen who sent personal reports to

the Emperor, the wishes he supposed the Emperor to hold, and the

fact that all the generals expressed the same wish--could no longer

check the inevitable movement, and gave the order to do what he

regarded as useless and harmful--gave his approval, that is, to the

accomplished fact.









CHAPTER IV





Bennigsen's note and the Cossack's information that the left flank

of the French was unguarded were merely final indications that it

was necessary to order an attack, and it was fixed for the fifth of

October.



On the morning of the fourth of October Kutuzov signed the

dispositions. Toll read them to Ermolov, asking him to attend to the

further arrangements.



"All right--all right. I haven't time just now," replied Ermolov,

and left the hut.



The dispositions drawn up by Toll were very good. As in the

Austerlitz dispositions, it was written--though not in German this

time:



"The First Column will march here and here," "the Second Column will

march there and there," and so on; and on paper, all these columns

arrived at their places at the appointed time and destroyed the enemy.

Everything had been admirably thought out as is usual in dispositions,

and as is always the case, not a single column reached its place at

the appointed time.



When the necessary number of copies of the dispositions had been

prepared, an officer was summoned and sent to deliver them to

Ermolov to deal with. A young officer of the Horse Guards, Kutuzov's

orderly, pleased at the importance of the mission entrusted to him,

went to Ermolov's quarters.



"Gone away," said Ermolov's orderly.



The officer of the Horse Guards went to a general with whom

Ermolov was often to be found.



"No, and the general's out too."

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The officer, mounting his horse, rode off to someone else.



"No, he's gone out."



"If only they don't make me responsible for this delay! What a

nuisance it is!" thought the officer, and he rode round the whole

camp. One man said he had seen Ermolov ride past with some other

generals, others said he must have returned home. The officer searched

till six o'clock in the evening without even stopping to eat.

Ermolov was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he was. The

officer snatched a little food at a comrade's, and rode again to the

vanguard to find Miloradovich. Miloradovich too was away, but here

he was told that he had gone to a ball at General Kikin's and that

Ermolov was probably there too.



"But where is it?"



"Why, there, over at Echkino," said a Cossack officer, pointing to a

country house in the far distance.



"What, outside our line?"



"They've put two regiments as outposts, and they're having such a

spree there, it's awful! Two bands and three sets of singers!"



The officer rode out beyond our lines to Echkino. While still at a

distance he heard as he rode the merry sounds of a soldier's dance

song proceeding from the house.



"In the meadows... in the meadows!" he heard, accompanied by

whistling and the sound of a torban, drowned every now and then by

shouts. These sounds made his spirits rise, but at the same time he

was afraid that he would be blamed for not having executed sooner

the important order entrusted to him. It was already past eight

o'clock. He dismounted and went up into the porch of a large country

house which had remained intact between the Russian and French forces.

In the refreshment room and the hall, footmen were bustling about with

wine and viands. Groups of singers stood outside the windows. The

officer was admitted and immediately saw all the chief generals of the

army together, and among them Ermolov's big imposing figure. They

all had their coats unbuttoned and were standing in a semicircle

with flushed and animated faces, laughing loudly. In the middle of the

room a short handsome general with a red face was dancing the trepak

with much spirit and agility.



"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo, Nicholas Ivanych! Ha, ha, ha!"



The officer felt that by arriving with important orders at such a

moment he was doubly to blame, and he would have preferred to wait;

but one of the generals espied him and, hearing what he had come

about, informed Ermolov.



Ermolov came forward with a frown on his face and, hearing what

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the officer had to say, took the papers from him without a word.





"You think he went off just by chance?" said a comrade, who was on

the staff that evening, to the officer of the Horse Guards,

referring to Ermolov. "It was a trick. It was done on purpose to get

Konovnitsyn into trouble. You'll see what a mess there'll be

tomorrow."









CHAPTER V





Next day the decrepit Kutuzov, having given orders to be called

early, said his prayers, dressed, and, with an unpleasant

consciousness of having to direct a battle he did not approve of,

got into his caleche and drove from Letashovka (a village three and

a half miles from Tarutino) to the place where the attacking columns

were to meet. He sat in the caleche, dozing and waking up by turns,

and listening for any sound of firing on the right as an indication

that the action had begun. But all was still quiet. A damp dull autumn

morning was just dawning. On approaching Tarutino Kutuzov noticed

cavalrymen leading their horses to water across the road along which

he was driving. Kutuzov looked at them searchingly, stopped his

carriage, and inquired what regiment they belonged to. They belonged

to a column that should have been far in front and in ambush long

before then. "It may be a mistake," thought the old commander in

chief. But a little further on he saw infantry regiments with their

arms piled and the soldiers, only partly dressed, eating their rye

porridge and carrying fuel. He sent for an officer. The officer

reported that no order to advance had been received.



"How! Not rec..." Kutuzov began, but checked himself immediately and

sent for a senior officer. Getting out of his caleche, he waited

with drooping head and breathing heavily, pacing silently up and down.

When Eykhen, the officer of the general staff whom he had summoned,

appeared, Kutuzov went purple in the face, not because that officer

was to blame for the mistake, but because he was an object of

sufficient importance for him to vent his wrath on. Trembling and

panting the old man fell into that state of fury in which he sometimes

used to roll on the ground, and he fell upon Eykhen, threatening him

with his hands, shouting and loading him with gross abuse. Another

man, Captain Brozin, who happened to turn up and who was not at all to

blame, suffered the same fate.



"What sort of another blackguard are you? I'll have you shot!

Scoundrels!" yelled Kutuzov in a hoarse voice, waving his arms and

reeling.



He was suffering physically. He, the commander in chief, a Serene

Highness who everybody said possessed powers such as no man had ever

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had in Russia, to be placed in this position--made the laughingstock

of the whole army! "I needn't have been in such a hurry to pray

about today, or have kept awake thinking everything over all night,"

thought he to himself. "When I was a chit of an officer no one would

have dared to mock me so... and now!" He was in a state of physical

suffering as if from corporal punishment, and could not avoid

expressing it by cries of anger and distress. But his strength soon

began to fail him, and looking about him, conscious of having said

much that was amiss, he again got into his caleche and drove back in

silence.



His wrath, once expended, did not return, and blinking feebly he

listened to excuses and self-justifications (Ermolov did not come to

see him till the next day) and to the insistence of Bennigsen,

Konovnitsyn, and Toll that the movement that had miscarried should

be executed next day. And once more Kutuzov had to consent.









CHAPTER VI





Next day the troops assembled in their appointed places in the

evening and advanced during the night. It was an autumn night with

dark purple clouds, but no rain. The ground was damp but not muddy,

and the troops advanced noiselessly, only occasionally a jingling of

the artillery could be faintly heard. The men were forbidden to talk

out loud, to smoke their pipes, or to strike a light, and they tried

to prevent their horses neighing. The secrecy of the undertaking

heightened its charm and they marched gaily. Some columns,

supposing they had reached their destination, halted, piled arms, and

settled down on the cold ground, but the majority marched all night

and arrived at places where they evidently should not have been.



Only Count Orlov-Denisov with his Cossacks (the least important

detachment of all) got to his appointed place at the right time.

This detachment halted at the outskirts of a forest, on the path

leading from the village of Stromilova to Dmitrovsk.



Toward dawn, Count Orlov-Denisov, who had dozed off, was awakened by

a deserter from the French army being brought to him. This was a

Polish sergeant of Poniatowski's corps, who explained in Polish that

he had come over because he had been slighted in the service: that

he ought long ago to have been made an officer, that he was braver

than any of them, and so he had left them and wished to pay them

out. He said that Murat was spending the night less than a mile from

where they were, and that if they would let him have a convoy of a

hundred men he would capture him alive. Count Orlov-Denisov

consulted his fellow officers.



The offer was too tempting to be refused. Everyone volunteered to go

and everybody advised making the attempt. After much disputing and

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arguing, Major-General Grekov with two Cossack regiments decided to go

with the Polish sergeant.



"Now, remember," said Count Orlov-Denisov to the sergeant at

parting, "if you have been lying I'll have you hanged like a dog;

but if it's true you shall have a hundred gold pieces!"



Without replying, the sergeant, with a resolute air, mounted and

rode away with Grekov whose men had quickly assembled. They

disappeared into the forest, and Count Orlov-Denisov, having seen

Grekov off, returned, shivering from the freshness of the early dawn

and excited by what he had undertaken on his own responsibility, and

began looking at the enemy camp, now just visible in the deceptive

light of dawn and the dying campfires. Our columns ought to have begun

to appear on an open declivity to his right. He looked in that

direction, but though the columns would have been visible quite far

off, they were not to be seen. It seemed to the count that things were

beginning to stir in the French camp, and his keen-sighted adjutant

confirmed this.



"Oh, it is really too late," said Count Orlov, looking at the camp.



As often happens when someone we have trusted is no longer before

our eyes, it suddenly seemed quite clear and obvious to him that the

sergeant was an impostor, that he had lied, and that the whole Russian

attack would be ruined by the absence of those two regiments, which he

would lead away heaven only knew where. How could one capture a

commander in chief from among such a mass of troops!



"I am sure that rascal was lying," said the count.



"They can still be called back," said one of his suite, who like

Count Orlov felt distrustful of the adventure when he looked at the

enemy's camp.



"Eh? Really... what do you think? Should we let them go on or not?"



"Will you have them fetched back?"



"Fetch them back, fetch them back!" said Count Orlov with sudden

determination, looking at his watch. "It will be too late. It is quite

light."



And the adjutant galloped through the forest after Grekov. When

Grekov returned, Count Orlov-Denisov, excited both by the abandoned

attempt and by vainly awaiting the infantry columns that still did not

appear, as well as by the proximity of the enemy, resolved to advance.

All his men felt the same excitement.



"Mount!" he commanded in a whisper. The men took their places and

crossed themselves.... "Forward, with God's aid!"



"Hurrah-ah-ah!" reverberated in the forest, and the Cossack

companies, trailing their lances and advancing one after another as if

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poured out of a sack, dashed gaily across the brook toward the camp.



One desperate, frightened yell from the first French soldier who saw

the Cossacks, and all who were in the camp, undressed and only just

waking up, ran off in all directions, abandoning cannons, muskets, and

horses.



Had the Cossacks pursued the French, without heeding what was behind

and around them, they would have captured Murat and everything

there. That was what the officers desired. But it was impossible to

make the Cossacks budge when once they had got booty and prisoners.

None of them listened to orders. Fifteen hundred prisoners and

thirty-eight guns were taken on the spot, besides standards and

(what seemed most important to the Cossacks) horses, saddles,

horsecloths, and the like. All this had to be dealt with, the

prisoners and guns secured, the booty divided--not without some

shouting and even a little themselves--and it was on this that the

Cossacks all busied themselves.



The French, not being farther pursued, began to recover

themselves: they formed into detachments and began firing.

Orlov-Denisov, still waiting for the other columns to arrive, advanced

no further.



Meantime, according to the dispositions which said that "the First

Column will march" and so on, the infantry of the belated columns,

commanded by Bennigsen and directed by Toll, had started in due

order and, as always happens, had got somewhere, but not to their

appointed places. As always happens the men, starting cheerfully,

began to halt; murmurs were heard, there was a sense of confusion, and

finally a backward movement. Adjutants and generals galloped about,

shouted, grew angry, quarreled, said they had come quite wrong and

were late, gave vent to a little abuse, and at last gave it all up and

went forward, simply to get somewhere. "We shall get somewhere or

other!" And they did indeed get somewhere, though not to their right

places; a few eventually even got to their right place, but too late

to be of any use and only in time to be fired at. Toll, who in this

battle played the part of Weyrother at Austerlitz, galloped

assiduously from place to place, finding everything upside down

everywhere. Thus he stumbled on Bagovut's corps in a wood when it

was already broad daylight, though the corps should long before have

joined Orlov-Denisov. Excited and vexed by the failure and supposing

that someone must be responsible for it, Toll galloped up to the

commander of the corps and began upbraiding him severely, saying

that he ought to be shot. General Bagovut, a fighting old soldier of

placid temperament, being also upset by all the delay, confusion,

and cross-purposes, fell into a rage to everybody's surprise and quite

contrary to his usual character and said disagreeable things to Toll.



"I prefer not to take lessons from anyone, but I can die with my men

as well as anybody," he said, and advanced with a single division.



Coming out onto a field under the enemy's fire, this brave general

went straight ahead, leading his men under fire, without considering

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in his agitation whether going into action now, with a single

division, would be of any use or no. Danger, cannon balls, and bullets

were just what he needed in his angry mood. One of the first bullets

killed him, and other bullets killed many of his men. And his division

remained under fire for some time quite uselessly.









CHAPTER VII





Meanwhile another column was to have attacked the French from the

front, but Kutuzov accompanied that column. He well knew that

nothing but confusion would come of this battle undertaken against his

will, and as far as was in his power held the troops back. He did

not advance.



He rode silently on his small gray horse, indolently answering

suggestions that they should attack.



"The word attack is always on your tongue, but you don't see that we

are unable to execute complicated maneuvers," said he to

Miloradovich who asked permission to advance.



"We couldn't take Murat prisoner this morning or get to the place in

time, and nothing can be done now!" he replied to someone else.



When Kutuzov was informed that at the French rear--where according

to the reports of the Cossacks there had previously been nobody--there

were now two battalions of Poles, he gave a sidelong glance at Ermolov

who was behind him and to whom he had not spoken since the previous

day.



"You see! They are asking to attack and making plans of all kinds,

but as soon as one gets to business nothing is ready, and the enemy,

forewarned, takes measures accordingly."



Ermolov screwed up his eyes and smiled faintly on hearing these

words. He understood that for him the storm had blown over, and that

Kutuzov would content himself with that hint.



"He's having a little fun at my expense," said Ermolov softly,

nudging with his knee Raevski who was at his side.



Soon after this, Ermolov moved up to Kutuzov and respectfully

remarked:



"It is not too late yet, your Highness--the enemy has not gone away-

if you were to order an attack! If not, the Guards will not so much as

see a little smoke."



Kutuzov did not reply, but when they reported to him that Murat's

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troops were in retreat he ordered an advance, though at every

hundred paces he halted for three quarters of an hour.



The whole battle consisted in what Orlov-Denisov's Cossacks had

done: the rest of the army merely lost some hundreds of men uselessly.



In consequence of this battle Kutuzov received a diamond decoration,

and Bennigsen some diamonds and a hundred thousand rubles, others also

received pleasant recognitions corresponding to their various

grades, and following the battle fresh changes were made in the staff.



"That's how everything is done with us, all topsy-turvy!" said the

Russian officers and generals after the Tarutino battle, letting it be

understood that some fool there is doing things all wrong but that

we ourselves should not have done so, just as people speak today.

But people who talk like that either do not know what they are talking

about or deliberately deceive themselves. No battle--Tarutino,

Borodino, or Austerlitz--takes place as those who planned it

anticipated. That is an essential condition.



A countless number of free forces (for nowhere is man freer than

during a battle, where it is a question of life and death) influence

the course taken by the fight, and that course never can be known in

advance and never coincides with the direction of any one force.



If many simultaneously and variously directed forces act on a

given body, the direction of its motion cannot coincide with any one

of those forces, but will always be a mean--what in mechanics is

represented by the diagonal of a parallelogram of forces.



If in the descriptions given by historians, especially French

ones, we find their wars and battles carried out in accordance with

previously formed plans, the only conclusion to be drawn is that those

descriptions are false.



The battle of Tarutino obviously did not attain the aim Toll had

in view--to lead the troops into action in the order prescribed by the

dispositions; nor that which Count Orlov-Denisov may have had in view-

to take Murat prisoner; nor the result of immediately destroying the

whole corps, which Bennigsen and others may have had in view; nor

the aim of the officer who wished to go into action to distinguish

himself; nor that of the Cossack who wanted more booty than he got,

and so on. But if the aim of the battle was what actually resulted and

what all the Russians of that day desired--to drive the French out

of Russia and destroy their army--it is quite clear that the battle of

Tarutino, just because of its incongruities, was exactly what was

wanted at that stage of the campaign. It would be difficult and even

impossible to imagine any result more opportune than the actual

outcome of this battle. With a minimum of effort and insignificant

losses, despite the greatest confusion, the most important results

of the whole campaign were attained: the transition from retreat to

advance, an exposure of the weakness of the French, and the

administration of that shock which Napoleon's army had only awaited to

begin its flight.

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CHAPTER VIII





Napoleon enters Moscow after the brilliant victory de la Moskowa;

there can be no doubt about the victory for the battlefield remains in

the hands of the French. The Russians retreat and abandon their

ancient capital. Moscow, abounding in provisions, arms, munitions, and

incalculable wealth, is in Napoleon's hands. The Russian army, only

half the strength of the French, does not make a single attempt to

attack for a whole month. Napoleon's position is most brilliant. He

can either fall on the Russian army with double its strength and

destroy it; negotiate an advantageous peace, or in case of a refusal

make a menacing move on Petersburg, or even, in the case of a reverse,

return to Smolensk or Vilna; or remain in Moscow; in short, no special

genius would seem to be required to retain the brilliant position

the French held at that time. For that, only very simple and easy

steps were necessary: not to allow the troops to loot, to prepare

winter clothing--of which there was sufficient in Moscow for the whole

army--and methodically to collect the provisions, of which

(according to the French historians) there were enough in Moscow to

supply the whole army for six months. Yet Napoleon, that greatest of

all geniuses, who the historians declare had control of the army, took

none of these steps.



He not merely did nothing of the kind, but on the contrary he used

his power to select the most foolish and ruinous of all the courses

open to him. Of all that Napoleon might have done: wintering in

Moscow, advancing on Petersburg or on Nizhni-Novgorod, or retiring

by a more northerly or more southerly route (say by the road Kutuzov

afterwards took), nothing more stupid or disastrous can be imagined

than what he actually did. He remained in Moscow till October, letting

the troops plunder the city; then, hesitating whether to leave a

garrison behind him, he quitted Moscow, approached Kutuzov without

joining battle, turned to the right and reached Malo-Yaroslavets,

again without attempting to break through and take the road Kutuzov

took, but retiring instead to Mozhaysk along the devastated Smolensk

road. Nothing more stupid than that could have been devised, or more

disastrous for the army, as the sequel showed. Had Napoleon's aim been

to destroy his army, the most skillful strategist could hardly have

devised any series of actions that would so completely have

accomplished that purpose, independently of anything the Russian

army might do.



Napoleon, the man of genius, did this! But to say that he

destroyed his army because he wished to, or because he was very

stupid, would be as unjust as to say that he had brought his troops to

Moscow because he wished to and because he was very clever and a

genius.



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In both cases his personal activity, having no more force than the

personal activity of any soldier, merely coincided with the laws

that guided the event.



The historians quite falsely represent Napoleon's faculties as

having weakened in Moscow, and do so only because the results did

not justify his actions. He employed all his ability and strength to

do the best he could for himself and his army, as he had done

previously and as he did subsequently in 1813. His activity at that

time was no less astounding than it was in Egypt, in Italy, in

Austria, and in Prussia. We do not know for certain in how far his

genius was genuine in Egypt--where forty centuries looked down upon

his grandeur--for his great exploits there are all told us by

Frenchmen. We cannot accurately estimate his genius in Austria or

Prussia, for we have to draw our information from French or German

sources, and the incomprehensible surrender of whole corps without

fighting and of fortresses without a siege must incline Germans to

recognize his genius as the only explanation of the war carried on

in Germany. But we, thank God, have no need to recognize his genius in

order to hide our shame. We have paid for the right to look at the

matter plainly and simply, and we will not abandon that right.



His activity in Moscow was as amazing and as full of genius as

elsewhere. Order after order order and plan after plan were issued

by him from the time he entered Moscow till the time he left it. The

absence of citizens and of a deputation, and even the burning of

Moscow, did not disconcert him. He did not lose sight either of the

welfare of his army or of the doings of the enemy, or of the welfare

of the people of Russia, or of the direction of affairs in Paris, or

of diplomatic considerations concerning the terms of the anticipated

peace.









CHAPTER IX





With regard to military matters, Napoleon immediately on his entry

into Moscow gave General Sabastiani strict orders to observe the

movements of the Russian army, sent army corps out along the different

roads, and charged Murat to find Kutuzov. Then he gave careful

directions about the fortification of the Kremlin, and drew up a

brilliant plan for a future campaign over the whole map of Russia.



With regard to diplomatic questions, Napoleon summoned Captain

Yakovlev, who had been robbed and was in rags and did not know how

to get out of Moscow, minutely explained to him his whole policy and

his magnanimity, and having written a letter to the Emperor

Alexander in which he considered it his duty to inform his Friend

and Brother that Rostopchin had managed affairs badly in Moscow, he

dispatched Yakovlev to Petersburg.



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Having similarly explained his views and his magnanimity to

Tutolmin, he dispatched that old man also to Petersburg to negotiate.



With regard to legal matters, immediately after the fires he gave

orders to find and execute the incendiaries. And the scoundrel

Rostopchin was punished by an order to burn down his houses.



With regard to administrative matters, Moscow was granted a

constitution. A municipality was established and the following

announcement issued:





INHABITANTS OF MOSCOW!



Your misfortunes are cruel, but His Majesty the Emperor and King

desires to arrest their course. Terrible examples have taught you

how he punishes disobedience and crime. Strict measures have been

taken to put an end to disorder and to re-establish public security. A

paternal administration, chosen from among yourselves, will form

your municipality or city government. It will take care of you, of

your needs, and of your welfare. Its members will be distinguished

by a red ribbon worn across the shoulder, and the mayor of the city

will wear a white belt as well. But when not on duty they will only

wear a red ribbon round the left arm.



The city police is established on its former footing, and better

order already prevails in consequence of its activity. The

government has appointed two commissaries general, or chiefs of

police, and twenty commissaries or captains of wards have been

appointed to the different wards of the city. You will recognize

them by the white ribbon they will wear on the left arm. Several

churches of different denominations are open, and divine service is

performed in them unhindered. Your fellow citizens are returning every

day to their homes. and orders have been given that they should find

in them the help and protection due to their misfortunes. These are

the measures the government has adopted to re-establish order and

relieve your condition. But to achieve this aim it is necessary that

you should add your efforts and should, if possible, forget the

misfortunes you have suffered, should entertain the hope of a less

cruel fate, should be certain that inevitable and ignominious death

awaits those who make any attempt on your persons or on what remains

of your property, and finally that you should not doubt that these

will be safeguarded, since such is the will of the greatest and most

just of monarchs. Soldiers and citizens, of whatever nation you may

be, re-establish public confidence, the source of the welfare of a

state, live like brothers, render mutual aid and protection one to

another, unite to defeat the intentions of the evil-minded, obey the

military and civil authorities, and your tears will soon cease to

flow!





With regard to supplies for the army, Napoleon decreed that all

the troops in turn should enter Moscow a la maraude* to obtain

provisions for themselves, so that the army might have its future

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provided for.





*As looters.





With regard to religion, Napoleon ordered the priests to be

brought back and services to be again performed in the churches.



With regard to commerce and to provisioning the army, the

following was placarded everywhere:





PROCLAMATION!



You, peaceful inhabitants of Moscow, artisans and workmen whom

misfortune has driven from the city, and you scattered tillers of

the soil, still kept out in the fields by groundless fear, listen!

Tranquillity is returning to this capital and order is being

restored in it. Your fellow countrymen are emerging boldly from

their hiding places on finding that they are respected. Any violence

to them or to their property is promptly punished. His Majesty the

Emperor and King protects them, and considers no one among you his

enemy except those who disobey his orders. He desires to end your

misfortunes and restore you to your homes and families. Respond,

therefore, to his benevolent intentions and come to us without fear.

Inhabitants, return with confidence to your abodes! You will soon find

means of satisfying your needs. Craftsmen and industrious artisans,

return to your work, your houses, your shops, where the protection

of guards awaits you! You shall receive proper pay for your work.

And lastly you too, peasants, come from the forests where you are

hiding in terror, return to your huts without fear, in full

assurance that you will find protection! Markets are established in

the city where peasants can bring their surplus supplies and the

products of the soil. The government has taken the following steps

to ensure freedom of sale for them: (1) From today, peasants,

husbandmen, and those living in the neighborhood of Moscow may without

any danger bring their supplies of all kinds to two appointed markets,

of which one is on the Mokhovaya Street and the other at the Provision

Market. (2) Such supplies will be bought from them at such prices as

seller and buyer may agree on, and if a seller is unable to obtain a

fair price he will be free to take his goods back to his village and

no one may hinder him under any pretense. (3) Sunday and Wednesday

of each week are appointed as the chief market days and to that end

a sufficient number of troops will be stationed along the highroads on

Tuesdays and Saturdays at such distances from the town as to protect

the carts. (4) Similar measures will be taken that peasants with their

carts and horses may meet with no hindrance on their return journey.

(5) Steps will immediately be taken to re-establish ordinary trading.



Inhabitants of the city and villages, and you, workingmen and

artisans, to whatever nation you belong, you are called on to carry

out the paternal intentions of His Majesty the Emperor and King and to

co-operate with him for the public welfare! Lay your respect and

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confidence at his feet and do not delay to unite with us!





With the object of raising the spirits of the troops and of the

people, reviews were constantly held and rewards distributed. The

Emperor rode through the streets to comfort the inhabitants, and,

despite his preoccupation with state affairs, himself visited the

theaters that were established by his order.



In regard to philanthropy, the greatest virtue of crowned heads,

Napoleon also did all in his power. He caused the words Maison de ma

Mere to be inscribed on the charitable institutions, thereby combining

tender filial affection with the majestic benevolence of a monarch. He

visited the Foundling Hospital and, allowing the orphans saved by

him to kiss his white hands, graciously conversed with Tutolmin. Then,

as Thiers eloquently recounts, he ordered his soldiers to be paid in

forged Russian money which he had prepared: "Raising the use of

these means by an act worthy of himself and of the French army, he let

relief be distributed to those who had been burned out. But as food

was too precious to be given to foreigners, who were for the most part

enemies, Napoleon preferred to supply them with money with which to

purchase food from outside, and had paper rubles distributed to them."



With reference to army discipline, orders were continually being

issued to inflict severe punishment for the nonperformance of military

duties and to suppress robbery.









CHAPTER X





But strange to say, all these measures, efforts, and plans--which

were not at all worse than others issued in similar circumstances--did

not affect the essence of the matter but, like the hands of a clock

detached from the mechanism, swung about in an arbitrary and aimless

way without engaging the cogwheels.



With reference to the military side--the plan of campaign--that work

of genius of which Thiers remarks that, "His genius never devised

anything more profound, more skillful, or more admirable," and

enters into a polemic with M. Fain to prove that this work of genius

must be referred not to the fourth but to the fifteenth of October-

that plan never was or could be executed, for it was quite out of

touch with the facts of the case. The fortifying of the Kremlin, for

which la Mosquee (as Napoleon termed the church of Basil the

Beatified) was to have been razed to the ground, proved quite useless.

The mining of the Kremlin only helped toward fulfilling Napoleon's

wish that it should be blown up when he left Moscow--as a child

wants the floor on which he has hurt himself to be beaten. The pursuit

of the Russian army, about which Napoleon was so concerned, produced

an unheard-of result. The French generals lost touch with the

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Russian army of sixty thousand men, and according to Thiers it was

only eventually found, like a lost pin, by the skill--and apparently

the genius--of Murat.



With reference to diplomacy, all Napoleon's arguments as to his

magnanimity and justice, both to Tutolmin and to Yakovlev (whose chief

concern was to obtain a greatcoat and a conveyance), proved useless;

Alexander did not receive these envoys and did not reply to their

embassage.



With regard to legal matters, after the execution of the supposed

incendiaries the rest of Moscow burned down.



With regard to administrative matters, the establishment of a

municipality did not stop the robberies and was only of use to certain

people who formed part of that municipality and under pretext of

preserving order looted Moscow or saved their own property from

being looted.



With regard to religion, as to which in Egypt matters had so

easily been settled by Napoleon's visit to a mosque, no results were

achieved. Two or three priests who were found in Moscow did try to

carry out Napoleon's wish, but one of them was slapped in the face

by a French soldier while conducting service, and a French official

reported of another that: "The priest whom I found and invited to

say Mass cleaned and locked up the church. That night the doors were

again broken open, the padlocks smashed, the books mutilated, and

other disorders perpetrated."



With reference to commerce, the proclamation to industrious

workmen and to peasants evoked no response. There were no

industrious workmen, and the peasants caught the commissaries who

ventured too far out of town with the proclamation and killed them.



As to the theaters for the entertainment of the people and the

troops, these did not meet with success either. The theaters set up in

the Kremlin and in Posnyakov's house were closed again at once because

the actors and actresses were robbed.



Even philanthropy did not have the desired effect. The genuine as

well as the false paper money which flooded Moscow lost its value. The

French, collecting booty, cared only for gold. Not only was the

paper money valueless which Napoleon so graciously distributed to

the unfortunate, but even silver lost its value in relation to gold.



But the most amazing example of the ineffectiveness of the orders

given by the authorities at that time was Napoleon's attempt to stop

the looting and re-establish discipline.



This is what the army authorities were reporting:



"Looting continues in the city despite the decrees against it. Order

is not yet restored and not a single merchant is carrying on trade

in a lawful manner. The sutlers alone venture to trade, and they

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sell stolen goods."



"The neighborhood of my ward continues to be pillaged by soldiers of

the 3rd Corps who, not satisfied with taking from the unfortunate

inhabitants hiding in the cellars the little they have left, even have

the ferocity to wound them with their sabers, as I have repeatedly

witnessed."



"Nothing new, except that the soldiers are robbing and pillaging-

October 9."



"Robbery and pillaging continue. There is a band of thieves in our

district who ought to be arrested by a strong force--October 11."



"The Emperor is extremely displeased that despite the strict

orders to stop pillage, parties of marauding Guards are continually

seen returning to the Kremlin. Among the Old Guard disorder and

pillage were renewed more violently than ever yesterday evening,

last night, and today. The Emperor sees with regret that the picked

soldiers appointed to guard his person, who should set an example of

discipline, carry disobedience to such a point that they break into

the cellars and stores containing army supplies. Others have disgraced

themselves to the extent of disobeying sentinels and officers, and

have abused and beaten them."



"The Grand Marshal of the palace," wrote the governor, "complains

bitterly that in spite of repeated orders, the soldiers continue to

commit nuisances in all the courtyards and even under the very windows

of the Emperor."



That army, like a herd of cattle run wild and trampling underfoot

the provender which might have saved it from starvation, disintegrated

and perished with each additional day it remained in Moscow. But it

did not go away.



It began to run away only when suddenly seized by a panic caused

by the capture of transport trains on the Smolensk road, and by the

battle of Tarutino. The news of that battle of Tarutino,

unexpectedly received by Napoleon at a review, evoked in him a

desire to punish the Russians (Thiers says), and he issued the order

for departure which the whole army was demanding.



Fleeing from Moscow the soldiers took with them everything they

had stolen. Napoleon, too, carried away his own personal tresor, but

on seeing the baggage trains that impeded the army, he was (Thiers

says) horror-struck. And yet with his experience of war he did not

order all the superfluous vehicles to be burned, as he had done with

those of a certain marshal when approaching Moscow. He gazed at the

caleches and carriages in which soldiers were riding and remarked that

it was a very good thing, as those vehicles could be used to carry

provisions, the sick, and the wounded.



The plight of the whole army resembled that of a wounded animal

which feels it is perishing and does not know what it is doing. To

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study the skillful tactics and aims of Napoleon and his army from

the time it entered Moscow till it was destroyed is like studying

the dying leaps and shudders of a mortally wounded animal. Very

often a wounded animal, hearing a rustle, rushes straight at the

hunter's gun, runs forward and back again, and hastens its own end.

Napoleon, under pressure from his whole army, did the same thing.

The rustle of the battle of Tarutino frightened the beast, and it

rushed forward onto the hunter's gun, reached him, turned back, and

finally--like any wild beast--ran back along the most

disadvantageous and dangerous path, where the old scent was familiar.



During the whole of that period Napoleon, who seems to us to have

been the leader of all these movements--as the figurehead of a ship

may seem to a savage to guide the vessel--acted like a child who,

holding a couple of strings inside a carriage, thinks he is driving

it.









CHAPTER XI





Early in the morning of the sixth of October Pierre went out of

the shed, and on returning stopped by the door to play with a little

blue-gray dog, with a long body and short bandy legs, that jumped

about him. This little dog lived in their shed, sleeping beside

Karataev at night; it sometimes made excursions into the town but

always returned again. Probably it had never had an owner, and it

still belonged to nobody and had no name. The French called it Azor;

the soldier who told stories called it Femgalka; Karataev and others

called it Gray, or sometimes Flabby. Its lack of a master, a name,

or even of a breed or any definite color did not seem to trouble the

blue-gray dog in the least. Its furry tail stood up firm and round

as a plume, its bandy legs served it so well that it would often

gracefully lift a hind leg and run very easily and quickly on three

legs, as if disdaining to use all four. Everything pleased it. Now

it would roll on its back, yelping with delight, now bask in the sun

with a thoughtful air of importance, and now frolic about playing with

a chip of wood or a straw.



Pierre's attire by now consisted of a dirty torn shirt (the only

remnant of his former clothing), a pair of soldier's trousers which by

Karataev's advice he tied with string round the ankles for warmth, and

a peasant coat and cap. Physically he had changed much during this

time. He no longer seemed stout, though he still had the appearance of

solidity and strength hereditary in his family. A beard and mustache

covered the lower part of his face, and a tangle of hair, infested

with lice, curled round his head like a cap. The look of his eyes

was resolute, calm, and animatedly alert, as never before. The

former slackness which had shown itself even in his eyes was now

replaced by an energetic readiness for action and resistance. His feet

were bare.

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Pierre first looked down the field across which vehicles and

horsemen were passing that morning, then into the distance across

the river, then at the dog who was pretending to be in earnest about

biting him, and then at his bare feet which he placed with pleasure in

various positions, moving his dirty thick big toes. Every time he

looked at his bare feet a smile of animated self-satisfaction

flitted across his face. The sight of them reminded him of all he

had experienced and learned during these weeks and this recollection

was pleasant to him.



For some days the weather had been calm and clear with slight frosts

in the mornings--what is called an "old wives' summer."



In the sunshine the air was warm, and that warmth was particularly

pleasant with the invigorating freshness of the morning frost still in

the air.



On everything--far and near--lay the magic crystal glitter seen only

at that time autumn. The Sparrow Hills were visible in the distance,

with the village, the church, and the large white house. The bare

trees, the sand, the bricks and roofs of the houses, the green

church spire, and the corners of the white house in the distance,

all stood out in the transparent air in most delicate outline and with

unnatural clearness. Near by could be seen the familiar ruins of a

half-burned mansion occupied by the French, with lilac bushes still

showing dark green beside the fence. And even that ruined and befouled

house--which in dull weather was repulsively ugly--seemed quietly

beautiful now, in the clear, motionless brilliance.



A French corporal, with coat unbuttoned in a homely way, a

skullcap on his head, and a short pipe in his mouth, came from

behind a corner of the shed and approached Pierre with a friendly

wink.



"What sunshine, Monsieur Kiril!" (Their name for Pierre.) "Eh?

Just like spring!"



And the corporal leaned against the door and offered Pierre his

pipe, though whenever he offered it Pierre always declined it.



"To be on the march in such weather..." he began.



Pierre inquired what was being said about leaving, and the

corporal told him that nearly all the troops were starting and there

ought to be an order about the prisoners that day. Sokolov, one of the

soldiers in the shed with Pierre, was dying, and Pierre told the

corporal that something should be done about him. The corporal replied

that Pierre need not worry about that as they had an ambulance and a

permanent hospital and arrangements would be made for the sick, and

that in general everything that could happen had been foreseen by

the authorities.



"Besides, Monsieur Kiril, you have only to say a word to the

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captain, you know. He is a man who never forgets anything. Speak to

the captain when he makes his round, he will do anything for you."



(The captain of whom the corporal spoke often had long chats with

Pierre and showed him all sorts of favors.)



"'You see, St. Thomas,' he said to me the other day. 'Monsieur Kiril

is a man of education, who speaks French. He is a Russian seigneur who

has had misfortunes, but he is a man. He knows what's what.... If he

wants anything and asks me, he won't get a refusal. When one has

studied, you see, one likes education and well-bred people.' It is for

your sake I mention it, Monsieur Kiril. The other day if it had not

been for you that affair would have ended ill."



And after chatting a while longer, the corporal went away. (The

affair he had alluded to had happened a few days before--a fight

between the prisoners and the French soldiers, in which Pierre had

succeeded in pacifying his comrades.) Some of the prisoners who had

heard Pierre talking to the corporal immediately asked what the

Frenchman had said. While Pierre was repeating what he had been told

about the army leaving Moscow, a thin, sallow, tattered French soldier

came up to the door of the shed. Rapidly and timidly raising his

fingers to his forehead by way of greeting, he asked Pierre whether

the soldier Platoche to whom he had given a shirt to sew was in that

shed.



A week before the French had had boot leather and linen issued to

them, which they had given out to the prisoners to make up into

boots and shirts for them.



"Ready, ready, dear fellow!" said Karataev, coming out with a neatly

folded shirt.



Karataev, on account of the warm weather and for convenience at

work, was wearing only trousers and a tattered shirt as black as soot.

His hair was bound round, workman fashion, with a wisp of lime-tree

bast, and his round face seemed rounder and pleasanter than ever.



"A promise is own brother to performance! I said Friday and here

it is, ready," said Platon, smiling and unfolding the shirt he had

sewn.



The Frenchman glanced around uneasily and then, as if overcoming his

hesitation, rapidly threw off his uniform and put on the shirt. He had

a long, greasy, flowered silk waistcoat next to his sallow, thin

bare body, but no shirt. He was evidently afraid the prisoners looking

on would laugh at him, and thrust his head into the shirt hurriedly.

None of the prisoners said a word.



"See, it fits well!" Platon kept repeating, pulling the shirt

straight.



The Frenchman, having pushed his head and hands through, without

raising his eyes, looked down at the shirt and examined the seams.

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"You see, dear man, this is not a sewing shop, and I had no proper

tools; and, as they say, one needs a tool even to kill a louse,"

said Platon with one of his round smiles, obviously pleased with his

work.



"It's good, quite good, thank you," said the Frenchman, in French,

"but there must be some linen left over.



"It will fit better still when it sets to your body," said Karataev,

still admiring his handiwork. "You'll be nice and comfortable...."



"Thanks, thanks, old fellow.... But the bits left over?" said the

Frenchman again and smiled. He took out an assignation ruble note

and gave it to Karataev. "But give me the pieces that are over."



Pierre saw that Platon did not want to understand what the Frenchman

was saying, and he looked on without interfering. Karataev thanked the

Frenchman for the money and went on admiring his own work. The

Frenchman insisted on having the pieces returned that were left over

and asked Pierre to translate what he said.



"What does he want the bits for?" said Karataev. "They'd make fine

leg bands for us. Well, never mind."



And Karataev, with a suddenly changed and saddened expression,

took a small bundle of scraps from inside his shirt and gave it to the

Frenchman without looking at him. "Oh dear!" muttered Karataev and

went away. The Frenchman looked at the linen, considered for a moment,

then looked inquiringly at Pierre and, as if Pierre's look had told

him something, suddenly blushed and shouted in a squeaky voice:



"Platoche! Eh, Platoche! Keep them yourself!" And handing back the

odd bits he turned and went out.



"There, look at that," said Karataev, swaying his head. "People said

they were not Christians, but they too have souls. It's what the old

folk used to say: 'A sweating hand's an open hand, a dry hand's

close.' He's naked, but yet he's given it back."



Karataev smiled thoughtfully and was silent awhile looking at the

pieces.



"But they'll make grand leg bands, dear friend," he said, and went

back into the shed.









CHAPTER XII





Four weeks had passed since Pierre had been taken prisoner and

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though the French had offered to move him from the men's to the

officers' shed, he had stayed in the shed where he was first put.



In burned and devastated Moscow Pierre experienced almost the

extreme limits of privation a man can endure; but thanks to his

physical strength and health, of which he had till then been

unconscious, and thanks especially to the fact that the privations

came so gradually that it was impossible to say when they began, he

endured his position not only lightly but joyfully. And just at this

time he obtained the tranquillity and ease of mind he had formerly

striven in vain to reach. He had long sought in different ways that

tranquillity of mind, that inner harmony which had so impressed him in

the soldiers at the battle of Borodino. He had sought it in

philanthropy, in Freemasonry, in the dissipations of town life, in

wine, in heroic feats of self-sacrifice, and in romantic love for

Natasha; he had sought it by reasoning--and all these quests and

experiments had failed him. And now without thinking about it he had

found that peace and inner harmony only through the horror of death,

through privation, and through what he recognized in Karataev.



Those dreadful moments he had lived through at the executions had as

it were forever washed away from his imagination and memory the

agitating thoughts and feelings that had formerly seemed so important.

It did not now occur to him to think of Russia, or the war, or

politics, or Napoleon. It was plain to him that all these things

were no business of his, and that he was not called on to judge

concerning them and therefore could not do so. "Russia and summer

weather are not bound together," he thought, repeating words of

Karataev's which he found strangely consoling. His intention of

killing Napoleon and his calculations of the cabalistic number of

the beast of the Apocalypse now seemed to him meaningless and even

ridiculous. His anger with his wife and anxiety that his name should

not be smirched now seemed not merely trivial but even amusing. What

concern was it of his that somewhere or other that woman was leading

the life she preferred? What did it matter to anybody, and

especially to him, whether or not they found out that their prisoner's

name was Count Bezukhov?



He now often remembered his conversation with Prince Andrew and

quite agreed with him, though he understood Prince Andrew's thoughts

somewhat differently. Prince Andrew had thought and said that

happiness could only be negative, but had said it with a shade of

bitterness and irony as though he was really saying that all desire

for positive happiness is implanted in us merely to torment us and

never be satisfied. But Pierre believed it without any mental

reservation. The absence of suffering, the satisfaction of one's needs

and consequent freedom in the choice of one's occupation, that is,

of one's way of life, now seemed to Pierre to be indubitably man's

highest happiness. Here and now for the first time he fully

appreciated the enjoyment of eating when he wanted to eat, drinking

when he wanted to drink, sleeping when he wanted to sleep, of warmth

when he was cold, of talking to a fellow man when he wished to talk

and to hear a human voice. The satisfaction of one's needs--good food,

cleanliness, and freedom--now that he was deprived of all this, seemed

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to Pierre to constitute perfect happiness; and the choice of

occupation, that is, of his way of life--now that that was so

restricted--seemed to him such an easy matter that he forgot that a

superfluity of the comforts of life destroys all joy in satisfying

one's needs, while great freedom in the choice of occupation--such

freedom as his wealth, his education, and his social position had

given him in his own life--is just what makes the choice of occupation

insolubly difficult and destroys the desire and possibility of

having an occupation.



All Pierre's daydreams now turned on the time when he would be free.

Yet subsequently, and for the rest of his life, he thought and spoke

with enthusiasm of that month of captivity, of those irrecoverable,

strong, joyful sensations, and chiefly of the complete peace of mind

and inner freedom which he experienced only during those weeks.



When on the first day he got up early, went out of the shed at dawn,

and saw the cupolas and crosses of the New Convent of the Virgin still

dark at first, the hoarfrost on the dusty grass, the Sparrow Hills,

and the wooded banks above the winding river vanishing in the purple

distance, when he felt the contact of the fresh air and heard the

noise of the crows flying from Moscow across the field, and when

afterwards light gleamed from the east and the sun's rim appeared

solemnly from behind a cloud, and the cupolas and crosses, the

hoarfrost, the distance and the river, all began to sparkle in the

glad light--Pierre felt a new joy and strength in life such as he

had never before known. And this not only stayed with him during the

whole of his imprisonment, but even grew in strength as the

hardships of his position increased.



That feeling of alertness and of readiness for anything was still

further strengthened in him by the high opinion his fellow prisoners

formed of him soon after his arrival at the shed. With his knowledge

of languages, the respect shown him by the French, his simplicity, his

readiness to give anything asked of him (he received the allowance

of three rubles a week made to officers); with his strength, which

he showed to the soldiers by pressing nails into the walls of the hut;

his gentleness to his companions, and his capacity for sitting still

and thinking without doing anything (which seemed to them

incomprehensible), he appeared to them a rather mysterious and

superior being. The very qualities that had been a hindrance, if not

actually harmful, to him in the world he had lived in--his strength,

his disdain for the comforts of life, his absent-mindedness and

simplicity--here among these people gave him almost the status of a

hero. And Pierre felt that their opinion placed responsibilities

upon him.









CHAPTER XIII





The French evacuation began on the night between the sixth and

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seventh of October: kitchens and sheds were dismantled, carts

loaded, and troops and baggage trains started.



At seven in the morning a French convoy in marching trim, wearing

shakos and carrying muskets, knapsacks, and enormous sacks, stood in

front of the sheds, and animated French talk mingled with curses

sounded all along the lines.



In the shed everyone was ready, dressed, belted, shod, and only

awaited the order to start. The sick soldier, Sokolov, pale and thin

with dark shadows round his eyes, alone sat in his place barefoot

and not dressed. His eyes, prominent from the emaciation of his

face, gazed inquiringly at his comrades who were paying no attention

to him, and he moaned regularly and quietly. It was evidently not so

much his sufferings that caused him to moan (he had dysentery) as

his fear and grief at being left alone.



Pierre, girt with a rope round his waist and wearing shoes

Karataev had made for him from some leather a French soldier had

torn off a tea chest and brought to have his boots mended with, went

up to the sick man and squatted down beside him.



"You know, Sokolov, they are not all going away! They have a

hospital here. You may be better off than we others," said Pierre.



"O Lord! Oh, it will be the death of me! O Lord!" moaned the man

in a louder voice.



"I'll go and ask them again directly," said Pierre, rising and going

to the door of the shed.



Just as Pierre reached the door, the corporal who had offered him

a pipe the day before came up to it with two soldiers. The corporal

and soldiers were in marching kit with knapsacks and shakos that had

metal straps, and these changed their familiar faces.



The corporal came, according to orders, to shut the door. The

prisoners had to be counted before being let out.



"Corporal, what will they do with the sick man?..." Pierre began.



But even as he spoke he began to doubt whether this was the corporal

he knew or a stranger, so unlike himself did the corporal seem at that

moment. Moreover, just as Pierre was speaking a sharp rattle of

drums was suddenly heard from both sides. The corporal frowned at

Pierre's words and, uttering some meaningless oaths, slammed the door.

The shed became semidark, and the sharp rattle of the drums on two

sides drowned the sick man's groans.



"There it is!... It again!..." said Pierre to himself, and an

involuntary shudder ran down his spine. In the corporal's changed

face, in the sound of his voice, in the stirring and deafening noise

of the drums, he recognized that mysterious, callous force which

compelled people against their will to kill their fellow men--that

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force the effect of which he had witnessed during the executions. To

fear or to try to escape that force, to address entreaties or

exhortations to those who served as its tools, was useless. Pierre

knew this now. One had to wait and endure. He did not again go to

the sick man, nor turn to look at him, but stood frowning by the

door of the hut.



When that door was opened and the prisoners, crowding against one

another like a flock of sheep, squeezed into the exit, Pierre pushed

his way forward and approached that very captain who as the corporal

had assured him was ready to do anything for him. The captain was also

in marching kit, and on his cold face appeared that same it which

Pierre had recognized in the corporal's words and in the roll of the

drums.



"Pass on, pass on!" the captain reiterated, frowning sternly, and

looking at the prisoners who thronged past him.



Pierre went up to him, though he knew his attempt would be vain.



"What now?" the officer asked with a cold look as if not recognizing

Pierre.



Pierre told him about the sick man.



"He'll manage to walk, devil take him!" said the captain. "Pass

on, pass on!" he continued without looking at Pierre.



"But he is dying," Pierre again began.



"Be so good..." shouted the captain, frowning angrily.



"Dram-da-da-dam, dam-dam..." rattled the drums, and Pierre

understood that this mysterious force completely controlled these

men and that it was now useless to say any more.



The officer prisoners were separated from the soldiers and told to

march in front. There were about thirty officers, with Pierre among

them, and about three hundred men.



The officers, who had come from the other sheds, were all

strangers to Pierre and much better dressed than he. They looked at

him and at his shoes mistrustfully, as at an alien. Not far from him

walked a fat major with a sallow, bloated, angry face, who was wearing

a Kazan dressing grown tied round with a towel, and who evidently

enjoyed the respect of his fellow prisoners. He kept one hand, in

which he clasped his tobacco pouch, inside the bosom of his dressing

gown and held the stem of his pipe firmly with the other. Panting

and puffing, the major grumbled and growled at everybody because he

thought he was being pushed and that they were all hurrying when

they had nowhere to hurry to and were all surprised at something

when there was nothing to be surprised at. Another, a thin little

officer, was speaking to everyone, conjecturing where they were now

being taken and how far they would get that day. An official in felt

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boots and wearing a commissariat uniform ran round from side to side

and gazed at the ruins of Moscow, loudly announcing his observations

as to what had been burned down and what this or that part of the city

was that they could see. A third officer, who by his accent was a

Pole, disputed with the commissariat officer, arguing that he was

mistaken in his identification of the different wards of Moscow.



"What are you disputing about?" said the major angrily. "What does

it matter whether it is St. Nicholas or St. Blasius? You see it's

burned down, and there's an end of it.... What are you pushing for?

Isn't the road wide enough?" said he, turning to a man behind him

who was not pushing him at all.



"Oh, oh, oh! What have they done?" the prisoners on one side and

another were heard saying as they gazed on the charred ruins. "All

beyond the river, and Zubova, and in the Kremlin.... Just look!

There's not half of it left. Yes, I told you--the whole quarter beyond

the river, and so it is."



"Well, you know it's burned, so what's the use of talking?" said the

major.



As they passed near a church in the Khamovniki (one of the few

unburned quarters of Moscow) the whole mass of prisoners suddenly

started to one side and exclamations of horror and disgust were heard.



"Ah, the villains! What heathens! Yes; dead, dead, so he is... And

smeared with something!"



Pierre too drew near the church where the thing was that evoked

these exclamations, and dimly made out something leaning against the

palings surrounding the church. From the words of his comrades who saw

better than he did, he found that this was the body of a man, set

upright against the palings with its face smeared with soot.



"Go on! What the devil... Go on! Thirty thousand devils!..." the

convoy guards began cursing and the French soldiers, with fresh

virulence, drove away with their swords the crowd of prisoners who

were gazing at the dead man.









CHAPTER XIV





Through the cross streets of the Khamovniki quarter the prisoners

marched, followed only by their escort and the vehicles and wagons

belonging to that escort, but when they reached the supply stores they

came among a huge and closely packed train of artillery mingled with

private vehicles.



At the bridge they all halted, waiting for those in front to get

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across. From the bridge they had a view of endless lines of moving

baggage trains before and behind them. To the right, where the

Kaluga road turns near Neskuchny, endless rows of troops and carts

stretched away into the distance. These were troops of Beauharnais'

corps which had started before any of the others. Behind, along the

riverside and across the Stone Bridge, were Ney's troops and

transport.



Davout's troops, in whose charge were the prisoners, were crossing

the Crimean bridge and some were already debouching into the Kaluga

road. But the baggage trains stretched out so that the last of

Beauharnais' train had not yet got out of Moscow and reached the

Kaluga road when the vanguard of Ney's army was already emerging

from the Great Ordynka Street.



When they had crossed the Crimean bridge the prisoners moved a few

steps forward, halted, and again moved on, and from all sides vehicles

and men crowded closer and closer together. They advanced the few

hundred paces that separated the bridge from the Kaluga road, taking

more than an hour to do so, and came out upon the square where the

streets of the Transmoskva ward and the Kaluga road converge, and

the prisoners jammed close together had to stand for some hours at

that crossway. From all sides, like the roar of the sea, were heard

the rattle of wheels, the tramp of feet, and incessant shouts of anger

and abuse. Pierre stood pressed against the wall of a charred house,

listening to that noise which mingled in his imagination with the roll

of the drums.



To get a better view, several officer prisoners climbed onto the

wall of the half-burned house against which Pierre was leaning.



"What crowds! Just look at the crowds!... They've loaded goods

even on the cannon! Look there, those are furs!" they exclaimed. "Just

see what the blackguards have looted.... There! See what that one

has behind in the cart.... Why, those are settings taken from some

icons, by heaven!... Oh, the rascals!... See how that fellow has

loaded himself up, he can hardly walk! Good lord, they've even grabbed

those chaises!... See that fellow there sitting on the trunks....

Heavens! They're fighting."



"That's right, hit him on the snout--on his snout! Like this, we

shan't get away before evening. Look, look there.... Why, that must be

Napoleon's own. See what horses! And the monograms with a crown!

It's like a portable house.... That fellow's dropped his sack and

doesn't see it. Fighting again... A woman with a baby, and not

bad-looking either! Yes, I dare say, that's the way they'll let you

pass... Just look, there's no end to it. Russian wenches, by heaven,

so they are! In carriages--see how comfortably they've settled

themselves!"



Again, as at the church in Khamovniki, a wave of general curiosity

bore all the prisoners forward onto the road, and Pierre, thanks to

his stature, saw over the heads of the others what so attracted

their curiosity. In three carriages involved among the munition carts,

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closely squeezed together, sat women with rouged faces, dressed in

glaring colors, who were shouting something in shrill voices.



From the moment Pierre had recognized the appearance of the

mysterious force nothing had seemed to him strange or dreadful:

neither the corpse smeared with soot for fun nor these women

hurrying away nor the burned ruins of Moscow. All that he now

witnessed scarcely made an impression on him--as if his soul, making

ready for a hard struggle, refused to receive impressions that might

weaken it.



The women's vehicles drove by. Behind them came more carts,

soldiers, wagons, soldiers, gun carriages, carriages, soldiers,

ammunition carts, more soldiers, and now and then women.



Pierre did not see the people as individuals but saw their movement.



All these people and horses seemed driven forward by some

invisible power. During the hour Pierre watched them they all came

flowing from the different streets with one and the same desire to get

on quickly; they all jostled one another, began to grow angry and to

fight, white teeth gleamed, brows frowned, ever the same words of

abuse flew from side to side, and all the faces bore the same

swaggeringly resolute and coldly cruel expression that had struck

Pierre that morning on the corporal's face when the drums were

beating.



It was not till nearly evening that the officer commanding the

escort collected his men and with shouts and quarrels forced his way

in among the baggage trains, and the prisoners, hemmed in on all

sides, emerged onto the Kaluga road.



They marched very quickly, without resting, and halted only when the

sun began to set. The baggage carts drew up close together and the men

began to prepare for their night's rest. They all appeared angry and

dissatisfied. For a long time, oaths, angry shouts, and fighting could

be heard from all sides. A carriage that followed the escort ran

into one of the carts and knocked a hole in it with its pole.

Several soldiers ran toward the cart from different sides: some beat

the carriage horses on their heads, turning them aside, others

fought among themselves, and Pierre saw that one German was badly

wounded on the head by a sword.



It seemed that all these men, now that they had stopped amid

fields in the chill dusk of the autumn evening, experienced one and

the same feeling of unpleasant awakening from the hurry and

eagerness to push on that had seized them at the start. Once at a

standstill they all seemed to understand that they did not yet know

where they were going, and that much that was painful and difficult

awaited them on this journey.



During this halt the escort treated the prisoners even worse than

they had done at the start. It was here that the prisoners for the

first time received horseflesh for their meat ration.

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From the officer down to the lowest soldier they showed what

seemed like personal spite against each of the prisoners, in

unexpected contrast to their former friendly relations.



This spite increased still more when, on calling over the roll of

prisoners, it was found that in the bustle of leaving Moscow one

Russian soldier, who had pretended to suffer from colic, had

escaped. Pierre saw a Frenchman beat a Russian soldier cruelly for

straying too far from the road, and heard his friend the captain

reprimand and threaten to court-martial a noncommissioned officer on

account of the escape of the Russian. To the noncommissioned officer's

excuse that the prisoner was ill and could not walk, the officer

replied that the order was to shoot those who lagged behind. Pierre

felt that that fatal force which had crushed him during the

executions, but which he had not felt during his imprisonment, now

again controlled his existence. It was terrible, but he felt that in

proportion to the efforts of that fatal force to crush him, there grew

and strengthened in his soul a power of life independent of it.



He ate his supper of buckwheat soup with horseflesh and chatted with

his comrades.



Neither Pierre nor any of the others spoke of what they had seen

in Moscow, or of the roughness of their treatment by the French, or of

the order to shoot them which had been announced to them. As if in

reaction against the worsening of their position they were all

particularly animated and gay. They spoke of personal reminiscences,

of amusing scenes they had witnessed during the campaign, and

avoided all talk of their present situation.



The sun had set long since. Bright stars shone out here and there in

the sky. A red glow as of a conflagration spread above the horizon

from the rising full moon, and that vast red ball swayed strangely

in the gray haze. It grew light. The evening was ending, but the night

had not yet come. Pierre got up and left his new companions,

crossing between the campfires to the other side of the road where

he had been told the common soldier prisoners were stationed. He

wanted to talk to them. On the road he was stopped by a French

sentinel who ordered him back.



Pierre turned back, not to his companions by the campfire, but to an

unharnessed cart where there was nobody. Tucking his legs under him

and dropping his head he sat down on the cold ground by the wheel of

the cart and remained motionless a long while sunk in thought.

Suddenly he burst out into a fit of his broad, good-natured

laughter, so loud that men from various sides turned with surprise

to see what this strange and evidently solitary laughter could mean.



"Ha-ha-ha!" laughed Pierre. And he said aloud to himself: "The

soldier did not let me pass. They took me and shut me up. They hold me

captive. What, me? Me? My immortal soul? Ha-ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha!..." and

he laughed till tears started to his eyes.



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A man got up and came to see what this queer big fellow was laughing

at all by himself. Pierre stopped laughing, got up, went farther

away from the inquisitive man, and looked around him.



The huge, endless bivouac that had previously resounded with the

crackling of campfires and the voices of many men had grown quiet, the

red campfires were growing paler and dying down. High up in the

light sky hung the full moon. Forests and fields beyond the camp,

unseen before, were now visible in the distance. And farther still,

beyond those forests and fields, the bright, oscillating, limitless

distance lured one to itself. Pierre glanced up at the sky and the

twinkling stars in its faraway depths. "And all that is me, all that

is within me, and it is all I!" thought Pierre. "And they caught all

that and put it into a shed boarded up with planks!" He smiled, and

went and lay down to sleep beside his companions.









CHAPTER XV





In the early days of October another envoy came to Kutuzov with a

letter from Napoleon proposing peace and falsely dated from Moscow,

though Napoleon was already not far from Kutuzov on the old Kaluga

road. Kutuzov replied to this letter as he had done to the one

formerly brought by Lauriston, saying that there could be no

question of peace.



Soon after that a report was received from Dorokhov's guerrilla

detachment operating to the left of Tarutino that troops of

Broussier's division had been seen at Forminsk and that being

separated from the rest of the French army they might easily be

destroyed. The soldiers and officers again demanded action. Generals

on the staff, excited by the memory of the easy victory at Tarutino,

urged Kutuzov to carry out Dorokhov's suggestion. Kutuzov did not

consider any offensive necessary. The result was a compromise which

was inevitable: a small detachment was sent to Forminsk to attack

Broussier.



By a strange coincidence, this task, which turned out to be a most

difficult and important one, was entrusted to Dokhturov--that same

modest little Dokhturov whom no one had described to us as drawing

up plans of battles, dashing about in front of regiments, showering

crosses on batteries, and so on, and who was thought to be and was

spoken of as undecided and undiscerning--but whom we find commanding

wherever the position was most difficult all through the

Russo-French wars from Austerlitz to the year 1813. At Austerlitz he

remained last at the Augezd dam, rallying the regiments, saving what

was possible when all were flying and perishing and not a single

general was left in the rear guard. Ill with fever he went to Smolensk

with twenty thousand men to defend the town against Napoleon's whole

army. In Smolensk, at the Malakhov Gate, he had hardly dozed off in

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a paroxysm of fever before he was awakened by the bombardment of the

town--and Smolensk held out all day long. At the battle of Borodino,

when Bagration was killed and nine tenths of the men of our left flank

had fallen and the full force of the French artillery fire was

directed against it, the man sent there was this same irresolute and

undiscerning Dokhturov--Kutuzov hastening to rectify a mistake he

had made by sending someone else there first. And the quiet little

Dokhturov rode thither, and Borodino became the greatest glory of

the Russian army. Many heroes have been described to us in verse and

prose, but of Dokhturov scarcely a word has been said.



It was Dokhturov again whom they sent to Forminsk and from there

to Malo-Yaroslavets, the place where the last battle with the French

was fought and where the obvious disintegration of the French army

began; and we are told of many geniuses and heroes of that period of

the campaign, but of Dokhturov nothing or very little is said and that

dubiously. And this silence about Dokhturov is the clearest

testimony to his merit.



It is natural for a man who does not understand the workings of a

machine to imagine that a shaving that has fallen into it by chance

and is interfering with its action and tossing about in it is its most

important part. The man who does not understand the construction of

the machine cannot conceive that the small connecting cogwheel which

revolves quietly is one of the most essential parts of the machine,

and not the shaving which merely harms and hinders the working.



On the tenth of October when Dokhturov had gone halfway to

Forminsk and stopped at the village of Aristovo, preparing

faithfully to execute the orders he had received, the whole French

army having, in its convulsive movement, reached Murat's position

apparently in order to give battle--suddenly without any reason turned

off to the left onto the new Kaluga road and began to enter

Forminsk, where only Broussier had been till then. At that time

Dokhturov had under his command, besides Dorokhov's detachment, the

two small guerrilla detachments of Figner and Seslavin.



On the evening of October 11 Seslavin came to the Aristovo

headquarters with a French guardsman he had captured. The prisoner

said that the troops that had entered Forminsk that day were the

vanguard of the whole army, that Napoleon was there and the whole army

had left Moscow four days previously. That same evening a house serf

who had come from Borovsk said he had seen an immense army entering

the town. Some Cossacks of Dokhturov's detachment reported having

sighted the French Guards marching along the road to Borovsk. From all

these reports it was evident that where they had expected to meet a

single division there was now the whole French army marching from

Moscow in an unexpected direction--along the Kaluga road. Dokhturov

was unwilling to undertake any action, as it was not clear to him

now what he ought to do. He had been ordered to attack Forminsk. But

only Broussier had been there at that time and now the whole French

army was there. Ermolov wished to act on his own judgment, but

Dokhturov insisted that he must have Kutuzov's instructions. So it was

decided to send a dispatch to the staff.

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For this purpose a capable officer, Bolkhovitinov, was chosen, who

was to explain the whole affair by word of mouth, besides delivering a

written report. Toward midnight Bolkhovitinov, having received the

dispatch and verbal instructions, galloped off to the General Staff

accompanied by a Cossack with spare horses.









CHAPTER XVI





It was a warm, dark, autumn night. It had been raining for four

days. Having changed horses twice and galloped twenty miles in an hour

and a half over a sticky, muddy road, Bolkhovitinov reached Litashevka

after one o'clock at night. Dismounting at a cottage on whose wattle

fence hung a signboard, GENERAL STAFF, and throwing down his reins, he

entered a dark passage.



"The general on duty, quick! It's very important!" said he to

someone who had risen and was sniffing in the dark passage.



"He has been very unwell since the evening and this is the third

night he has not slept," said the orderly pleadingly in a whisper.

"You should wake the captain first."



"But this is very important, from General Dokhturov," said

Bolkhovitinov, entering the open door which he had found by feeling in

the dark.



The orderly had gone in before him and began waking somebody.



"Your honor, your honor! A courier."



"What? What's that? From whom?" came a sleepy voice.



"From Dokhturov and from Alexey Petrovich. Napoleon is at Forminsk,"

said Bolkhovitinov, unable to see in the dark who was speaking but

guessing by the voice that it was not Konovnitsyn.



The man who had wakened yawned and stretched himself.



"I don't like waking him," he said, fumbling for something. "He is

very ill. Perhaps this is only a rumor."



"Here is the dispatch," said Bolkhovitinov. "My orders are to give

it at once to the general on duty."



"Wait a moment, I'll light a candle. You damned rascal, where do you

always hide it?" said the voice of the man who was stretching himself,

to the orderly. (This was Shcherbinin, Konovnitsyn's adjutant.)

"I've found it, I've found it!" he added.

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The orderly was striking a light and Shcherbinin was fumbling for

something on the candlestick.



"Oh, the nasty beasts!" said he with disgust.



By the light of the sparks Bolkhovitinov saw Shcherbinin's

youthful face as he held the candle, and the face of another man who

was still asleep. This was Konovnitsyn.



When the flame of the sulphur splinters kindled by the tinder burned

up, first blue and then red, Shcherbinin lit the tallow candle, from

the candlestick of which the cockroaches that had been gnawing it were

running away, and looked at the messenger. Bolkhovitinov was

bespattered all over with mud and had smeared his face by wiping it

with his sleeve.



"Who gave the report?" inquired Shcherbinin, taking the envelope.



"The news is reliable," said Bolkhovitinov. "Prisoners, Cossacks,

and the scouts all say the same thing."



"There's nothing to be done, we'll have to wake him," said

Shcherbinin, rising and going up to the man in the nightcap who lay

covered by a greatcoat. "Peter Petrovich!" said he. (Konovnitsyn did

not stir.) "To the General Staff!" he said with a smile, knowing

that those words would be sure to arouse him.



And in fact the head in the nightcap was lifted at once. On

Konovnitsyn's handsome, resolute face with cheeks flushed by fever,

there still remained for an instant a faraway dreamy expression remote

from present affairs, but then he suddenly started and his face

assumed its habitual calm and firm appearance.



"Well, what is it? From whom?" he asked immediately but without

hurry, blinking at the light.



While listening to the officer's report Konovnitsyn broke the seal

and read the dispatch. Hardly had he done so before he lowered his

legs in their woolen stockings to the earthen floor and began

putting on his boots. Then he took off his nightcap, combed his hair

over his temples, and donned his cap.



"Did you get here quickly? Let us go to his Highness."



Konovnitsyn had understood at once that the news brought was of

great importance and that no time must be lost. He did not consider or

ask himself whether the news was good or bad. That did not interest

him. He regarded the whole business of the war not with his

intelligence or his reason but by something else. There was within him

a deep unexpressed conviction that all would be well, but that one

must not trust to this and still less speak about it, but must only

attend to one's own work. And he did his work, giving his whole

strength to the task.

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Peter Petrovich Konovnitsyn, like Dokhturov, seems to have been

included merely for propriety's sake in the list of the so-called

heroes of 1812--the Barclays, Raevskis, Ermolovs, Platovs, and

Miloradoviches. Like Dokhturov he had the reputation of being a man of

very limited capacity and information, and like Dokhturov he never

made plans of battle but was always found where the situation was most

difficult. Since his appointment as general on duty he had always

slept with his door open, giving orders that every messenger should be

allowed to wake him up. In battle he was always under fire, so that

Kutuzov reproved him for it and feared to send him to the front, and

like Dokhturov he was one of those unnoticed cogwheels that, without

clatter or noise, constitute the most essential part of the machine.



Coming out of the hut into the damp, dark night Konovnitsyn frowned-

partly from an increased pain in his head and partly at the unpleasant

thought that occurred to him, of how all that nest of influential

men on the staff would be stirred up by this news, especially

Bennigsen, who ever since Tarutino had been at daggers drawn with

Kutuzov; and how they would make suggestions, quarrel, issue orders,

and rescind them. And this premonition was disagreeable to him

though he knew it could not be helped.



And in fact Toll, to whom he went to communicate the news,

immediately began to expound his plans to a general sharing his

quarters, until Konovnitsyn, who listened in weary silence, reminded

him that they must go to see his Highness.









CHAPTER XVII





Kutuzov like all old people did not sleep much at night. He often

fell asleep unexpectedly in the daytime, but at night, lying on his

bed without undressing, he generally remained awake thinking.



So he lay now on his bed, supporting his large, heavy, scarred

head on his plump hand, with his one eye open, meditating and

peering into the darkness.



Since Bennigsen, who corresponded with the Emperor and had more

influence than anyone else on the staff, had begun to avoid him,

Kutuzov was more at ease as to the possibility of himself and his

troops being obliged to take part in useless aggressive movements. The

lesson of the Tarutino battle and of the day before it, which

Kutuzov remembered with pain, must, he thought, have some effect on

others too.



"They must understand that we can only lose by taking the offensive.

Patience and time are my warriors, my champions," thought Kutuzov.

He knew that an apple should not be plucked while it is green. It will

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fall of itself when ripe, but if picked unripe the apple is spoiled,

the tree is harmed, and your teeth are set on edge. Like an

experienced sportsman he knew that the beast was wounded, and

wounded as only the whole strength of Russia could have wounded it,

but whether it was mortally wounded or not was still an undecided

question. Now by the fact of Lauriston and Barthelemi having been

sent, and by the reports of the guerrillas, Kutuzov was almost sure

that the wound was mortal. But he needed further proofs and it was

necessary to wait.



"They want to run to see how they have wounded it. Wait and we shall

see! Continual maneuvers, continual advances!" thought he. "What

for? Only to distinguish themselves! As if fighting were fun. They are

like children from whom one can't get any sensible account of what has

happened because they all want to show how well they can fight. But

that's not what is needed now.



"And what ingenious maneuvers they all propose to me! It seems to

them that when they have thought of two or three contingencies" (he

remembered the general plan sent him from Petersburg) "they have

foreseen everything. But the contingencies are endless."



The undecided question as to whether the wound inflicted at Borodino

was mortal or not had hung over Kutuzov's head for a whole month. On

the one hand the French had occupied Moscow. On the other Kutuzov felt

assured with all his being that the terrible blow into which he and

all the Russians had put their whole strength must have been mortal.

But in any case proofs were needed; he had waited a whole month for

them and grew more impatient the longer he waited. Lying on his bed

during those sleepless nights he did just what he reproached those

younger generals for doing. He imagined all sorts of possible

contingencies, just like the younger men, but with this difference,

that he saw thousands of contingencies instead of two or three and

based nothing on them. The longer he thought the more contingencies

presented themselves. He imagined all sorts of movements of the

Napoleonic army as a whole or in sections--against Petersburg, or

against him, or to outflank him. He thought too of the possibility

(which he feared most of all) that Napoleon might fight him with his

own weapon and remain in Moscow awaiting him. Kutuzov even imagined

that Napoleon's army might turn back through Medyn and Yukhnov, but

the one thing he could not foresee was what happened--the insane,

convulsive stampede of Napoleon's army during its first eleven days

after leaving Moscow: a stampede which made possible what Kutuzov

had not yet even dared to think of--the complete extermination of

the French. Dorokhov's report about Broussier's division, the

guerrillas' reports of distress in Napoleon's army, rumors of

preparations for leaving Moscow, all confirmed the supposition that

the French army was beaten and preparing for flight. But these were

only suppositions, which seemed important to the younger men but not

to Kutuzov. With his sixty years' experience he knew what value to

attach to rumors, knew how apt people who desire anything are to group

all news so that it appears to confirm what they desire, and he knew

how readily in such cases they omit all that makes for the contrary.

And the more he desired it the less he allowed himself to believe

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it. This question absorbed all his mental powers. All else was to

him only life's customary routine. To such customary routine

belonged his conversations with the staff, the letters he wrote from

Tarutino to Madame de Stael, the reading of novels, the distribution

of awards, his correspondence with Petersburg, and so on. But the

destruction of the French, which he alone foresaw, was his heart's one

desire.



On the night of the eleventh of October he lay leaning on his arm

and thinking of that.



There was a stir in the next room and he heard the steps of Toll,

Konovnitsyn, and Bolkhovitinov.



"Eh, who's there? Come in, come in! What news?" the field marshal

called out to them.



While a footman was lighting a candle, Toll communicated the

substance of the news.



"Who brought it?" asked Kutuzov with a look which, when the candle

was lit, struck Toll by its cold severity.



"There can be no doubt about it, your Highness."



"Call him in, call him here."



Kutuzov sat up with one leg hanging down from the bed and his big

paunch resting against the other which was doubled under him. He

screwed up his seeing eye to scrutinize the messenger more

carefully, as if wishing to read in his face what preoccupied his

own mind.



"Tell me, tell me, friend," said he to Bolkhovitinov in his low,

aged voice, as he pulled together the shirt which gaped open on his

chest, "come nearer--nearer. What news have you brought me? Eh? That

Napoleon has left Moscow? Are you sure? Eh?"



Bolkhovitinov gave a detailed account from the beginning of all he

had been told to report.



"Speak quicker, quicker! Don't torture me!" Kutuzov interrupted him.



Bolkhovitinov told him everything and was then silent, awaiting

instructions. Toll was beginning to say something but Kutuzov

checked him. He tried to say something, but his face suddenly puckered

and wrinkled; he waved his arm at Toll and turned to the opposite side

of the room, to the corner darkened by the icons that hung there.



"O Lord, my Creator, Thou has heard our prayer..." said he in a

tremulous voice with folded hands. "Russia is saved. I thank Thee, O

Lord!" and he wept.





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CHAPTER XVIII





From the time he received this news to the end of the campaign all

Kutuzov's activity was directed toward restraining his troops, by

authority, by guile, and by entreaty, from useless attacks, maneuvers,

or encounters with the perishing enemy. Dokhturov went to

Malo-Yaroslavets, but Kutuzov lingered with the main army and gave

orders for the evacuation of Kaluga--a retreat beyond which town

seemed to him quite possible.



Everywhere Kutuzov retreated, but the enemy without waiting for

his retreat fled in the opposite direction.



Napoleon's historians describe to us his skilled maneuvers at

Tarutino and Malo-Yaroslavets, and make conjectures as to what would

have happened had Napoleon been in time to penetrate into the rich

southern provinces.



But not to speak of the fact that nothing prevented him from

advancing into those southern provinces (for the Russian army did

not bar his way), the historians forget that nothing could have

saved his army, for then already it bore within itself the germs of

inevitable ruin. How could that army--which had found abundant

supplies in Moscow and had trampled them underfoot instead of

keeping them, and on arriving at Smolensk had looted provisions

instead of storing them--how could that army recuperate in Kaluga

province, which was inhabited by Russians such as those who lived in

Moscow, and where fire had the same property of consuming what was set

ablaze?



That army could not recover anywhere. Since the battle of Borodino

and the pillage of Moscow it had borne within itself, as it were,

the chemical elements of dissolution.



The members of what had once been an army--Napoleon himself and

all his soldiers fled--without knowing whither, each concerned only to

make his escape as quickly as possible from this position, of the

hopelessness of which they were all more or less vaguely conscious.



So it came about that at the council at Malo-Yaroslavets, when the

generals pretending to confer together expressed various opinions, all

mouths were closed by the opinion uttered by the simple-minded soldier

Mouton who, speaking last, said what they all felt: that the one thing

needful was to get away as quickly as possible; and no one, not even

Napoleon, could say anything against that truth which they all

recognized.



But though they all realized that it was necessary to get away,

there still remained a feeling of shame at admitting that they must

flee. An external shock was needed to overcome that shame, and this

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shock came in due time. It was what the French called "le hourra de

l'Empereur."



The day after the council at Malo-Yaroslavets Napoleon rode out

early in the morning amid the lines of his army with his suite of

marshals and an escort, on the pretext of inspecting the army and

the scene of the previous and of the impending battle. Some Cossacks

on the prowl for booty fell in with the Emperor and very nearly

captured him. If the Cossacks did not capture Napoleon then, what

saved him was the very thing that was destroying the French army,

the booty on which the Cossacks fell. Here as at Tarutino they went

after plunder, leaving the men. Disregarding Napoleon they rushed

after the plunder and Napoleon managed to escape.



When les enfants du Don might so easily have taken the Emperor

himself in the midst of his army, it was clear that there was

nothing for it but to fly as fast as possible along the nearest,

familiar road. Napoleon with his forty-year-old stomach understood

that hint, not feeling his former agility and boldness, and under

the influence of the fright the Cossacks had given him he at once

agreed with Mouton and issued orders--as the historians tell us--to

retreat by the Smolensk road.



That Napoleon agreed with Mouton, and that the army retreated,

does not prove that Napoleon caused it to retreat, but that the forces

which influenced the whole army and directed it along the Mozhaysk

(that is, the Smolensk) road acted simultaneously on him also.









CHAPTER XIX





A man in motion always devises an aim for that motion. To be able to

go a thousand miles he must imagine that something good awaits him

at the end of those thousand miles. One must have the prospect of a

promised land to have the strength to move.



The promised land for the French during their advance had been

Moscow, during their retreat it was their native land. But that native

land was too far off, and for a man going a thousand miles it is

absolutely necessary to set aside his final goal and to say to

himself: "Today I shall get to a place twenty-five miles off where I

shall rest and spend the night," and during the first day's journey

that resting place eclipses his ultimate goal and attracts all his

hopes and desires. And the impulses felt by a single person are always

magnified in a crowd.



For the French retreating along the old Smolensk road, the final

goal--their native land--was too remote, and their immediate goal

was Smolensk, toward which all their desires and hopes, enormously

intensified in the mass, urged them on. It was not that they knew that

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much food and fresh troops awaited them in Smolensk, nor that they

were told so (on the contrary their superior officers, and Napoleon

himself, knew that provisions were scarce there), but because this

alone could give them strength to move on and endure their present

privations. So both those who knew and those who did not know deceived

themselves, and pushed on to Smolensk as to a promised land.



Coming out onto the highroad the French fled with surprising

energy and unheard-of rapidity toward the goal they had fixed on.

Besides the common impulse which bound the whole crowd of French

into one mass and supplied them with a certain energy, there was

another cause binding them together--their great numbers. As with

the physical law of gravity, their enormous mass drew the individual

human atoms to itself. In their hundreds of thousands they moved

like a whole nation.



Each of them desired nothing more than to give himself up as a

prisoner to escape from all this horror and misery; but on the one

hand the force of this common attraction to Smolensk, their goal, drew

each of them in the same direction; on the other hand an army corps

could not surrender to a company, and though the French availed

themselves of every convenient opportunity to detach themselves and to

surrender on the slightest decent pretext, such pretexts did not

always occur. Their very numbers and their crowded and swift

movement deprived them of that possibility and rendered it not only

difficult but impossible for the Russians to stop this movement, to

which the French were directing all their energies. Beyond a certain

limit no mechanical disruption of the body could hasten the process of

decomposition.



A lump of snow cannot be melted instantaneously. There is a

certain limit of time in less than which no amount of heat can melt

the snow. On the contrary the greater the heat the more solidified the

remaining snow becomes.



Of the Russian commanders Kutuzov alone understood this. When the

flight of the French army along the Smolensk road became well defined,

what Konovnitsyn had foreseen on the night of the eleventh of

October began to occur. The superior officers all wanted to

distinguish themselves, to cut off, to seize, to capture, and to

overthrow the French, and all clamored for action.



Kutuzov alone used all his power (and such power is very limited

in the case of any commander in chief) to prevent an attack.



He could not tell them what we say now: "Why fight, why block the

road, losing our own men and inhumanly slaughtering unfortunate

wretches? What is the use of that, when a third of their army has

melted away on the road from Moscow to Vyazma without any battle?" But

drawing from his aged wisdom what they could understand, he told

them of the golden bridge, and they laughed at and slandered him,

flinging themselves on, rending and exulting over the dying beast.



Ermolov, Miloradovich, Platov, and others in proximity to the French

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near Vyazma could not resist their desire to cut off and break up

two French corps, and by way of reporting their intention to Kutuzov

they sent him a blank sheet of paper in an envelope.



And try as Kutuzov might to restrain the troops, our men attacked,

trying to bar the road. Infantry regiments, we are told, advanced to

the attack with music and with drums beating, and killed and lost

thousands of men.



But they did not cut off or overthrow anybody and the French army,

closing up more firmly at the danger, continued, while steadily

melting away, to pursue its fatal path to Smolensk.









BOOK FOURTEEN: 1812









CHAPTER I





The Battle of Borodino, with the occupation of Moscow that

followed it and the flight of the French without further conflicts, is

one of the most instructive phenomena in history.



All historians agree that the external activity of states and

nations in their conflicts with one another is expressed in wars,

and that as a direct result of greater or less success in war the

political strength of states and nations increases or decreases.



Strange as may be the historical account of how some king or

emperor, having quarreled with another, collects an army, fights his

enemy's army, gains a victory by killing three, five, or ten

thousand men, and subjugates a kingdom and an entire nation of several

millions, all the facts of history (as far as we know it) confirm

the truth of the statement that the greater or lesser success of one

army against another is the cause, or at least an essential

indication, of an increase or decrease in the strength of the

nation--even though it is unintelligible why the defeat of an army-

a hundredth part of a nation--should oblige that whole nation to

submit. An army gains a victory, and at once the rights of the

conquering nation have increased to the detriment of the defeated.

An army has suffered defeat, and at once a people loses its rights

in proportion to the severity of the reverse, and if its army

suffers a complete defeat the nation is quite subjugated.



So according to history it has been found from the most ancient

times, and so it is to our own day. All Napoleon's wars serve to

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confirm this rule. In proportion to the defeat of the Austrian army

Austria loses its rights, and the rights and the strength of France

increase. The victories of the French at Jena and Auerstadt destroy

the independent existence of Prussia.



But then, in 1812, the French gain a victory near Moscow. Moscow

is taken and after that, with no further battles, it is not Russia

that ceases to exist, but the French army of six hundred thousand, and

then Napoleonic France itself. To strain the facts to fit the rules of

history: to say that the field of battle at Borodino remained in the

hands of the Russians, or that after Moscow there were other battles

that destroyed Napoleon's army, is impossible.



After the French victory at Borodino there was no general engagement

nor any that were at all serious, yet the French army ceased to exist.

What does this mean? If it were an example taken from the history of

China, we might say that it was not an historic phenomenon (which is

the historians' usual expedient when anything does not fit their

standards); if the matter concerned some brief conflict in which

only a small number of troops took part, we might treat it as an

exception; but this event occurred before our fathers' eyes, and for

them it was a question of the life or death of their fatherland, and

it happened in the greatest of all known wars.



The period of the campaign of 1812 from the battle of Borodino to

the expulsion of the French proved that the winning of a battle does

not produce a conquest and is not even an invariable indication of

conquest; it proved that the force which decides the fate of peoples

lies not in the conquerors, nor even in armies and battles, but in

something else.



The French historians, describing the condition of the French army

before it left Moscow, affirm that all was in order in the Grand Army,

except the cavalry, the artillery, and the transport--there was no

forage for the horses or the cattle. That was a misfortune no one

could remedy, for the peasants of the district burned their hay rather

than let the French have it.



The victory gained did not bring the usual results because the

peasants Karp and Vlas (who after the French had evacuated Moscow

drove in their carts to pillage the town, and in general personally

failed to manifest any heroic feelings), and the whole innumerable

multitude of such peasants, did not bring their hay to Moscow for

the high price offered them, but burned it instead.



Let us imagine two men who have come out to fight a duel with

rapiers according to all the rules of the art of fencing. The

fencing has gone on for some time; suddenly one of the combatants,

feeling himself wounded and understanding that the matter is no joke

but concerns his life, throws down his rapier, and seizing the first

cudgel that comes to hand begins to brandish it. Then let us imagine

that the combatant who so sensibly employed the best and simplest

means to attain his end was at the same time influenced by

traditions of chivalry and, desiring to conceal the facts of the case,

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insisted that he had gained his victory with the rapier according to

all the rules of art. One can imagine what confusion and obscurity

would result from such an account of the duel.



The fencer who demanded a contest according to the rules of

fencing was the French army; his opponent who threw away the rapier

and snatched up the cudgel was the Russian people; those who try to

explain the matter according to the rules of fencing are the

historians who have described the event.



After the burning of Smolensk a war began which did not follow any

previous traditions of war. The burning of towns and villages, the

retreats after battles, the blow dealt at Borodino and the renewed

retreat, the burning of Moscow, the capture of marauders, the

seizure of transports, and the guerrilla war were all departures

from the rules.



Napoleon felt this, and from the time he took up the correct fencing

attitude in Moscow and instead of his opponent's rapier saw a cudgel

raised above his head, he did not cease to complain to Kutuzov and

to the Emperor Alexander that the war was being carried on contrary to

all the rules--as if there were any rules for killing people. In spite

of the complaints of the French as to the nonobservance of the

rules, in spite of the fact that to some highly placed Russians it

seemed rather disgraceful to fight with a cudgel and they wanted to

assume a pose en quarte or en tierce according to all the rules, and

to make an adroit thrust en prime, and so on--the cudgel of the

people's war was lifted with all its menacing and majestic strength,

and without consulting anyone's tastes or rules and regardless of

anything else, it rose and fell with stupid simplicity, but

consistently, and belabored the French till the whole invasion had

perished.



And it is well for a people who do not--as the French did in 1813-

salute according to all the rules of art, and, presenting the hilt

of their rapier gracefully and politely, hand it to their

magnanimous conqueror, but at the moment of trial, without asking what

rules others have adopted in similar cases, simply and easily pick

up the first cudgel that comes to hand and strike with it till the

feeling of resentment and revenge in their soul yields to a feeling of

contempt and compassion.









CHAPTER II





One of the most obvious and advantageous departures from the

so-called laws of war is the action of scattered groups against men

pressed together in a mass. Such action always occurs in wars that

take on a national character. In such actions, instead of two crowds

opposing each other, the men disperse, attack singly, run away when

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attacked by stronger forces, but again attack when opportunity offers.

This was done by the guerrillas in Spain, by the mountain tribes in

the Caucasus, and by the Russians in 1812.



People have called this kind of war "guerrilla warfare" and assume

that by so calling it they have explained its meaning. But such a

war does not fit in under any rule and is directly opposed to a

well-known rule of tactics which is accepted as infallible. That

rule says that an attacker should concentrate his forces in order to

be stronger than his opponent at the moment of conflict.



Guerrilla war (always successful, as history shows) directly

infringes that rule.



This contradiction arises from the fact that military science

assumes the strength of an army to be identical with its numbers.

Military science says that the more troops the greater the strength.

Les gros bataillons ont toujours raison.*





*Large battalions are always victorious.





For military science to say this is like defining momentum in

mechanics by reference to the mass only: stating that momenta are

equal or unequal to each other simply because the masses involved

are equal or unequal.



Momentum (quantity of motion) is the product of mass and velocity.



In military affairs the strength of an army is the product of its

mass and some unknown x.



Military science, seeing in history innumerable instances of the

fact that the size of any army does not coincide with its strength and

that small detachments defeat larger ones, obscurely admits the

existence of this unknown factor and tries to discover it--now in a

geometric formation, now in the equipment employed, now, and most

usually, in the genius of the commanders. But the assignment of

these various meanings to the factor does not yield results which

accord with the historic facts.



Yet it is only necessary to abandon the false view (adopted to

gratify the "heroes") of the efficacy of the directions issued in

wartime by commanders, in order to find this unknown quantity.



That unknown quantity is the spirit of the army, that is to say, the

greater or lesser readiness to fight and face danger felt by all the

men composing an army, quite independently of whether they are, or are

not, fighting under the command of a genius, in two--or three-line

formation, with cudgels or with rifles that repeat thirty times a

minute. Men who want to fight will always put themselves in the most

advantageous conditions for fighting.



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The spirit of an army is the factor which multiplied by the mass

gives the resulting force. To define and express the significance of

this unknown factor--the spirit of an army--is a problem for science.



This problem is only solvable if we cease arbitrarily to

substitute for the unknown x itself the conditions under which that

force becomes apparent--such as the commands of the general, the

equipment employed, and so on--mistaking these for the real

significance of the factor, and if we recognize this unknown

quantity in its entirety as being the greater or lesser desire to

fight and to face danger. Only then, expressing known historic facts

by equations and comparing the relative significance of this factor,

can we hope to define the unknown.



Ten men, battalions, or divisions, fighting fifteen men, battalions,

or divisions, conquer--that is, kill or take captive--all the

others, while themselves losing four, so that on the one side four and

on the other fifteen were lost. Consequently the four were equal to

the fifteen, and therefore 4x = 15y. Consequently x/y = 15/4. This

equation does not give us the value of the unknown factor but gives us

a ratio between two unknowns. And by bringing variously selected

historic units (battles, campaigns, periods of war) into such

equations, a series of numbers could be obtained in which certain laws

should exist and might be discovered.



The tactical rule that an army should act in masses when

attacking, and in smaller groups in retreat, unconsciously confirms

the truth that the strength of an army depends on its spirit. To

lead men forward under fire more discipline (obtainable only by

movement in masses) is needed than is needed to resist attacks. But

this rule which leaves out of account the spirit of the army

continually proves incorrect and is in particularly striking

contrast to the facts when some strong rise or fall in the spirit of

the troops occurs, as in all national wars.



The French, retreating in 1812--though according to tactics they

should have separated into detachments to defend themselves-

congregated into a mass because the spirit of the army had so fallen

that only the mass held the army together. The Russians, on the

contrary, ought according to tactics to have attacked in mass, but

in fact they split up into small units, because their spirit had so

risen that separate individuals, without orders, dealt blows at the

French without needing any compulsion to induce them to expose

themselves to hardships and dangers.









CHAPTER III





The so-called partisan war began with the entry of the French into

Smolensk.

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Before partisan warfare had been officially recognized by the

government, thousands of enemy stragglers, marauders, and foragers had

been destroyed by the Cossacks and the peasants, who killed them off

as instinctively as dogs worry a stray mad dog to death. Denis

Davydov, with his Russian instinct, was the first to recognize the

value of this terrible cudgel which regardless of the rules of

military science destroyed the French, and to him belongs the credit

for taking the first step toward regularizing this method of warfare.



On August 24 Davydov's first partisan detachment was formed and then

others were recognized. The further the campaign progressed the more

numerous these detachments became.



The irregulars destroyed the great army piecemeal. They gathered the

fallen leaves that dropped of themselves from that withered tree-

the French army--and sometimes shook that tree itself. By October,

when the French were fleeing toward Smolensk, there were hundreds of

such companies, of various sizes and characters. There were some

that adopted all the army methods and had infantry, artillery, staffs,

and the comforts of life. Others consisted solely of Cossack

cavalry. There were also small scratch groups of foot and horse, and

groups of peasants and landowners that remained unknown. A sacristan

commanded one party which captured several hundred prisoners in the

course of a month; and there was Vasilisa, the wife of a village

elder, who slew hundreds of the French.



The partisan warfare flamed up most fiercely in the latter days of

October. Its first period had passed: when the partisans themselves,

amazed at their own boldness, feared every minute to be surrounded and

captured by the French, and hid in the forests without unsaddling,

hardly daring to dismount and always expecting to be pursued. By the

end of October this kind of warfare had taken definite shape: it had

become clear to all what could be ventured against the French and what

could not. Now only the commanders of detachments with staffs, and

moving according to rules at a distance from the French, still

regarded many things as impossible. The small bands that had started

their activities long before and had already observed the French

closely considered things possible which the commanders of the big

detachments did not dare to contemplate. The Cossacks and peasants who

crept in among the French now considered everything possible.



On October 22, Denisov (who was one of the irregulars) was with

his group at the height of the guerrilla enthusiasm. Since early

morning he and his party had been on the move. All day long he had

been watching from the forest that skirted the highroad a large French

convoy of cavalry baggage and Russian prisoners separated from the

rest of the army, which--as was learned from spies and prisoners-

was moving under a strong escort to Smolensk. Besides Denisov and

Dolokhov (who also led a small party and moved in Denisov's vicinity),

the commanders of some large divisions with staffs also knew of this

convoy and, as Denisov expressed it, were sharpening their teeth for

it. Two of the commanders of large parties--one a Pole and the other a

German--sent invitations to Denisov almost simultaneously,

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requesting him to join up with their divisions to attack the convoy.



"No, bwother, I have gwown mustaches myself," said Denisov on

reading these documents, and he wrote to the German that, despite

his heartfelt desire to serve under so valiant and renowned a general,

he had to forgo that pleasure because he was already under the command

of the Polish general. To the Polish general he replied to the same

effect, informing him that he was already under the command of the

German.



Having arranged matters thus, Denisov and Dolokhov intended, without

reporting matters to the higher command, to attack and seize that

convoy with their own small forces. On October 22 it was moving from

the village of Mikulino to that of Shamshevo. To the left of the

road between Mikulino and Shamshevo there were large forests,

extending in some places up to the road itself though in others a mile

or more back from it. Through these forests Denisov and his party rode

all day, sometimes keeping well back in them and sometimes coming to

the very edge, but never losing sight of the moving French. That

morning, Cossacks of Denisov's party had seized and carried off into

the forest two wagons loaded with cavalry saddles, which had stuck

in the mud not far from Mikulino where the forest ran close to the

road. Since then, and until evening, the party had the movements of

the French without attacking. It was necessary to let the French reach

Shamshevo quietly without alarming them and then, after joining

Dolokhov who was to come that evening to a consultation at a

watchman's hut in the forest less than a mile from Shamshevo, to

surprise the French at dawn, falling like an avalanche on their

heads from two sides, and rout and capture them all at one blow.



In their rear, more than a mile from Mikulino where the forest

came right up to the road, six Cossacks were posted to report if any

fresh columns of French should show themselves.



Beyond Shamshevo, Dolokhov was to observe the road in the same

way, to find out at what distance there were other French troops. They

reckoned that the convoy had fifteen hundred men. Denisov had two

hundred, and Dolokhov might have as many more, but the disparity of

numbers did not deter Denisov. All that he now wanted to know was what

troops these were and to learn that he had to capture a "tongue"--that

is, a man from the enemy column. That morning's attack on the wagons

had been made so hastily that the Frenchmen with the wagons had all

been killed; only a little drummer boy had been taken alive, and as he

was a straggler he could tell them nothing definite about the troops

in that column.



Denisov considered it dangerous to make a second attack for fear

of putting the whole column on the alert, so he sent Tikhon

Shcherbaty, a peasant of his party, to Shamshevo to try and seize at

least one of the French quartermasters who had been sent on in

advance.









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CHAPTER IV





It was a warm rainy autumn day. The sky and the horizon were both

the color of muddy water. At times a sort of mist descended, and

then suddenly heavy slanting rain came down.



Denisov in a felt cloak and a sheepskin cap from which the rain

ran down was riding a thin thoroughbred horse with sunken sides.

Like his horse, which turned its head and laid its ears back, he

shrank from the driving rain and gazed anxiously before him. His

thin face with its short, thick black beard looked angry.



Beside Denisov rode an esaul,* Denisov's fellow worker, also in felt

cloak and sheepskin cap, and riding a large sleek Don horse.





*A captain of Cossacks.





Esaul Lovayski the Third was a tall man as straight as an arrow,

pale-faced, fair-haired, with narrow light eyes and with calm

self-satisfaction in his face and bearing. Though it was impossible to

say in what the peculiarity of the horse and rider lay, yet at first

glance at the esaul and Denisov one saw that the latter was wet and

uncomfortable and was a man mounted on a horse, while looking at the

esaul one saw that he was as comfortable and as much at ease as always

and that he was not a man who had mounted a horse, but a man who was

one with his horse, a being consequently possessed of twofold

strength.



A little ahead of them walked a peasant guide, wet to the skin and

wearing a gray peasant coat and a white knitted cap.



A little behind, on a poor, small, lean Kirghiz mount with an

enormous tail and mane and a bleeding mouth, rode a young officer in a

blue French overcoat.



Beside him rode an hussar, with a boy in a tattered French uniform

and blue cap behind him on the crupper of his horse. The boy held on

to the hussar with cold, red hands, and raising his eyebrows gazed

about him with surprise. This was the French drummer boy captured that

morning.



Behind them along the narrow, sodden, cutup forest road came hussars

in threes and fours, and then Cossacks: some in felt cloaks, some in

French greatcoats, and some with horsecloths over their heads. The

horses, being drenched by the rain, all looked black whether

chestnut or bay. Their necks, with their wet, close-clinging manes,

looked strangely thin. Steam rose from them. Clothes, saddles,

reins, were all wet, slippery, and sodden, like the ground and the

fallen leaves that strewed the road. The men sat huddled up trying not

to stir, so as to warm the water that had trickled to their bodies and

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not admit the fresh cold water that was leaking in under their

seats, their knees, and at the back of their necks. In the midst of

the outspread line of Cossacks two wagons, drawn by French horses

and by saddled Cossack horses that had been hitched on in front,

rumbled over the tree stumps and branches and splashed through the

water that lay in the ruts.



Denisov's horse swerved aside to avoid a pool in the track and

bumped his rider's knee against a tree.



"Oh, the devil!" exclaimed Denisov angrily, and showing his teeth he

struck his horse three times with his whip, splashing himself and

his comrades with mud.



Denisov was out of sorts both because of the rain and also from

hunger (none of them had eaten anything since morning), and yet more

because he still had no news from Dolokhov and the man sent to capture

a "tongue" had not returned.



"There'll hardly be another such chance to fall on a transport as

today. It's too risky to attack them by oneself, and if we put it

off till another day one of the big guerrilla detachments will

snatch the prey from under our noses," thought Denisov, continually

peering forward, hoping to see a messenger from Dolokhov.



On coming to a path in the forest along which he could see far to

the right, Denisov stopped.



"There's someone coming," said he.



The esaul looked in the direction Denisov indicated.



"There are two, an officer and a Cossack. But it is not

presupposable that it is the lieutenant colonel himself," said the

esaul, who was fond of using words the Cossacks did not know.



The approaching riders having descended a decline were no longer

visible, but they reappeared a few minutes later. In front, at a weary

gallop and using his leather whip, rode an officer, disheveled and

drenched, whose trousers had worked up to above his knees. Behind him,

standing in the stirrups, trotted a Cossack. The officer, a very young

lad with a broad rosy face and keen merry eyes, galloped up to Denisov

and handed him a sodden envelope.



"From the general," said the officer. "Please excuse its not being

quite dry."



Denisov, frowning, took the envelope and opened it.



"There, they kept telling us: 'It's dangerous, it's dangerous,'"

said the officer, addressing the esaul while Denisov was reading the

dispatch. "But Komarov and I"--he pointed to the Cossack--"were

prepared. We have each of us two pistols.... But what's this?" he

asked, noticing the French drummer boy. "A prisoner? You've already

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been in action? May I speak to him?"



"Wostov! Petya!" exclaimed Denisov, having run through the dispatch.

"Why didn't you say who you were?" and turning with a smile he held

out his hand to the lad.



The officer was Petya Rostov.



All the way Petya had been preparing himself to behave with

Denisov as befitted a grownup man and an officer--without hinting at

their previous acquaintance. But as soon as Denisov smiled at him

Petya brightened up, blushed with pleasure, forgot the official manner

he had been rehearsing, and began telling him how he had already

been in a battle near Vyazma and how a certain hussar had

distinguished himself there.



"Well, I am glad to see you," Denisov interrupted him, and his

face again assumed its anxious expression.



"Michael Feoklitych," said he to the esaul, "this is again fwom that

German, you know. He"--he indicated Petya--"is serving under him."



And Denisov told the esaul that the dispatch just delivered was a

repetition of the German general's demand that he should join forces

with him for an attack on the transport.



"If we don't take it tomowwow, he'll snatch it fwom under our

noses," he added.



While Denisov was talking to the esaul, Petya--abashed by

Denisov's cold tone and supposing that it was due to the condition

of his trousers--furtively tried to pull them down under his greatcoat

so that no one should notice it, while maintaining as martial an air

as possible.



"Will there be any orders, your honor?" he asked Denisov, holding

his hand at the salute and resuming the game of adjutant and general

for which he had prepared himself, "or shall I remain with your

honor?"



"Orders?" Denisov repeated thoughtfully. "But can you stay till

tomowwow?"



"Oh, please... May I stay with you?" cried Petya.



"But, just what did the genewal tell you? To weturn at once?"

asked Denisov.



Petya blushed.



"He gave me no instructions. I think I could?" he returned,

inquiringly.



"Well, all wight," said Denisov.

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And turning to his men he directed a party to go on to the halting

place arranged near the watchman's hut in the forest, and told the

officer on the Kirghiz horse (who performed the duties of an adjutant)

to go and find out where Dolokhov was and whether he would come that

evening. Denisov himself intended going with the esaul and Petya to

the edge of the forest where it reached out to Shamshevo, to have a

look at the part of the French bivouac they were to attack next day.



"Well, old fellow," said he to the peasant guide, "lead us to

Shamshevo."



Denisov, Petya, and the esaul, accompanied by some Cossacks and

the hussar who had the prisoner, rode to the left across a ravine to

the edge of the forest.









CHAPTER V





The rain had stopped, and only the mist was falling and drops from

the trees. Denisov, the esaul, and Petya rode silently, following

the peasant in the knitted cap who, stepping lightly with outturned

toes and moving noiselessly in his bast shoes over the roots and wet

leaves, silently led them to the edge of the forest.



He ascended an incline, stopped, looked about him, and advanced to

where the screen of trees was less dense. On reaching a large oak tree

that had not yet shed its leaves, he stopped and beckoned mysteriously

to them with his hand.



Denisov and Petya rode up to him. From the spot where the peasant

was standing they could see the French. Immediately beyond the forest,

on a downward slope, lay a field of spring rye. To the right, beyond a

steep ravine, was a small village and a landowner's house with a

broken roof. In the village, in the house, in the garden, by the well,

by the pond, over all the rising ground, and all along the road uphill

from the bridge leading to the village, not more than five hundred

yards away, crowds of men could be seen through the shimmering mist.

Their un-Russian shouting at their horses which were straining

uphill with the carts, and their calls to one another, could be

clearly heard.



"Bwing the prisoner here," said Denisov in a low voice, not taking

his eyes off the French.



A Cossack dismounted, lifted the boy down, and took him to

Denisov. Pointing to the French troops, Denisov asked him what these

and those of them were. The boy, thrusting his cold hands into his

pockets and lifting his eyebrows, looked at Denisov in affright, but

in spite of an evident desire to say all he knew gave confused

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answers, merely assenting to everything Denisov asked him. Denisov

turned away from him frowning and addressed the esaul, conveying his

own conjectures to him.



Petya, rapidly turning his head, looked now at the drummer boy,

now at Denisov, now at the esaul, and now at the French in the village

and along the road, trying not to miss anything of importance.



"Whether Dolokhov comes or not, we must seize it, eh?" said

Denisov with a merry sparkle in his eyes.



"It is a very suitable spot," said the esaul.



"We'll send the infantwy down by the swamps," Denisov continued.

"They'll cweep up to the garden; you'll wide up fwom there with the

Cossacks"--he pointed to a spot in the forest beyond the village--"and

I with my hussars fwom here. And at the signal shot..."



"The hollow is impassable--there's a swamp there," said the esaul.

"The horses would sink. We must ride round more to the left...."



While they were talking in undertones the crack of a shot sounded

from the low ground by the pond, a puff of white smoke appeared,

then another, and the sound of hundreds of seemingly merry French

voices shouting together came up from the slope. For a moment

Denisov and the esaul drew back. They were so near that they thought

they were the cause of the firing and shouting. But the firing and

shouting did not relate to them. Down below, a man wearing something

red was running through the marsh. The French were evidently firing

and shouting at him.



"Why, that's our Tikhon," said the esaul.



"So it is! It is!"



"The wascal!" said Denisov.



"He'll get away!" said the esaul, screwing up his eyes.



The man whom they called Tikhon, having run to the stream, plunged

in so that the water splashed in the air, and, having disappeared

for an instant, scrambled out on all fours, all black with the wet,

and ran on. The French who had been pursuing him stopped.



"Smart, that!" said the esaul.



"What a beast!" said Denisov with his former look of vexation. "What

has he been doing all this time?"



"Who is he?" asked Petya.



"He's our plastun. I sent him to capture a 'tongue.'"



"Oh, yes," said Petya, nodding at the first words Denisov uttered as

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if he understood it all, though he really did not understand

anything of it.



Tikhon Shcherbaty was one of the most indispensable men in their

band. He was a peasant from Pokrovsk, near the river Gzhat. When

Denisov had come to Pokrovsk at the beginning of his operations and

had as usual summoned the village elder and asked him what he knew

about the French, the elder, as though shielding himself, had replied,

as all village elders did, that he had neither seen nor heard anything

of them. But when Denisov explained that his purpose was to kill the

French, and asked if no French had strayed that way, the elder replied

that some "more-orderers" had really been at their village, but that

Tikhon Shcherbaty was the only man who dealt with such matters.

Denisov had Tikhon called and, having praised him for his activity,

said a few words in the elder's presence about loyalty to the Tsar and

the country and the hatred of the French that all sons of the

fatherland should cherish.



"We don't do the French any harm," said Tikhon, evidently frightened

by Denisov's words. "We only fooled about with the lads for fun, you

know! We killed a score or so of 'more-orderers,' but we did no harm

else..."



Next day when Denisov had left Pokrovsk, having quite forgotten

about this peasant, it was reported to him that Tikhon had attached

himself to their party and asked to be allowed to remain with it.

Denisov gave orders to let him do so.



Tikhon, who at first did rough work, laying campfires, fetching

water, flaying dead horses, and so on, soon showed a great liking

and aptitude for partisan warfare. At night he would go out for

booty and always brought back French clothing and weapons, and when

told to would bring in French captives also. Denisov then relieved him

from drudgery and began taking him with him when he went out on

expeditions and had him enrolled among the Cossacks.



Tikhon did not like riding, and always went on foot, never lagging

behind the cavalry. He was armed with a musketoon (which he carried

rather as a joke), a pike and an ax, which latter he used as a wolf

uses its teeth, with equal case picking fleas out of its fur or

crunching thick bones. Tikhon with equal accuracy would split logs

with blows at arm's length, or holding the head of the ax would cut

thin little pegs or carve spoons. In Denisov's party he held a

peculiar and exceptional position. When anything particularly

difficult or nasty had to be done--to push a cart out of the mud

with one's shoulders, pull a horse out of a swamp by its tail, skin

it, slink in among the French, or walk more than thirty miles in a

day--everybody pointed laughingly at Tikhon.



"It won't hurt that devil--he's as strong as a horse!" they said

of him.



Once a Frenchman Tikhon was trying to capture fired a pistol at

him and shot him in the fleshy part of the back. That wound (which

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Tikhon treated only with internal and external applications of

vodka) was the subject of the liveliest jokes by the whole detachment-

jokes in which Tikhon readily joined.



"Hallo, mate! Never again? Gave you a twist?" the Cossacks would

banter him. And Tikhon, purposely writhing and making faces, pretended

to be angry and swore at the French with the funniest curses. The only

effect of this incident on Tikhon was that after being wounded he

seldom brought in prisoners.



He was the bravest and most useful man in the party. No one found

more opportunities for attacking, no one captured or killed more

Frenchmen, and consequently he was made the buffoon of all the

Cossacks and hussars and willingly accepted that role. Now he had been

sent by Denisov overnight to Shamshevo to capture a "tongue." But

whether because he had not been content to take only one Frenchman

or because he had slept through the night, he had crept by day into

some bushes right among the French and, as Denisov had witnessed

from above, had been detected by them.









CHAPTER VI





After talking for some time with the esaul about next day's

attack, which now, seeing how near they were to the French, he

seemed to have definitely decided on, Denisov turned his horse and

rode back.



"Now, my lad, we'll go and get dwy," he said to Petya.



As they approached the watchhouse Denisov stopped, peering into

the forest. Among the trees a man with long legs and long, swinging

arms, wearing a short jacket, bast shoes, and a Kazan hat, was

approaching with long, light steps. He had a musketoon over his

shoulder and an ax stuck in his girdle. When he espied Denisov he

hastily threw something into the bushes, removed his sodden hat by its

floppy brim, and approached his commander. It was Tikhon. His wrinkled

and pockmarked face and narrow little eyes beamed with

self-satisfied merriment. He lifted his head high and gazed at Denisov

as if repressing a laugh.



"Well, where did you disappear to?" inquired Denisov.



"Where did I disappear to? I went to get Frenchmen," answered Tikhon

boldly and hurriedly, in a husky but melodious bass voice.



"Why did you push yourself in there by daylight? You ass! Well,

why haven't you taken one?"



"Oh, I took one all right," said Tikhon.

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"Where is he?"



"You see, I took him first thing at dawn," Tikhon continued,

spreading out his flat feet with outturned toes in their bast shoes.

"I took him into the forest. Then I see he's no good and think I'll go

and fetch a likelier one."



"You see?... What a wogue--it's just as I thought," said Denisov

to the esaul. "Why didn't you bwing that one?"



"What was the good of bringing him?" Tikhon interrupted hastily

and angrily--"that one wouldn't have done for you. As if I don't

know what sort you want!"



"What a bwute you are!... Well?"



"I went for another one," Tikhon continued, "and I crept like this

through the wood and lay down." (He suddenly lay down on his stomach

with a supple movement to show how he had done it.) "One turned up and

I grabbed him, like this." (He jumped up quickly and lightly.)

"'Come along to the colonel,' I said. He starts yelling, and

suddenly there were four of them. They rushed at me with their

little swords. So I went for them with my ax, this way: 'What are

you up to?' says I. 'Christ be with you!'" shouted Tikhon, waving

his arms with an angry scowl and throwing out his chest.



"Yes, we saw from the hill how you took to your heels through the

puddles!" said the esaul, screwing up his glittering eyes.



Petya badly wanted to laugh, but noticed that they all refrained

from laughing. He turned his eyes rapidly from Tikhon's face to the

esaul's and Denisov's, unable to make out what it all meant.



"Don't play the fool!" said Denisov, coughing angrily. "Why didn't

you bwing the first one?"



Tikhon scratched his back with one hand and his head with the other,

then suddenly his whole face expanded into a beaming, foolish grin,

disclosing a gap where he had lost a tooth (that was why he was called

Shcherbaty--the gap-toothed). Denisov smiled, and Petya burst into a

peal of merry laughter in which Tikhon himself joined.



"Oh, but he was a regular good-for-nothing," said Tikhon. "The

clothes on him--poor stuff! How could I bring him? And so rude, your

honor! Why, he says: 'I'm a general's son myself, I won't go!' he

says."



"You are a bwute!" said Denisov. "I wanted to question..."



"But I questioned him," said Tikhon. "He said he didn't know much.

'There are a lot of us,' he says, 'but all poor stuff--only soldiers

in name,' he says. 'Shout loud at them,' he says, 'and you'll take

them all,'" Tikhon concluded, looking cheerfully and resolutely into

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Denisov's eyes.



"I'll give you a hundwed sharp lashes--that'll teach you to play the

fool!" said Denisov severely.



"But why are you angry?" remonstrated Tikhon, "just as if I'd

never seen your Frenchmen! Only wait till it gets dark and I'll

fetch you any of them you want--three if you like."



"Well, let's go," said Denisov, and rode all the way to the

watchhouse in silence and frowning angrily.



Tikhon followed behind and Petya heard the Cossacks laughing with

him and at him, about some pair of boots he had thrown into the

bushes.



When the fit of laughter that had seized him at Tikhon's words and

smile had passed and Petya realized for a moment that this Tikhon

had killed a man, he felt uneasy. He looked round at the captive

drummer boy and felt a pang in his heart. But this uneasiness lasted

only a moment. He felt it necessary to hold his head higher, to

brace himself, and to question the esaul with an air of importance

about tomorrow's undertaking, that he might not be unworthy of the

company in which he found himself.



The officer who had been sent to inquire met Denisov on the way with

the news that Dolokhov was soon coming and that all was well with him.



Denisov at once cheered up and, calling Petya to him, said: "Well,

tell me about yourself."









CHAPTER VII





Petya, having left his people after their departure from Moscow,

joined his regiment and was soon taken as orderly by a general

commanding a large guerrilla detachment. From the time he received his

commission, and especially since he had joined the active army and

taken part in the battle of Vyazma, Petya had been in a constant state

of blissful excitement at being grown-up and in a perpetual ecstatic

hurry not to miss any chance to do something really heroic. He was

highly delighted with what he saw and experienced in the army, but

at the same time it always seemed to him that the really heroic

exploits were being performed just where he did not happen to be.

And he was always in a hurry to get where he was not.



When on the twenty-first of October his general expressed a wish

to send somebody to Denisov's detachment, Petya begged so piteously to

be sent that the general could not refuse. But when dispatching him he

recalled Petya's mad action at the battle of Vyazma, where instead

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of riding by the road to the place to which he had been sent, he had

galloped to the advanced line under the fire of the French and had

there twice fired his pistol. So now the general explicitly forbade

his taking part in any action whatever of Denisov's. That was why

Petya had blushed and grown confused when Denisov asked him whether he

could stay. Before they had ridden to the outskirts of the forest

Petya had considered he must carry out his instructions strictly and

return at once. But when he saw the French and saw Tikhon and

learned that there would certainly be an attack that night, he

decided, with the rapidity with which young people change their views,

that the general, whom he had greatly respected till then, was a

rubbishy German, that Denisov was a hero, the esaul a hero, and Tikhon

a hero too, and that it would be shameful for him to leave them at a

moment of difficulty.



It was already growing dusk when Denisov, Petya, and the esaul

rode up to the watchhouse. In the twilight saddled horses could be

seen, and Cossacks and hussars who had rigged up rough shelters in the

glade and were kindling glowing fires in a hollow of the forest

where the French could not see the smoke. In the passage of the

small watchhouse a Cossack with sleeves rolled up was chopping some

mutton. In the room three officers of Denisov's band were converting a

door into a tabletop. Petya took off his wet clothes, gave them to

be dried, and at once began helping the officers to fix up the

dinner table.



In ten minutes the table was ready and a napkin spread on it. On the

table were vodka, a flask of rum, white bread, roast mutton, and salt.



Sitting at table with the officers and tearing the fat savory mutton

with his hands, down which the grease trickled, Petya was in an

ecstatic childish state of love for all men, and consequently of

confidence that others loved him in the same way.



"So then what do you think, Vasili Dmitrich?" said he to Denisov.

"It's all right my staying a day with you?" And not waiting for a

reply he answered his own question: "You see I was told to find out-

well, I am finding out.... Only do let me into the very... into the

chief... I don't want a reward... But I want..."



Petya clenched his teeth and looked around, throwing back his head

and flourishing his arms.



"Into the vewy chief..." Denisov repeated with a smile.



"Only, please let me command something, so that I may really

command..." Petya went on. "What would it be to you?... Oh, you want a

knife?" he said, turning to an officer who wished to cut himself a

piece of mutton.



And he handed him his clasp knife. The officer admired it.



"Please keep it. I have several like it," said Petya, blushing.

"Heavens! I was quite forgetting!" he suddenly cried. "I have some

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raisins, fine ones; you know, seedless ones. We have a new sutler

and he has such capital things. I bought ten pounds. I am used to

something sweet. Would you like some?..." and Petya ran out into the

passage to his Cossack and brought back some bags which contained

about five pounds of raisins. "Have some, gentlemen, have some!"



"You want a coffeepot, don't you?" he asked the esaul. "I bought a

capital one from our sutler! He has splendid things. And he's very

honest, that's the chief thing. I'll be sure to send it to you. Or

perhaps your flints are giving out, or are worn out--that happens

sometimes, you know. I have brought some with me, here they are"-

and he showed a bag--"a hundred flints. I bought them very cheap.

Please take as many as you want, or all if you like...."



Then suddenly, dismayed lest he had said too much, Petya stopped and

blushed.



He tried to remember whether he had not done anything else that

was foolish. And running over the events of the day he remembered

the French drummer boy. "It's capital for us here, but what of him?

Where have they put him? Have they fed him? Haven't they hurt his

feelings?" he thought. But having caught himself saying too much about

the flints, he was now afraid to speak out.



"I might ask," he thought, "but they'll say: 'He's a boy himself and

so he pities the boy.' I'll show them tomorrow whether I'm a boy. Will

it seem odd if I ask?" Petya thought. "Well, never mind!" and

immediately, blushing and looking anxiously at the officers to see

if they appeared ironical, he said:



"May I call in that boy who was taken prisoner and give him

something to eat?... Perhaps..."



"Yes, he's a poor little fellow," said Denisov, who evidently saw

nothing shameful in this reminder. "Call him in. His name is Vincent

Bosse. Have him fetched."



"I'll call him," said Petya.



"Yes, yes, call him. A poor little fellow," Denisov repeated.



Petya was standing at the door when Denisov said this. He slipped in

between the officers, came close to Denisov, and said:



"Let me kiss you, dear old fellow! Oh, how fine, how splendid!"



And having kissed Denisov he ran out of the hut.



"Bosse! Vincent!" Petya cried, stopping outside the door.



"Who do you want, sir?" asked a voice in the darkness.



Petya replied that he wanted the French lad who had been captured

that day.

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"Ah, Vesenny?" said a Cossack.



Vincent, the boy's name, had already been changed by the Cossacks

into Vesenny (vernal) and into Vesenya by the peasants and soldiers.

In both these adaptations the reference to spring (vesna) matched

the impression made by the young lad.



"He is warming himself there by the bonfire. Ho, Vesenya!

Vesenya!--Vesenny!" laughing voices were heard calling to one

another in the darkness.



"He's a smart lad," said an hussar standing near Petya. "We gave him

something to eat a while ago. He was awfully hungry!"



The sound of bare feet splashing through the mud was heard in the

darkness, and the drummer boy came to the door.



"Ah, c'est vous!" said Petya. "Voulez-vous manger? N'ayez pas

peur, on ne vous fera pas de mal,"* he added shyly and affectionately,

touching the boy's hand. "Entrez, entrez."*[2]





*"Ah, it's you! Do you want something to eat? Don't be afraid,

they won't hurt you."



*[2] "Come in, come in."





"Merci, monsieur,"* said the drummer boy in a trembling almost

childish voice, and he began scraping his dirty feet on the threshold.





*"Thank you, sir."





There were many things Petya wanted to say to the drummer boy, but

did not dare to. He stood irresolutely beside him in the passage. Then

in the darkness he took the boy's hand and pressed it.



"Come in, come in!" he repeated in a gentle whisper. "Oh, what can I

do for him?" he thought, and opening the door he let the boy pass in

first.



When the boy had entered the hut, Petya sat down at a distance

from him, considering it beneath his dignity to pay attention to

him. But he fingered the money in his pocket and wondered whether it

would seem ridiculous to give some to the drummer boy.









CHAPTER VIII

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The arrival of Dolokhov diverted Petya's attention from the

drummer boy, to whom Denisov had had some mutton and vodka given,

and whom he had had dressed in a Russian coat so that he might be kept

with their band and not sent away with the other prisoners. Petya

had heard in the army many stories of Dolokhov's extraordinary bravery

and of his cruelty to the French, so from the moment he entered the

hut Petya did not take his eyes from him, but braced himself up more

and more and held his head high, that he might not be unworthy even of

such company.



Dolokhov's appearance amazed Petya by its simplicity.



Denisov wore a Cossack coat, had a beard, had an icon of Nicholas

the Wonder-Worker on his breast, and his way of speaking and

everything he did indicated his unusual position. But Dolokhov, who in

Moscow had worn a Persian costume, had now the appearance of a most

correct officer of the Guards. He was clean-shaven and wore a

Guardsman's padded coat with an Order of St. George at his

buttonhole and a plain forage cap set straight on his head. He took

off his wet felt cloak in a corner of the room, and without greeting

anyone went up to Denisov and began questioning him about the matter

in hand. Denisov told him of the designs the large detachments had

on the transport, of the message Petya had brought, and his own

replies to both generals. Then he told him all he knew of the French

detachment.



"That's so. But we must know what troops they are and their

numbers," said Dolokhov. "It will be necessary to go there. We can't

start the affair without knowing for certain how many there are. I

like to work accurately. Here now--wouldn't one of these gentlemen

like to ride over to the French camp with me? I have brought a spare

uniform."



"I, I... I'll go with you!" cried Petya.



"There's no need for you to go at all," said Denisov, addressing

Dolokhov, "and as for him, I won't let him go on any account."



"I like that!" exclaimed Petya. "Why shouldn't I go?"



"Because it's useless."



"Well, you must excuse me, because... because... I shall go, and

that's all. You'll take me, won't you?" he said, turning to Dolokhov.



"Why not?" Dolokhov answered absently, scrutinizing the face of

the French drummer boy. "Have you had that youngster with you long?"

he asked Denisov.



"He was taken today but he knows nothing. I'm keeping him with me."



"Yes, and where do you put the others?" inquired Dolokhov.

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"Where? I send them away and take a weceipt for them," shouted

Denisov, suddenly flushing. "And I say boldly that I have not a single

man's life on my conscience. Would it be difficult for you to send

thirty or thwee hundwed men to town under escort, instead of staining-

I speak bluntly--staining the honor of a soldier?"



"That kind of amiable talk would be suitable from this young count

of sixteen," said Dolokhov with cold irony, "but it's time for you

to drop it."



"Why, I've not said anything! I only say that I'll certainly go with

you," said Petya shyly.



"But for you and me, old fellow, it's time to drop these amenities,"

continued Dolokhov, as if he found particular pleasure in speaking

of this subject which irritated Denisov. "Now, why have you kept

this lad?" he went on, swaying his head. "Because you are sorry for

him! Don't we know those 'receipts' of yours? You send a hundred men

away, and thirty get there. The rest either starve or get killed. So

isn't it all the same not to send them?"



The esaul, screwing up his light-colored eyes, nodded approvingly.



"That's not the point. I'm not going to discuss the matter. I do not

wish to take it on my conscience. You say they'll die. All wight. Only

not by my fault!"



Dolokhov began laughing.



"Who has told them not to capture me these twenty times over? But if

they did catch me they'd string me up to an aspen tree, and with all

your chivalry just the same." He paused. "However, we must get to

work. Tell the Cossack to fetch my kit. I have two French uniforms

in it. Well, are you coming with me?" he asked Petya.



"I? Yes, yes, certainly!" cried Petya, blushing almost to tears

and glancing at Denisov.



While Dolokhov had been disputing with Denisov what should be done

with prisoners, Petya had once more felt awkward and restless; but

again he had no time to grasp fully what they were talking about.

"If grown-up, distinguished men think so, it must be necessary and

right," thought he. "But above all Denisov must not dare to imagine

that I'll obey him and that he can order me about. I will certainly go

to the French camp with Dolokhov. If he can, so can I!"



And to all Denisov's persuasions, Petya replied that he too was

accustomed to do everything accurately and not just anyhow, and that

he never considered personal danger.



"For you'll admit that if we don't know for sure how many of them

there are... hundreds of lives may depend on it, while there are

only two of us. Besides, I want to go very much and certainly will go,

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so don't hinder me," said he. "It will only make things worse..."









CHAPTER IX





Having put on French greatcoats and shakos, Petya and Dolokhov

rode to the clearing from which Denisov had reconnoitered the French

camp, and emerging from the forest in pitch darkness they descended

into the hollow. On reaching the bottom, Dolokhov told the Cossacks

accompanying him to await him there and rode on at a quick trot

along the road to the bridge. Petya, his heart in his mouth with

excitement, rode by his side.



"If we're caught, I won't be taken alive! I have a pistol,"

whispered he.



"Don't talk Russian," said Dolokhov in a hurried whisper, and at

that very moment they heard through the darkness the challenge: "Qui

vive?"* and the click of a musket.





*"Who goes there?"





The blood rushed to Petya's face and he grasped his pistol.



"Lanciers du 6-me,"* replied Dolokhov, neither hastening nor

slackening his horse's pace.





*"Lancers of the 6th Regiment."





The black figure of a sentinel stood on the bridge.



"Mot d'ordre."*





*"Password."





Dolokhov reined in his horse and advanced at a walk.



"Dites donc, le colonel Gerard est ici?"* he asked.





*"Tell me, is Colonel Gerard here?"





"Mot d'ordre," repeated the sentinel, barring the way and not

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replying.



"Quand un officier fait sa ronde, les sentinelles ne demandent pas

le mot d'ordre..." cried Dolokhov suddenly flaring up and riding

straight at the sentinel. "Je vous demande si le colonel est ici."*





*"When an officer is making his round, sentinels don't ask him for

the password.... I am asking you if the colonel is here."





And without waiting for an answer from the sentinel, who had stepped

aside, Dolokhov rode up the incline at a walk.



Noticing the black outline of a man crossing the road, Dolokhov

stopped him and inquired where the commander and officers were. The

man, a soldier with a sack over his shoulder, stopped, came close up

to Dolokhov's horse, touched it with his hand, and explained simply

and in a friendly way that the commander and the officers were

higher up the hill to the right in the courtyard of the farm, as he

called the landowner's house.



Having ridden up the road, on both sides of which French talk

could be heard around the campfires, Dolokhov turned into the

courtyard of the landowner's house. Having ridden in, he dismounted

and approached a big blazing campfire, around which sat several men

talking noisily. Something was boiling in a small cauldron at the edge

of the fire and a soldier in a peaked cap and blue overcoat, lit up by

the fire, was kneeling beside it stirring its contents with a ramrod.



"Oh, he's a hard nut to crack," said one of the officers who was

sitting in the shadow at the other side of the fire.



"He'll make them get a move on, those fellows!" said another,

laughing.



Both fell silent, peering out through the darkness at the sound of

Dolokhov's and Petya's steps as they advanced to the fire leading

their horses.



"Bonjour, messieurs!"* said Dolokhov loudly and clearly.





*"Good day, gentlemen."





There was a stir among the officers in the shadow beyond the fire,

and one tall, long-necked officer, walking round the fire, came up

to Dolokhov.



"Is that you, Clement?" he asked. "Where the devil...?" But, noticing

his mistake, he broke off short and, with a frown, greeted Dolokhov as

a stranger, asking what he could do for him.



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Dolokhov said that he and his companion were trying to overtake

their regiment, and addressing the company in general asked whether

they knew anything of the 6th Regiment. None of them knew anything,

and Petya thought the officers were beginning to look at him and

Dolokhov with hostility and suspicion. For some seconds all were

silent.



"If you were counting on the evening soup, you have come too

late," said a voice from behind the fire with a repressed laugh.



Dolokhov replied that they were not hungry and must push on

farther that night.



He handed the horses over to the soldier who was stirring the pot

and squatted down on his heels by the fire beside the officer with the

long neck. That officer did not take his eyes from Dolokhov and

again asked to what regiment he belonged. Dolokhov, as if he had not

heard the question, did not reply, but lighting a short French pipe

which he took from his pocket began asking the officer in how far

the road before them was safe from Cossacks.



"Those brigands are everywhere," replied an officer from behind

the fire.



Dolokhov remarked that the Cossacks were a danger only to stragglers

such as his companion and himself, "but probably they would not dare

to attack large detachments?" he added inquiringly. No one replied.



"Well, now he'll come away," Petya thought every moment as he

stood by the campfire listening to the talk.



But Dolokhov restarted the conversation which had dropped and

began putting direct questions as to how many men there were in the

battalion, how many battalions, and how many prisoners. Asking about

the Russian prisoners with that detachment, Dolokhov said:



"A horrid business dragging these corpses about with one! It would

be better to shoot such rabble," and burst into loud laughter, so

strange that Petya thought the French would immediately detect their

disguise, and involuntarily took a step back from the campfire.



No one replied a word to Dolokhov's laughter, and a French officer

whom they could not see (he lay wrapped in a greatcoat) rose and

whispered something to a companion. Dolokhov got up and called to

the soldier who was holding their horses.



"Will they bring our horses or not?" thought Petya, instinctively

drawing nearer to Dolokhov.



The horses were brought.



"Good evening, gentlemen," said Dolokhov.



Petya wished to say "Good night" but could not utter a word. The

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officers were whispering together. Dolokhov was a long time mounting

his horse which would not stand still, then he rode out of the yard at

a footpace. Petya rode beside him, longing to look round to see

whether or no the French were running after them, but not daring to.



Coming out onto the road Dolokhov did not ride back across the

open country, but through the village. At one spot he stopped and

listened. "Do you hear?" he asked. Petya recognized the sound of

Russian voices and saw the dark figures of Russian prisoners round

their campfires. When they had descended to the bridge Petya and

Dolokhov rode past the sentinel, who without saying a word paced

morosely up and down it, then they descended into the hollow where the

Cossacks awaited them.



"Well now, good-by. Tell Denisov, 'at the first shot at

daybreak,'" said Dolokhov and was about to ride away, but Petya seized

hold of him.



"Really!" he cried, "you are such a hero! Oh, how fine, how

splendid! How I love you!"



"All right, all right!" said Dolokhov. But Petya did not let go of

him and Dolokhov saw through the gloom that Petya was bending toward

him and wanted to kiss him. Dolokhov kissed him, laughed, turned his

horse, and vanished into the darkness.









CHAPTER X





Having returned to the watchman's hut, Petya found Denisov in the

passage. He was awaiting Petya's return in a state of agitation,

anxiety, and self-reproach for having let him go.



"Thank God!" he exclaimed. "Yes, thank God!" he repeated,

listening to Petya's rapturous account. "But, devil take you, I

haven't slept because of you! Well, thank God. Now lie down. We can

still get a nap before morning."



"But... no," said Petya, "I don't want to sleep yet. Besides I

know myself, if I fall asleep it's finished. And then I am used to not

sleeping before a battle."



He sat awhile in the hut joyfully recalling the details of his

expedition and vividly picturing to himself what would happen next

day.



Then, noticing that Denisov was asleep, he rose and went out of

doors.



It was still quite dark outside. The rain was over, but drops were

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still falling from the trees. Near the watchman's hut the black shapes

of the Cossacks' shanties and of horses tethered together could be

seen. Behind the hut the dark shapes of the two wagons with their

horses beside them were discernible, and in the hollow the dying

campfire gleamed red. Not all the Cossacks and hussars were asleep;

here and there, amid the sounds of falling drops and the munching of

the horses near by, could be heard low voices which seemed to be

whispering.



Petya came out, peered into the darkness, and went up to the wagons.

Someone was snoring under them, and around them stood saddled horses

munching their oats. In the dark Petya recognized his own horse, which

he called "Karabakh" though it was of Ukranian breed, and went up to

it.



"Well, Karabakh! We'll do some service tomorrow," said he,

sniffing its nostrils and kissing it.



"Why aren't you asleep, sir?" said a Cossack who was sitting under a

wagon.



"No, ah... Likhachev--isn't that your name? Do you know I have

only just come back! We've been into the French camp."



And Petya gave the Cossack a detailed account not only of his ride

but also of his object, and why he considered it better to risk his

life than to act "just anyhow."



"Well, you should get some sleep now," said the Cossack.



"No, I am used to this," said Petya. "I say, aren't the flints in

your pistols worn out? I brought some with me. Don't you want any? You

can have some."



The Cossack bent forward from under the wagon to get a closer look

at Petya.



"Because I am accustomed to doing everything accurately," said

Petya. "Some fellows do things just anyhow, without preparation, and

then they're sorry for it afterwards. I don't like that."



"Just so," said the Cossack.



"Oh yes, another thing! Please, my dear fellow, will you sharpen

my saber for me? It's got bl..." (Petya feared to tell a lie, and

the saber never had been sharpened.) "Can you do it?"



"Of course I can."



Likhachev got up, rummaged in his pack, and soon Petya heard the

warlike sound of steel on whetstone. He climbed onto the wagon and sat

on its edge. The Cossack was sharpening the saber under the wagon.



"I say! Are the lads asleep?" asked Petya.

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"Some are, and some aren't--like us."



"Well, and that boy?"



"Vesenny? Oh, he's thrown himself down there in the passage. Fast

asleep after his fright. He was that glad!"



After that Petya remained silent for a long time, listening to the

sounds. He heard footsteps in the darkness and a black figure

appeared.



"What are you sharpening?" asked a man coming up to the wagon.



"Why, this gentleman's saber."



"That's right," said the man, whom Petya took to be an hussar.

"Was the cup left here?"



"There, by the wheel!"



The hussar took the cup.



"It must be daylight soon," said he, yawning, and went away.



Petya ought to have known that he was in a forest with Denisov's

guerrilla band, less than a mile from the road, sitting on a wagon

captured from the French beside which horses were tethered, that under

it Likhachev was sitting sharpening a saber for him, that the big dark

blotch to the right was the watchman's hut, and the red blotch below

to the left was the dying embers of a campfire, that the man who had

come for the cup was an hussar who wanted a drink; but he neither knew

nor waited to know anything of all this. He was in a fairy kingdom

where nothing resembled reality. The big dark blotch might really be

the watchman's hut or it might be a cavern leading to the very

depths of the earth. Perhaps the red spot was a fire, or it might be

the eye of an enormous monster. Perhaps he was really sitting on a

wagon, but it might very well be that he was not sitting on a wagon

but on a terribly high tower from which, if he fell, he would have

to fall for a whole day or a whole month, or go on falling and never

reach the bottom. Perhaps it was just the Cossack, Likhachev, who

was sitting under the wagon, but it might be the kindest, bravest,

most wonderful, most splendid man in the world, whom no one knew of.

It might really have been that the hussar came for water and went back

into the hollow, but perhaps he had simply vanished--disappeared

altogether and dissolved into nothingness.



Nothing Petya could have seen now would have surprised him. He was

in a fairy kingdom where everything was possible.



He looked up at the sky. And the sky was a fairy realm like the

earth. It was clearing, and over the tops of the trees clouds were

swiftly sailing as if unveiling the stars. Sometimes it looked as if

the clouds were passing, and a clear black sky appeared. Sometimes

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it seemed as if the black spaces were clouds. Sometimes the sky seemed

to be rising high, high overhead, and then it seemed to sink so low

that one could touch it with one's hand.



Petya's eyes began to close and he swayed a little.



The trees were dripping. Quiet talking was heard. The horses neighed

and jostled one another. Someone snored.



"Ozheg-zheg, Ozheg-zheg..." hissed the saber against the

whetstone, and suddenly Petya heard an harmonious orchestra playing

some unknown, sweetly solemn hymn. Petya was as musical as Natasha and

more so than Nicholas, but had never learned music or thought about

it, and so the melody that unexpectedly came to his mind seemed to him

particularly fresh and attractive. The music became more and more

audible. The melody grew and passed from one instrument to another.

And what was played was a fugue--though Petya had not the least

conception of what a fugue is. Each instrument--now resembling a

violin and now a horn, but better and clearer than violin or horn-

played its own part, and before it had finished the melody merged with

another instrument that began almost the same air, and then with a

third and a fourth; and they all blended into one and again became

separate and again blended, now into solemn church music, now into

something dazzlingly brilliant and triumphant.



"Oh--why, that was in a dream!" Petya said to himself, as he lurched

forward. "It's in my ears. But perhaps it's music of my own. Well,

go on, my music! Now!..."



He closed his eyes, and, from all sides as if from a distance,

sounds fluttered, grew into harmonies, separated, blended, and again

all mingled into the same sweet and solemn hymn. "Oh, this is

delightful! As much as I like and as I like!" said Petya to himself.

He tried to conduct that enormous orchestra.



"Now softly, softly die away!" and the sounds obeyed him. "Now

fuller, more joyful. Still more and more joyful!" And from an

unknown depth rose increasingly triumphant sounds. "Now voices join

in!" ordered Petya. And at first from afar he heard men's voices and

then women's. The voices grew in harmonious triumphant strength, and

Petya listened to their surpassing beauty in awe and joy.



With a solemn triumphal march there mingled a song, the drip from

the trees, and the hissing of the saber, "Ozheg-zheg-zheg..." and

again the horses jostled one another and neighed, not disturbing the

choir but joining in it.



Petya did not know how long this lasted: he enjoyed himself all

the time, wondered at his enjoyment and regretted that there was no

one to share it. He was awakened by Likhachev's kindly voice.



"It's ready, your honor; you can split a Frenchman in half with it!"



Petya woke up.

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"It's getting light, it's really getting light!" he exclaimed.



The horses that had previously been invisible could now be seen to

their very tails, and a watery light showed itself through the bare

branches. Petya shook himself, jumped up, took a ruble from his pocket

and gave it to Likhachev; then he flourished the saber, tested it, and

sheathed it. The Cossacks were untying their horses and tightening

their saddle girths.



"And here's the commander," said Likhachev.



Denisov came out of the watchman's hut and, having called Petya,

gave orders to get ready.









CHAPTER XI





The men rapidly picked out their horses in the semidarkness,

tightened their saddle girths, and formed companies. Denisov stood

by the watchman's hut giving final orders. The infantry of the

detachment passed along the road and quickly disappeared amid the

trees in the mist of early dawn, hundreds of feet splashing through

the mud. The esaul gave some orders to his men. Petya held his horse

by the bridle, impatiently awaiting the order to mount. His face,

having been bathed in cold water, was all aglow, and his eyes were

particularly brilliant. Cold shivers ran down his spine and his

whole body pulsed rhythmically.



"Well, is ev'wything weady?" asked Denisov. "Bwing the horses."



The horses were brought. Denisov was angry with the Cossack

because the saddle girths were too slack, reproved him, and mounted.

Petya put his foot in the stirrup. His horse by habit made as if to

nip his leg, but Petya leaped quickly into the saddle unconscious of

his own weight and, turning to look at the hussars starting in the

darkness behind him, rode up to Denisov.



"Vasili Dmitrich, entrust me with some commission! Please... for

God's sake...!" said he.



Denisov seemed to have forgotten Petya's very existence. He turned

to glance at him.



"I ask one thing of you," he said sternly, "to obey me and not shove

yourself forward anywhere."



He did not say another word to Petya but rode in silence all the

way. When they had come to the edge of the forest it was noticeably

growing light over the field. Denisov talked in whispers with the

esaul and the Cossacks rode past Petya and Denisov. When they had

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all ridden by, Denisov touched his horse and rode down the hill.

Slipping onto their haunches and sliding, the horses descended with

their riders into the ravine. Petya rode beside Denisov, the pulsation

of his body constantly increasing. It was getting lighter and lighter,

but the mist still hid distant objects. Having reached the valley,

Denisov looked back and nodded to a Cossack beside him.



"The signal!" said he.



The Cossack raised his arm and a shot rang out. In an instant the

tramp of horses galloping forward was heard, shouts came from

various sides, and then more shots.



At the first sound of trampling hoofs and shouting, Petya lashed his

horse and loosening his rein galloped forward, not heeding Denisov who

shouted at him. It seemed to Petya that at the moment the shot was

fired it suddenly became as bright as noon. He galloped to the bridge.

Cossacks were galloping along the road in front of him. On the

bridge he collided with a Cossack who had fallen behind, but he

galloped on. In front of him soldiers, probably Frenchmen, were

running from right to left across the road. One of them fell in the

mud under his horse's feet.



Cossacks were crowding about a hut, busy with something. From the

midst of that crowd terrible screams arose. Petya galloped up, and the

first thing he saw was the pale face and trembling jaw of a Frenchman,

clutching the handle of a lance that had been aimed at him.



"Hurrah!... Lads!... ours!" shouted Petya, and giving rein to his

excited horse he galloped forward along the village street.



He could hear shooting ahead of him. Cossacks, hussars, and ragged

Russian prisoners, who had come running from both sides of the road,

were shouting something loudly and incoherently. A gallant-looking

Frenchman, in a blue overcoat, capless, and with a frowning red

face, had been defending himself against the hussars. When Petya

galloped up the Frenchman had already fallen. "Too late again!"

flashed through Petya's mind and he galloped on to the place from

which the rapid firing could be heard. The shots came from the yard of

the landowner's house he had visited the night before with Dolokhov.

The French were making a stand there behind a wattle fence in a garden

thickly overgrown with bushes and were firing at the Cossacks who

crowded at the gateway. Through the smoke, as he approached the

gate, Petya saw Dolokhov, whose face was of a pale-greenish tint,

shouting to his men. "Go round! Wait for the infantry!" he exclaimed

as Petya rode up to him.



"Wait?... Hurrah-ah-ah!" shouted Petya, and without pausing a moment

galloped to the place whence came the sounds of firing and where the

smoke was thickest.



A volley was heard, and some bullets whistled past, while others

plashed against something. The Cossacks and Dolokhov galloped after

Petya into the gateway of the courtyard. In the dense wavering smoke

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some of the French threw down their arms and ran out of the bushes

to meet the Cossacks, while others ran down the hill toward the

pond. Petya was galloping along the courtyard, but instead of

holding the reins he waved both his arms about rapidly and

strangely, slipping farther and farther to one side in his saddle. His

horse, having galloped up to a campfire that was smoldering in the

morning light, stopped suddenly, and Petya fell heavily on to the

wet ground. The Cossacks saw that his arms and legs jerked rapidly

though his head was quite motionless. A bullet had pierced his skull.



After speaking to the senior French officer, who came out of the

house with a white handkerchief tied to his sword and announced that

they surrendered, Dolokhov dismounted and went up to Petya, who lay

motionless with outstretched arms.



"Done for!" he said with a frown, and went to the gate to meet

Denisov who was riding toward him.



"Killed?" cried Denisov, recognizing from a distance the

unmistakably lifeless attitude--very familiar to him--in which Petya's

body was lying.



"Done for!" repeated Dolokhov as if the utterance of these words

afforded him pleasure, and he went quickly up to the prisoners, who

were surrounded by Cossacks who had hurried up. "We won't take

them!" he called out to Denisov.



Denisov did not reply; he rode up to Petya, dismounted, and with

trembling hands turned toward himself the bloodstained,

mud-bespattered face which had already gone white.



"I am used to something sweet. Raisins, fine ones... take them all!"

he recalled Petya's words. And the Cossacks looked round in surprise

at the sound, like the yelp of a dog, with which Denisov turned

away, walked to the wattle fence, and seized hold of it.



Among the Russian prisoners rescued by Denisov and Dolokhov was

Pierre Bezukhov.









CHAPTER XII



During the whole of their march from Moscow no fresh orders had been

issued by the French authorities concerning the party of prisoners

among whom was Pierre. On the twenty-second of October that party

was no longer with the same troops and baggage trains with which it

had left Moscow. Half the wagons laden with hardtack that had traveled

the first stages with them had been captured by Cossacks, the other

half had gone on ahead. Not one of those dismounted cavalrymen who had

marched in front of the prisoners was left; they had all

disappeared. The artillery the prisoners had seen in front of them

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during the first days was now replaced by Marshal Junot's enormous

baggage train, convoyed by Westphalians. Behind the prisoners came a

cavalry baggage train.



From Vyazma onwards the French army, which had till then moved in

three columns, went on as a single group. The symptoms of disorder

that Pierre had noticed at their first halting place after leaving

Moscow had now reached the utmost limit.



The road along which they moved was bordered on both sides by dead

horses; ragged men who had fallen behind from various regiments

continually changed about, now joining the moving column, now again

lagging behind it.



Several times during the march false alarms had been given and the

soldiers of the escort had raised their muskets, fired, and run

headlong, crushing one another, but had afterwards reassembled and

abused each other for their causeless panic.



These three groups traveling together--the cavalry stores, the

convoy of prisoners, and Junot's baggage train--still constituted a

separate and united whole, though each of the groups was rapidly

melting away.



Of the artillery baggage train which had consisted of a hundred

and twenty wagons, not more than sixty now remained; the rest had been

captured or left behind. Some of Junot's wagons also had been captured

or abandoned. Three wagons had been raided and robbed by stragglers

from Davout's corps. From the talk of the Germans Pierre learned

that a larger guard had been allotted to that baggage train than to

the prisoners, and that one of their comrades, a German soldier, had

been shot by the marshal's own order because a silver spoon

belonging to the marshal had been found in his possession.



The group of prisoners had melted away most of all. Of the three

hundred and thirty men who had set out from Moscow fewer than a

hundred now remained. The prisoners were more burdensome to the escort

than even the cavalry saddles or Junot's baggage. They understood that

the saddles and Junot's spoon might be of some use, but that cold

and hungry soldiers should have to stand and guard equally cold and

hungry Russians who froze and lagged behind on the road (in which case

the order was to shoot them) was not merely incomprehensible but

revolting. And the escort, as if afraid, in the grievous condition

they themselves were in, of giving way to the pity they felt for the

prisoners and so rendering their own plight still worse, treated

them with particular moroseness and severity.



At Dorogobuzh while the soldiers of the convoy, after locking the

prisoners in a stable, had gone off to pillage their own stores,

several of the soldier prisoners tunneled under the wall and ran away,

but were recaptured by the French and shot.



The arrangement adopted when they started, that the officer

prisoners should be kept separate from the rest, had long since been

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abandoned. All who could walk went together, and after the third stage

Pierre had rejoined Karataev and the gray-blue bandy-legged dog that

had chosen Karataev for its master.



On the third day after leaving Moscow Karataev again fell ill with

the fever he had suffered from in the hospital in Moscow, and as he

grew gradually weaker Pierre kept away from him. Pierre did not know

why, but since Karataev had begun to grow weaker it had cost him an

effort to go near him. When he did so and heard the subdued moaning

with which Karataev generally lay down at the halting places, and when

he smelled the odor emanating from him which was now stronger than

before, Pierre moved farther away and did not think about him.



While imprisoned in the shed Pierre had learned not with his

intellect but with his whole being, by life itself, that man is

created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the

satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises

not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last

three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory

truth--that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that

as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely

free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack

freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and

that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed

of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now,

sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while

the other was warming; and that when he had put on tight dancing shoes

he had suffered just as he did now when he walked with bare feet

that were covered with sores--his footgear having long since fallen to

pieces. He discovered that when he had married his wife--of his own

free will as it had seemed to him--he had been no more free than now

when they locked him up at night in a stable. Of all that he himself

subsequently termed his sufferings, but which at the time he

scarcely felt, the worst was the state of his bare, raw, and

scab-covered feet. (The horseflesh was appetizing and nourishing,

the saltpeter flavor of the gunpowder they used instead of salt was

even pleasant; there was no great cold, it was always warm walking

in the daytime, and at night there were the campfires; the lice that

devoured him warmed his body.) The one thing that was at first hard to

bear was his feet.



After the second day's march Pierre, having examined his feet by the

campfire, thought it would be impossible to walk on them; but when

everybody got up he went along, limping, and, when he had warmed up,

walked without feeling the pain, though at night his feet were more

terrible to look at than before. However, he did not look at them now,

but thought of other things.



Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the

saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to

another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows

superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain

limit.



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He did not see and did not hear how they shot the prisoners who

lagged behind, though more than a hundred perished in that way. He did

not think of Karataev who grew weaker every day and evidently would

soon have to share that fate. Still less did Pierre think about

himself. The harder his position became and the more terrible the

future, the more independent of that position in which he found

himself were the joyful and comforting thoughts, memories, and

imaginings that came to him.









CHAPTER XIII





At midday on the twenty-second of October Pierre was going uphill

along the muddy, slippery road, looking at his feet and at the

roughness of the way. Occasionally he glanced at the familiar crowd

around him and then again at his feet. The former and the latter

were alike familiar and his own. The blue-gray bandy legged dog ran

merrily along the side of the road, sometimes in proof of its

agility and self-satisfaction lifting one hind leg and hopping along

on three, and then again going on all four and rushing to bark at

the crows that sat on the carrion. The dog was merrier and sleeker

than it had been in Moscow. All around lay the flesh of different

animals--from men to horses--in various stages of decomposition; and

as the wolves were kept off by the passing men the dog could eat all

it wanted.



It had been raining since morning and had seemed as if at any moment

it might cease and the sky clear, but after a short break it began

raining harder than before. The saturated road no longer absorbed

the water, which ran along the ruts in streams.



Pierre walked along, looking from side to side, counting his steps

in threes, and reckoning them off on his fingers. Mentally

addressing the rain, he repeated: "Now then, now then, go on! Pelt

harder!"



It seemed to him that he was thinking of nothing, but far down and

deep within him his soul was occupied with something important and

comforting. This something was a most subtle spiritual deduction

from a conversation with Karataev the day before.



At their yesterday's halting place, feeling chilly by a dying

campfire, Pierre had got up and gone to the next one, which was

burning better. There Platon Karataev was sitting covered up--head and

all--with his greatcoat as if it were a vestment, telling the soldiers

in his effective and pleasant though now feeble voice a story Pierre

knew. It was already past midnight, the hour when Karataev was usually

free of his fever and particularly lively. When Pierre reached the

fire and heard Platon's voice enfeebled by illness, and saw his

pathetic face brightly lit up by the blaze, he felt a painful prick at

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his heart. His feeling of pity for this man frightened him and he

wished to go away, but there was no other fire, and Pierre sat down,

trying not to look at Platon.



"Well, how are you?" he asked.



"How am I? If we grumble at sickness, God won't grant us death,"

replied Platon, and at once resumed the story he had begun.



"And so, brother," he continued, with a smile on his pale

emaciated face and a particularly happy light in his eyes, "you

see, brother..."



Pierre had long been familiar with that story. Karataev had told

it to him alone some half-dozen times and always with a specially

joyful emotion. But well as he knew it, Pierre now listened to that

tale as to something new, and the quiet rapture Karataev evidently

felt as he told it communicated itself also to Pierre. The story was

of an old merchant who lived a good and God-fearing life with his

family, and who went once to the Nizhni fair with a companion--a

rich merchant.



Having put up at an inn they both went to sleep, and next morning

his companion was found robbed and with his throat cut. A bloodstained

knife was found under the old merchant's pillow. He was tried,

knouted, and his nostrils having been torn off, "all in due form" as

Karataev put it, he was sent to hard labor in Siberia.



"And so, brother" (it was at this point that Pierre came up), "ten

years or more passed by. The old man was living as a convict,

submitting as he should and doing no wrong. Only he prayed to God

for death. Well, one night the convicts were gathered just as we

are, with the old man among them. And they began telling what each was

suffering for, and how they had sinned against God. One told how he

had taken a life, another had taken two, a third had set a house on

fire, while another had simply been a vagrant and had done nothing. So

they asked the old man: 'What are you being punished for, Daddy?'--'I,

my dear brothers,' said he, 'am being punished for my own and other

men's sins. But I have not killed anyone or taken anything that was

not mine, but have only helped my poorer brothers. I was a merchant,

my dear brothers, and had much property. 'And he went on to tell

them all about it in due order. 'I don't grieve for myself,' he

says, 'God, it seems, has chastened me. Only I am sorry for my old

wife and the children,' and the old man began to weep. Now it happened

that in the group was the very man who had killed the other

merchant. 'Where did it happen, Daddy?' he said. 'When, and in what

month?' He asked all about it and his heart began to ache. So he comes

up to the old man like this, and falls down at his feet! 'You are

perishing because of me, Daddy,' he says. 'It's quite true, lads, that

this man,' he says, 'is being tortured innocently and for nothing! I,'

he says, 'did that deed, and I put the knife under your head while you

were asleep. Forgive me, Daddy,' he says, 'for Christ's sake!'"



Karataev paused, smiling joyously as he gazed into the fire, and

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he drew the logs together.



"And the old man said, 'God will forgive you, we are all sinners

in His sight. I suffer for my own sins,' and he wept bitter tears.

Well, and what do you think, dear friends?" Karataev continued, his

face brightening more and more with a rapturous smile as if what he

now had to tell contained the chief charm and the whole meaning of his

story: "What do you think, dear fellows? That murderer confessed to

the authorities. 'I have taken six lives,' he says (he was a great

sinner), 'but what I am most sorry for is this old man. Don't let

him suffer because of me.' So he confessed and it was all written down

and the papers sent off in due form. The place was a long way off, and

while they were judging, what with one thing and another, filling in

the papers all in due form--the authorities I mean--time passed. The

affair reached the Tsar. After a while the Tsar's decree came: to

set the merchant free and give him a compensation that had been

awarded. The paper arrived and they began to look for the old man.

'Where is the old man who has been suffering innocently and in vain? A

paper has come from the Tsar!' so they began looking for him," here

Karataev's lower jaw trembled, "but God had already forgiven him--he

was dead! That's how it was, dear fellows!" Karataev concluded and sat

for a long time silent, gazing before him with a smile.



And Pierre's soul was dimly but joyfully filled not by the story

itself but by its mysterious significance: by the rapturous joy that

lit up Karataev's face as he told it, and the mystic significance of

that joy.









CHAPTER XIV





"A vos places!"* suddenly cried a voice.





*"To your places."





A pleasant feeling of excitement and an expectation of something

joyful and solemn was aroused among the soldiers of the convoy and the

prisoners. From all sides came shouts of command, and from the left

came smartly dressed cavalrymen on good horses, passing the

prisoners at a trot. The expression on all faces showed the tension

people feel at the approach of those in authority. The prisoners

thronged together and were pushed off the road. The convoy formed up.



"The Emperor! The Emperor! The Marshal! The Duke!" and hardly had

the sleek cavalry passed, before a carriage drawn by six gray horses

rattled by. Pierre caught a glimpse of a man in a three-cornered hat

with a tranquil look on his handsome, plump, white face. It was one of

the marshals. His eye fell on Pierre's large and striking figure,

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and in the expression with which he frowned and looked away Pierre

thought he detected sympathy and a desire to conceal that sympathy.



The general in charge of the stores galloped after the carriage with

a red and frightened face, whipping up his skinny horse. Several

officers formed a group and some soldiers crowded round them. Their

faces all looked excited and worried.



"What did he say? What did he say?" Pierre heard them ask.



While the marshal was passing, the prisoners had huddled together in

a crowd, and Pierre saw Karataev whom he had not yet seen that

morning. He sat in his short overcoat leaning against a birch tree. On

his face, besides the look of joyful emotion it had worn yesterday

while telling the tale of the merchant who suffered innocently,

there was now an expression of quiet solemnity.



Karataev looked at Pierre with his kindly round eyes now filled with

tears, evidently wishing him to come near that he might say

something to him. But Pierre was not sufficiently sure of himself.

He made as if he did not notice that look and moved hastily away.



When the prisoners again went forward Pierre looked round.

Karataev was still sitting at the side of the road under the birch

tree and two Frenchmen were talking over his head. Pierre did not look

round again but went limping up the hill.



From behind, where Karataev had been sitting, came the sound of a

shot. Pierre heard it plainly, but at that moment he remembered that

he had not yet finished reckoning up how many stages still remained to

Smolensk--a calculation he had begun before the marshal went by. And

he again started reckoning. Two French soldiers ran past Pierre, one

of whom carried a lowered and smoking gun. They both looked pale,

and in the expression on their faces--one of them glanced timidly at

Pierre--there was something resembling what he had seen on the face of

the young soldier at the execution. Pierre looked at the soldier and

remembered that, two days before, that man had burned his shirt

while drying it at the fire and how they had laughed at him.



Behind him, where Karataev had been sitting, the dog began to

howl. "What a stupid beast! Why is it howling?" thought Pierre.



His comrades, the prisoner soldiers walking beside him, avoided

looking back at the place where the shot had been fired and the dog

was howling, just as Pierre did, but there was a set look on all their

faces.









CHAPTER XV





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The stores, the prisoners, and the marshal's baggage train stopped

at the village of Shamshevo. The men crowded together round the

campfires. Pierre went up to the fire, ate some roast horseflesh,

lay down with his back to the fire, and immediately fell asleep. He

again slept as he had done at Mozhaysk after the battle of Borodino.



Again real events mingled with dreams and again someone, he or

another, gave expression to his thoughts, and even to the same

thoughts that had been expressed in his dream at Mozhaysk.



"Life is everything. Life is God. Everything changes and moves and

that movement is God. And while there is life there is joy in

consciousness of the divine. To love life is to love God. Harder and

more blessed than all else is to love this life in one's sufferings,

in innocent sufferings."



"Karataev!" came to Pierre's mind.



And suddenly he saw vividly before him a long-forgotten, kindly

old man who had given him geography lessons in Switzerland. "Wait a

bit," said the old man, and showed Pierre a globe. This globe was

alive--a vibrating ball without fixed dimensions. Its whole surface

consisted of drops closely pressed together, and all these drops moved

and changed places, sometimes several of them merging into one,

sometimes one dividing into many. Each drop tried to spread out and

occupy as much space as possible, but others striving to do the same

compressed it, sometimes destroyed it, and sometimes merged with it.



"That is life," said the old teacher.



"How simple and clear it is," thought Pierre. "How is it I did not

know it before?"



"God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect

Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from

the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. There now,

Karataev has spread out and disappeared. Do you understand, my child?"

said the teacher.



"Do you understand, damn you?" shouted a voice, and Pierre woke up.



He lifted himself and sat up. A Frenchman who had just pushed a

Russian soldier away was squatting by the fire, engaged in roasting

a piece of meat stuck on a ramrod. His sleeves were rolled up and

his sinewy, hairy, red hands with their short fingers deftly turned

the ramrod. His brown morose face with frowning brows was clearly

visible by the glow of the charcoal.



"It's all the same to him," he muttered, turning quickly to a

soldier who stood behind him. "Brigand! Get away!"



And twisting the ramrod he looked gloomily at Pierre, who turned

away and gazed into the darkness. A prisoner, the Russian soldier

the Frenchman had pushed away, was sitting near the fire patting

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something with his hand. Looking more closely Pierre recognized the

blue-gray dog, sitting beside the soldier, wagging its tail.



"Ah, he's come?" said Pierre. "And Plat-" he began, but did not

finish.



Suddenly and simultaneously a crowd of memories awoke in his

fancy--of the look Platon had given him as he sat under the tree, of

the shot heard from that spot, of the dog's howl, of the guilty

faces of the two Frenchmen as they ran past him, of the lowered and

smoking gun, and of Karataev's absence at this halt--and he was on the

point of realizing that Karataev had been killed, but just at that

instant, he knew not why, the recollection came to his mind of a

summer evening he had spent with a beautiful Polish lady on the

veranda of his house in Kiev. And without linking up the events of the

day or drawing a conclusion from them, Pierre closed his eyes,

seeing a vision of the country in summertime mingled with memories

of bathing and of the liquid, vibrating globe, and he sank into

water so that it closed over his head.



Before sunrise he was awakened by shouts and loud and rapid

firing. French soldiers were running past him.



"The Cossacks!" one of them shouted, and a moment later a crowd of

Russians surrounded Pierre.



For a long time he could not understand what was happening to him.

All around he heard his comrades sobbing with joy.



"Brothers! Dear fellows! Darlings!" old soldiers exclaimed, weeping,

as they embraced Cossacks and hussars.



The hussars and Cossacks crowded round the prisoners; one offered

them clothes, another boots, and a third bread. Pierre sobbed as he

sat among them and could not utter a word. He hugged the first soldier

who approached him, and kissed him, weeping.



Dolokhov stood at the gate of the ruined house, letting a crowd of

disarmed Frenchmen pass by. The French, excited by all that had

happened, were talking loudly among themselves, but as they passed

Dolokhov who gently switched his boots with his whip and watched

them with cold glassy eyes that boded no good, they became silent.

On the opposite side stood Dolokhov's Cossack, counting the

prisoners and marking off each hundred with a chalk line on the gate.



"How many?" Dolokhov asked the Cossack.



"The second hundred," replied the Cossack.



"Filez, filez!"* Dolokhov kept saying, having adopted this

expression from the French, and when his eyes met those of the

prisoners they flashed with a cruel light.





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*"Get along, get along!"





Denisov, bareheaded and with a gloomy face, walked behind some

Cossacks who were carrying the body of Petya Rostov to a hole that had

been dug in the garden.









CHAPTER XVI





After the twenty-eighth of October when the frosts began, the flight

of the French assumed a still more tragic character, with men

freezing, or roasting themselves to death at the campfires, while

carriages with people dressed in furs continued to drive past,

carrying away the property that had been stolen by the Emperor, kings,

and dukes; but the process of the flight and disintegration of the

French army went on essentially as before.



From Moscow to Vyazma the French army of seventy-three thousand

men not reckoning the Guards (who did nothing during the whole war but

pillage) was reduced to thirty-six thousand, though not more than five

thousand had fallen in battle. From this beginning the succeeding

terms of the progression could be determined mathematically. The

French army melted away and perished at the same rate from Moscow to

Vyazma, from Vyazma to Smolensk, from Smolensk to the Berezina, and

from the Berezina to Vilna--independently of the greater or lesser

intensity of the cold, the pursuit, the barring of the way, or any

other particular conditions. Beyond Vyazma the French army instead

of moving in three columns huddled together into one mass, and so went

on to the end. Berthier wrote to his Emperor (we know how far

commanding officers allow themselves to diverge from the truth in

describing the condition of an army) and this is what he said:





I deem it my duty to report to Your Majesty the condition of the

various corps I have had occasion to observe during different stages

of the last two or three days' march. They are almost disbanded.

Scarcely a quarter of the soldiers remain with the standards of

their regiments, the others go off by themselves in different

directions hoping to find food and escape discipline. In general

they regard Smolensk as the place where they hope to recover. During

the last few days many of the men have been seen to throw away their

cartridges and their arms. In such a state of affairs, whatever your

ultimate plans may be, the interest of Your Majesty's service

demands that the army should be rallied at Smolensk and should first

of all be freed from ineffectives, such as dismounted cavalry,

unnecessary baggage, and artillery material that is no longer in

proportion to the present forces. The soldiers, who are worn out

with hunger and fatigue, need these supplies as well as a few days'

rest. Many have died last days on the road or at the bivouacs. This

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state of things is continually becoming worse and makes one fear

that unless a prompt remedy is applied the troops will no longer be

under control in case of an engagement.



November 9: twenty miles from Smolensk.





After staggering into Smolensk which seemed to them a promised land,

the French, searching for food, killed one another, sacked their own

stores, and when everything had been plundered fled farther.



They all went without knowing whither or why they were going.

Still less did that genius, Napoleon, know it, for no one issued any

orders to him. But still he and those about him retained their old

habits: wrote commands, letters, reports, and orders of the day;

called one another sire, mon cousin, prince d'Eckmuhl, roi de

Naples, and so on. But these orders and reports were only on paper,

nothing in them was acted upon for they could not be carried out,

and though they entitled one another Majesties, Highnesses, or

Cousins, they all felt that they were miserable wretches who had

done much evil for which they had now to pay. And though they

pretended to be concerned about the army, each was thinking only of

himself and of how to get away quickly and save himself.









CHAPTER XVII





The movements of the Russian and French armies during the campaign

from Moscow back to the Niemen were like those in a game of Russian

blindman's bluff, in which two players are blindfolded and one of them

occasionally rings a little bell to inform the catcher of his

whereabouts. First he rings his bell fearlessly, but when he gets into

a tight place he runs away as quietly as he can, and often thinking to

escape runs straight into his opponent's arms.



At first while they were still moving along the Kaluga road,

Napoleon's armies made their presence known, but later when they

reached the Smolensk road they ran holding the clapper of their bell

tight--and often thinking they were escaping ran right into the

Russians.



Owing to the rapidity of the French flight and the Russian pursuit

and the consequent exhaustion of the horses, the chief means of

approximately ascertaining the enemy's position--by cavalry

scouting--was not available. Besides, as a result of the frequent

and rapid change of position by each army, even what information was

obtained could not be delivered in time. If news was received one

day that the enemy had been in a certain position the day before, by

the third day when something could have been done, that army was

already two days' march farther on and in quite another position.



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One army fled and the other pursued. Beyond Smolensk there were

several different roads available for the French, and one would have

thought that during their stay of four days they might have learned

where the enemy was, might have arranged some more advantageous plan

and undertaken something new. But after a four days' halt the mob,

with no maneuvers or plans, again began running along the beaten

track, neither to the right nor to the left but along the old--the

worst--road, through Krasnoe and Orsha.



Expecting the enemy from behind and not in front, the French

separated in their flight and spread out over a distance of

twenty-four hours. In front of them all fled the Emperor, then the

kings, then the dukes. The Russian army, expecting Napoleon to take

the road to the right beyond the Dnieper--which was the only

reasonable thing for him to do--themselves turned to the right and

came out onto the highroad at Krasnoe. And here as in a game of

blindman's buff the French ran into our vanguard. Seeing their enemy

unexpectedly the French fell into confusion and stopped short from the

sudden fright, but then they resumed their flight, abandoning their

comrades who were farther behind. Then for three days separate

portions of the French army--first Murat's (the vice-king's), then

Davout's, and then Ney's--ran, as it were, the gauntlet of the Russian

army. They abandoned one another, abandoned all their heavy baggage,

their artillery, and half their men, and fled, getting past the

Russians by night by making semicircles to the right.



Ney, who came last, had been busying himself blowing up the walls of

Smolensk which were in nobody's way, because despite the unfortunate

plight of the French or because of it, they wished to punish the floor

against which they had hurt themselves. Ney, who had had a corps of

ten thousand men, reached Napoleon at Orsha with only one thousand men

left, having abandoned all the rest and all his cannon, and having

crossed the Dnieper at night by stealth at a wooded spot.



From Orsha they fled farther along the road to Vilna, still

playing at blindman's buff with the pursuing army. At the Berezina

they again became disorganized, many were drowned and many

surrendered, but those who got across the river fled farther. Their

supreme chief donned a fur coat and, having seated himself in a

sleigh, galloped on alone, abandoning his companions. The others who

could do so drove away too, leaving those who could not to surrender

or die.









CHAPTER XVIII





This campaign consisted in a flight of the French during which

they did all they could to destroy themselves. From the time they

turned onto the Kaluga road to the day their leader fled from the

army, none of the movements of the crowd had any sense. So one might

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have thought that regarding this period of the campaign the

historians, who attributed the actions of the mass to the will of

one man, would have found it impossible to make the story of the

retreat fit their theory. But no! Mountains of books have been written

by the historians about this campaign, and everywhere are described

Napoleon's arrangements, the maneuvers, and his profound plans which

guided the army, as well as the military genius shown by his marshals.



The retreat from Malo-Yaroslavets when he had a free road into a

well-supplied district and the parallel road was open to him along

which Kutuzov afterwards pursued him--this unnecessary retreat along a

devastated road--is explained to us as being due to profound

considerations. Similarly profound considerations are given for his

retreat from Smolensk to Orsha. Then his heroism at Krasnoe is

described, where he is reported to have been prepared to accept battle

and take personal command, and to have walked about with a birch stick

and said:



"J'ai assez fait l'empereur; il est temps de faire le general,"* but

nevertheless immediately ran away again, abandoning to its fate the

scattered fragments of the army he left behind.





*"I have acted the Emperor long enough; it is time to act the

general."





Then we are told of the greatness of soul of the marshals,

especially of Ney--a greatness of soul consisting in this: that he

made his way by night around through the forest and across the Dnieper

and escaped to Orsha, abandoning standards, artillery, and nine tenths

of his men.



And lastly, the final departure of the great Emperor from his heroic

army is presented to us by the historians as something great and

characteristic of genius. Even that final running away, described in

ordinary language as the lowest depth of baseness which every child is

taught to be ashamed of--even that act finds justification in the

historians' language.



When it is impossible to stretch the very elastic threads of

historical ratiocination any farther, when actions are clearly

contrary to all that humanity calls right or even just, the historians

produce a saving conception of "greatness." "Greatness," it seems,

excludes the standards of right and wrong. For the "great" man nothing

is wrong, there is no atrocity for which a "great" man can be blamed.



"C'est grand!"* say the historians, and there no longer exists

either good or evil but only "grand" and "not grand." Grand is good,

not grand is bad. Grand is the characteristic, in their conception, of

some special animals called "heroes." And Napoleon, escaping home in a

warm fur coat and leaving to perish those who were not merely his

comrades but were (in his opinion) men he had brought there, feels que

c'est grand,*[2] and his soul is tranquil.

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*"It is great."



*[2] That it is great.





"Du sublime (he saw something sublime in himself) au ridicule il n'y

a qu'un pas,"* said he. And the whole world for fifty years has been

repeating: "Sublime! Grand! Napoleon le Grand!" Du sublime au ridicule

il n'y a qu'un pas.





*"From the sublime to the ridiculous is but a step."





And it occurs to no one that to admit a greatness not

commensurable with the standard of right and wrong is merely to

admit one's own nothingness and immeasurable meanness.



For us with the standard of good and evil given us by Christ, no

human actions are incommensurable. And there is no greatness where

simplicity, goodness, and truth are absent.









CHAPTER XIX





What Russian, reading the account of the last part of the campaign

of 1812, has not experienced an uncomfortable feeling of regret,

dissatisfaction, and perplexity? Who has not asked himself how it is

that the French were not all captured or destroyed when our three

armies surrounded them in superior numbers, when the disordered

French, hungry and freezing, surrendered in crowds, and when (as the

historians relate) the aim of the Russians was to stop the French,

to cut them off, and capture them all?



How was it that the Russian army, which when numerically weaker than

the French had given battle at Borodino, did not achieve its purpose

when it had surrounded the French on three sides and when its aim

was to capture them? Can the French be so enormously superior to us

that when we had surrounded them with superior forces we could not

beat them? How could that happen?



History (or what is called by that name) replying to these questions

says that this occurred because Kutuzov and Tormasov and Chichagov,

and this man and that man, did not execute such and such maneuvers...



But why did they not execute those maneuvers? And why if they were

guilty of not carrying out a prearranged plan were they not tried

and punished? But even if we admitted that Kutuzov, Chichagov, and

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others were the cause of the Russian failures, it is still

incomprehensible why, the position of the Russian army being what it

was at Krasnoe and at the Berezina (in both cases we had superior

forces), the French army with its marshals, kings, and Emperor was not

captured, if that was what the Russians aimed at.



The explanation of this strange fact given by Russian military

historians (to the effect that Kutuzov hindered an attack) is

unfounded, for we know that he could not restrain the troops from

attacking at Vyazma and Tarutino.



Why was the Russian army--which with inferior forces had withstood

the enemy in full strength at Borodino--defeated at Krasnoe and the

Berezina by the disorganized crowds of the French when it was

numerically superior?



If the aim of the Russians consisted in cutting off and capturing

Napoleon and his marshals--and that aim was not merely frustrated

but all attempts to attain it were most shamefully baffled--then

this last period of the campaign is quite rightly considered by the

French to be a series of victories, and quite wrongly considered

victorious by Russian historians.



The Russian military historians in so far as they submit to claims

of logic must admit that conclusion, and in spite of their lyrical

rhapsodies about valor, devotion, and so forth, must reluctantly admit

that the French retreat from Moscow was a series of victories for

Napoleon and defeats for Kutuzov.



But putting national vanity entirely aside one feels that such a

conclusion involves a contradiction, since the series of French

victories brought the French complete destruction, while the series of

Russian defeats led to the total destruction of their enemy and the

liberation of their country.



The source of this contradiction lies in the fact that the

historians studying the events from the letters of the sovereigns

and the generals, from memoirs, reports, projects, and so forth,

have attributed to this last period of the war of 1812 an aim that

never existed, namely that of cutting off and capturing Napoleon

with his marshals and his army.



There never was or could have been such an aim, for it would have

been senseless and its attainment quite impossible.



It would have been senseless, first because Napoleon's

disorganized army was flying from Russia with all possible speed, that

is to say, was doing just what every Russian desired. So what was

the use of performing various operations on the French who were

running away as fast as they possibly could?



Secondly, it would have been senseless to block the passage of men

whose whole energy was directed to flight.



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Thirdly, it would have been senseless to sacrifice one's own

troops in order to destroy the French army, which without external

interference was destroying itself at such a rate that, though its

path was not blocked, it could not carry across the frontier more than

it actually did in December, namely a hundredth part of the original

army.



Fourthly, it would have been senseless to wish to take captive the

Emperor, kings, and dukes--whose capture would have been in the

highest degree embarrassing for the Russians, as the most adroit

diplomatists of the time (Joseph de Maistre and others) recognized.

Still more senseless would have been the wish to capture army corps of

the French, when our own army had melted away to half before

reaching Krasnoe and a whole division would have been needed to convoy

the corps of prisoners, and when our men were not always getting

full rations and the prisoners already taken were perishing of hunger.



All the profound plans about cutting off and capturing Napoleon

and his army were like the plan of a market gardener who, when driving

out of his garden a cow that had trampled down the beds he had

planted, should run to the gate and hit the cow on the head. The

only thing to be said in excuse of that gardener would be that he

was very angry. But not even that could be said for those who drew

up this project, for it was not they who had suffered from the

trampled beds.



But besides the fact that cutting off Napoleon with his army would

have been senseless, it was impossible.



It was impossible first because--as experience shows that a

three-mile movement of columns on a battlefield never coincides with

the plans--the probability of Chichagov, Kutuzov, and Wittgenstein

effecting a junction on time at an appointed place was so remote as to

be tantamount to impossibility, as in fact thought Kutuzov, who when

he received the plan remarked that diversions planned over great

distances do not yield the desired results.



Secondly it was impossible, because to paralyze the momentum with

which Napoleon's army was retiring, incomparably greater forces than

the Russians possessed would have been required.



Thirdly it was impossible, because the military term "to cut off"

has no meaning. One can cut off a slice of bread, but not an army.

To cut off an army--to bar its road--is quite impossible, for there is

always plenty of room to avoid capture and there is the night when

nothing can be seen, as the military scientists might convince

themselves by the example of Krasnoe and of the Berezina. It is only

possible to capture prisoners if they agree to be captured, just as it

is only possible to catch a swallow if it settles on one's hand. Men

can only be taken prisoners if they surrender according to the rules

of strategy and tactics, as the Germans did. But the French troops

quite rightly did not consider that this suited them, since death by

hunger and cold awaited them in flight or captivity alike.



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Fourthly and chiefly it was impossible, because never since the

world began has a war been fought under such conditions as those

that obtained in 1812, and the Russian army in its pursuit of the

French strained its strength to the utmost and could not have done

more without destroying itself.



During the movement of the Russian army from Tarutino to Krasnoe

it lost fifty thousand sick or stragglers, that is a number equal to

the population of a large provincial town. Half the men fell out of

the army without a battle.



And it is of this period of the campaign--when the army lacked boots

and sheepskin coats, was short of provisions and without vodka, and

was camping out at night for months in the snow with fifteen degrees

of frost, when there were only seven or eight hours of daylight and

the rest was night in which the influence of discipline cannot be

maintained, when men were taken into that region of death where

discipline fails, not for a few hours only as in a battle, but for

months, where they were every moment fighting death from hunger and

cold, when half the army perished in a single month--it is of this

period of the campaign that the historians tell us how Miloradovich

should have made a flank march to such and such a place, Tormasov to

another place, and Chichagov should have crossed (more than

knee-deep in snow) to somewhere else, and how so-and-so "routed" and

"cut off" the French and so on and so on.



The Russians, half of whom died, did all that could and should

have been done to attain an end worthy of the nation, and they are not

to blame because other Russians, sitting in warm rooms, proposed

that they should do what was impossible.



All that strange contradiction now difficult to understand between

the facts and the historical accounts only arises because the

historians dealing with the matter have written the history of the

beautiful words and sentiments of various generals, and not the

history of the events.



To them the words of Miloradovich seem very interesting, and so do

their surmises and the rewards this or that general received; but

the question of those fifty thousand men who were left in hospitals

and in graves does not even interest them, for it does not come within

the range of their investigation.



Yet one need only discard the study of the reports and general plans

and consider the movement of those hundreds of thousands of men who

took a direct part in the events, and all the questions that seemed

insoluble easily and simply receive an immediate and certain solution.



The aim of cutting off Napoleon and his army never existed except in

the imaginations of a dozen people. It could not exist because it

was senseless and unattainable.



The people had a single aim: to free their land from invasion.

That aim was attained in the first place of itself, as the French

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ran away, and so it was only necessary not to stop their flight.

Secondly it was attained by the guerrilla warfare which was destroying

the French, and thirdly by the fact that a large Russian army was

following the French, ready to use its strength in case their movement

stopped.



The Russian army had to act like a whip to a running animal. And the

experienced driver knew it was better to hold the whip raised as a

menace than to strike the running animal on the head.









BOOK FIFTEEN: 1812 --13









CHAPTER I





When seeing a dying animal a man feels a sense of horror:

substance similar to his own is perishing before his eyes. But when it

is a beloved and intimate human being that is dying, besides this

horror at the extinction of life there is a severance, a spiritual

wound, which like a physical wound is sometimes fatal and sometimes

heals, but always aches and shrinks at any external irritating touch.



After Prince Andrew's death Natasha and Princess Mary alike felt

this. Drooping in spirit and closing their eyes before the menacing

cloud of death that overhung them, they dared not look life in the

face. They carefully guarded their open wounds from any rough and

painful contact. Everything: a carriage passing rapidly in the street,

a summons to dinner, the maid's inquiry what dress to prepare, or

worse still any word of insincere or feeble sympathy, seemed an

insult, painfully irritated the wound, interrupting that necessary

quiet in which they both tried to listen to the stern and dreadful

choir that still resounded in their imagination, and hindered their

gazing into those mysterious limitless vistas that for an instant

had opened out before them.



Only when alone together were they free from such outrage and

pain. They spoke little even to one another, and when they did it

was of very unimportant matters.



Both avoided any allusion to the future. To admit the possibility of

a future seemed to them to insult his memory. Still more carefully did

they avoid anything relating to him who was dead. It seemed to them

that what they had lived through and experienced could not be

expressed in words, and that any reference to the details of his

life infringed the majesty and sacredness of the mystery that had been

accomplished before their eyes.

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Continued abstention from speech, and constant avoidance of

everything that might lead up to the subject--this halting on all

sides at the boundary of what they might not mention--brought before

their minds with still greater purity and clearness what they were

both feeling.



But pure and complete sorrow is as impossible as pure and complete

joy. Princess Mary, in her position as absolute and independent

arbiter of her own fate and guardian and instructor of her nephew, was

the first to be called back to life from that realm of sorrow in which

she had dwelt for the first fortnight. She received letters from her

relations to which she had to reply; the room in which little Nicholas

had been put was damp and he began to cough; Alpatych came to

Yaroslavl with reports on the state of their affairs and with advice

and suggestions that they should return to Moscow to the house on

the Vozdvizhenka Street, which had remained uninjured and needed

only slight repairs. Life did not stand still and it was necessary

to live. Hard as it was for Princess Mary to emerge from the realm

of secluded contemplation in which she had lived till then, and

sorry and almost ashamed as she felt to leave Natasha alone, yet the

cares of life demanded her attention and she involuntarily yielded

to them. She went through the accounts with Alpatych, conferred with

Dessalles about her nephew, and gave orders and made preparations

for the journey to Moscow.



Natasha remained alone and, from the time Princess Mary began making

preparations for departure, held aloof from her too.



Princess Mary asked the countess to let Natasha go with her to

Moscow, and both parents gladly accepted this offer, for they saw

their daughter losing strength every day and thought that a change

of scene and the advice of Moscow doctors would be good for her.



"I am not going anywhere," Natasha replied when this was proposed to

her. "Do please just leave me alone!" And she ran out of the room,

with difficulty refraining from tears of vexation and irritation

rather than of sorrow.



After she felt herself deserted by Princes Mary and alone in her

grief, Natasha spent most of the time in her room by herself,

sitting huddled up feet and all in the corner of the sofa, tearing and

twisting something with her slender nervous fingers and gazing

intently and fixedly at whatever her eyes chanced to fall on. This

solitude exhausted and tormented her but she was in absolute need of

it. As soon as anyone entered she got up quickly, changed her position

and expression, and picked up a book or some sewing, evidently waiting

impatiently for the intruder to go.



She felt all the time as if she might at any moment penetrate that

on which--with a terrible questioning too great for her strength-

her spiritual gaze was fixed.



One day toward the end of December Natasha, pale and thin, dressed

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in a black woolen gown, her plaited hair negligently twisted into a

knot, was crouched feet and all in the corner of her sofa, nervously

crumpling and smoothing out the end of her sash while she looked at

a corner of the door.



She was gazing in the direction in which he had gone--to the other

side of life. And that other side of life, of which she had never

before thought and which had formerly seemed to her so far away and

improbable, was now nearer and more akin and more comprehensible

than this side of life, where everything was either emptiness and

desolation or suffering and indignity.



She was gazing where she knew him to be; but she could not imagine

him otherwise than as he had been here. She now saw him again as he

had been at Mytishchi, at Troitsa, and at Yaroslavl.



She saw his face, heard his voice, repeated his words and her own,

and sometimes devised other words they might have spoken.



There he is lying back in an armchair in his velvet cloak, leaning

his head on his thin pale hand. His chest is dreadfully hollow and his

shoulders raised. His lips are firmly closed, his eyes glitter, and

a wrinkle comes and goes on his pale forehead. One of his legs

twitches just perceptibly, but rapidly. Natasha knows that he is

struggling with terrible pain. "What is that pain like? Why does he

have that pain? What does he feel? How does it hurt him?" thought

Natasha. He noticed her watching him, raised his eyes, and began to

speak seriously:



"One thing would be terrible," said he: "to bind oneself forever

to a suffering man. It would be continual torture." And he looked

searchingly at her. Natasha as usual answered before she had time to

think what she would say. She said: "This can't go on--it won't. You

will get well--quite well."



She now saw him from the commencement of that scene and relived what

she had then felt. She recalled his long sad and severe look at

those words and understood the meaning of the rebuke and despair in

that protracted gaze.



"I agreed," Natasha now said to herself, "that it would be

dreadful if he always continued to suffer. I said it then only because

it would have been dreadful for him, but he understood it differently.

He thought it would be dreadful for me. He then still wished to live

and feared death. And I said it so awkwardly and stupidly! I did not

say what I meant. I thought quite differently. Had I said what I

thought, I should have said: even if he had to go on dying, to die

continually before my eyes, I should have been happy compared with

what I am now. Now there is nothing... nobody. Did he know that? No,

he did not and never will know it. And now it will never, never be

possible to put it right." And now he again seemed to be saying the

same words to her, only in her imagination Natasha this time gave

him a different answer. She stopped him and said: "Terrible for you,

but not for me! You know that for me there is nothing in life but you,

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and to suffer with you is the greatest happiness for me," and he

took her hand and pressed it as he had pressed it that terrible

evening four days before his death. And in her imagination she said

other tender and loving words which she might have said then but

only spoke now: "I love thee!... thee! I love, love..." she said,

convulsively pressing her hands and setting her teeth with a desperate

effort...



She was overcome by sweet sorrow and tears were already rising in

her eyes; then she suddenly asked herself to whom she was saying this.

Again everything was shrouded in hard, dry perplexity, and again

with a strained frown she peered toward the world where he was. And

now, now it seemed to her she was penetrating the mystery.... But at

the instant when it seemed that the incomprehensible was revealing

itself to her a loud rattle of the door handle struck painfully on her

ears. Dunyasha, her maid, entered the room quickly and abruptly with a

frightened look on her face and showing no concern for her mistress.



"Come to your Papa at once, please!" said she with a strange,

excited look. "A misfortune... about Peter Ilynich... a letter," she

finished with a sob.









CHAPTER II





Besides a feeling of aloofness from everybody Natasha was feeling

a special estrangement from the members of her own family. All of

them--her father, mother, and Sonya--were so near to her, so familiar,

so commonplace, that all their words and feelings seemed an insult

to the world in which she had been living of late, and she felt not

merely indifferent to them but regarded them with hostility. She heard

Dunyasha's words about Peter Ilynich and a misfortune, but did not

grasp them.



"What misfortune? What misfortune can happen to them? They just live

their own old, quiet, and commonplace life," thought Natasha.



As she entered the ballroom her father was hurriedly coming out of

her mother's room. His face was puckered up and wet with tears. He had

evidently run out of that room to give vent to the sobs that were

choking him. When he saw Natasha he waved his arms despairingly and

burst into convulsively painful sobs that distorted his soft round

face.



"Pe... Petya... Go, go, she... is calling..." and weeping like a

child and quickly shuffling on his feeble legs to a chair, he almost

fell into it, covering his face with his hands.



Suddenly an electric shock seemed to run through Natasha's whole

being. Terrible anguish struck her heart, she felt a dreadful ache

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as if something was being torn inside her and she were dying. But

the pain was immediately followed by a feeling of release from the

oppressive constraint that had prevented her taking part in life.

The sight of her father, the terribly wild cries of her mother that

she heard through the door, made her immediately forget herself and

her own grief.



She ran to her father, but he feebly waved his arm, pointing to

her mother's door. Princess Mary, pale and with quivering chin, came

out from that room and taking Natasha by the arm said something to

her. Natasha neither saw nor heard her. She went in with rapid

steps, pausing at the door for an instant as if struggling with

herself, and then ran to her mother.



The countess was lying in an armchair in a strange and awkward

position, stretching out and beating her head against the wall.

Sonya and the maids were holding her arms.



"Natasha! Natasha!..." cried the countess. "It's not true... it's

not true... He's lying... Natasha!" she shrieked, pushing those around

her away. "Go away, all of you; it's not true! Killed!... ha, ha,

ha!... It's not true!"



Natasha put one knee on the armchair, stooped over her mother,

embraced her, and with unexpected strength raised her, turned her face

toward herself, and clung to her.



"Mummy!... darling!... I am here, my dearest Mummy," she kept on

whispering, not pausing an instant.



She did not let go of her mother but struggled tenderly with her,

demanded a pillow and hot water, and unfastened and tore open her

mother's dress.



"My dearest darling... Mummy, my precious!..." she whispered

incessantly, kissing her head, her hands, her face, and feeling her

own irrepressible and streaming tears tickling her nose and cheeks.



The countess pressed her daughter's hand, closed her eyes, and

became quiet for a moment. Suddenly she sat up with unaccustomed

swiftness, glanced vacantly around her, and seeing Natasha began to

press her daughter's head with all her strength. Then she turned

toward her daughter's face which was wincing with pain and gazed

long at it.



"Natasha, you love me?" she said in a soft trustful whisper.

"Natasha, you would not deceive me? You'll tell me the whole truth?"



Natasha looked at her with eyes full of tears and in her look

there was nothing but love and an entreaty for forgiveness.



"My darling Mummy!" she repeated, straining all the power of her

love to find some way of taking on herself the excess of grief that

crushed her mother.

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And again in a futile struggle with reality her mother, refusing

to believe that she could live when her beloved boy was killed in

the bloom of life, escaped from reality into a world of delirium.



Natasha did not remember how that day passed nor that night, nor the

next day and night. She did not sleep and did not leave her mother.

Her persevering and patient love seemed completely to surround the

countess every moment, not explaining or consoling, but recalling

her to life.



During the third night the countess kept very quiet for a few

minutes, and Natasha rested her head on the arm of her chair and

closed her eyes, but opened them again on hearing the bedstead

creak. The countess was sitting up in bed and speaking softly.



"How glad I am you have come. You are tired. Won't you have some

tea?" Natasha went up to her. "You have improved in looks and grown

more manly," continued the countess, taking her daughter's hand.



"Mamma! What are you saying..."



"Natasha, he is no more, no more!"



And embracing her daughter, the countess began to weep for the first

time.









CHAPTER III





Princess Mary postponed her departure. Sonya and the count tried

to replace Natasha but could not. They saw that she alone was able

to restrain her mother from unreasoning despair. For three weeks

Natasha remained constantly at her mother's side, sleeping on a lounge

chair in her room, making her eat and drink, and talking to her

incessantly because the mere sound of her tender, caressing tones

soothed her mother.



The mother's wounded spirit could not heal. Petya's

death had torn from her half her life. When the news of Petya's

death had come she had been a fresh and vigorous woman of fifty, but a

month later she left her room a listless old woman taking no

interest in life. But the same blow that almost killed the countess,

this second blow, restored Natasha to life.



A spiritual wound produced by a rending of the spiritual body is

like a physical wound and, strange as it may seem, just as a deep

wound may heal and its edges join, physical and spiritual wounds alike

can yet heal completely only as the result of a vital force from

within.

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Natasha's wound healed in that way. She thought her life was

ended, but her love for her mother unexpectedly showed her that the

essence of life--love--was still active within her. Love awoke and

so did life.



Prince Andrew's last days had bound Princess Mary and Natasha

together; this new sorrow brought them still closer to one another.

Princess Mary put off her departure, and for three weeks looked

after Natasha as if she had been a sick child. The last weeks passed

in her mother's bedroom had strained Natasha's physical strength.



One afternoon noticing Natasha shivering with fever, Princess Mary

took her to her own room and made her lie down on the bed. Natasha lay

down, but when Princess Mary had drawn the blinds and was going away

she called her back.



"I don't want to sleep, Mary, sit by me a little."



"You are tired--try to sleep."



"No, no. Why did you bring me away? She will be asking for me."



"She is much better. She spoke so well today," said Princess Mary.



Natasha lay on the bed and in the semidarkness of the room scanned

Princess Mary's face.



"Is she like him?" thought Natasha. "Yes, like and yet not like. But

she is quite original, strange, new, and unknown. And she loves me.

What is in her heart? All that is good. But how? What is her mind

like? What does she think about me? Yes, she is splendid!"



"Mary," she said timidly, drawing Princess Mary's hand to herself,

"Mary, you mustn't think me wicked. No? Mary darling, how I love

you! Let us be quite, quite friends."



And Natasha, embracing her, began kissing her face and hands, making

Princess Mary feel shy but happy by this demonstration of her

feelings.



From that day a tender and passionate friendship such as exists only

between women was established between Princess Mary and Natasha.

They were continually kissing and saying tender things to one

another and spent most of their time together. When one went out the

other became restless and hastened to rejoin her. Together they felt

more in harmony with one another than either of them felt with herself

when alone. A feeling stronger than friendship sprang up between them;

an exclusive feeling of life being possible only in each other's

presence.



Sometimes they were silent for hours; sometimes after they were

already in bed they would begin talking and go on till morning. They

spoke most of what was long past. Princess Mary spoke of her

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childhood, of her mother, her father, and her daydreams; and

Natasha, who with a passive lack of understanding had formerly

turned away from that life of devotion, submission, and the poetry

of Christian self-sacrifice, now feeling herself bound to Princess

Mary by affection, learned to love her past too and to understand a

side of life previously incomprehensible to her. She did not think

of applying submission and self-abnegation to her own life, for she

was accustomed to seek other joys, but she understood and loved in

another those previously incomprehensible virtues. For Princess

Mary, listening to Natasha's tales of childhood and early youth, there

also opened out a new and hitherto uncomprehended side of life: belief

in life and its enjoyment.



Just as before, they never mentioned him so as not to lower (as they

thought) their exalted feelings by words; but this silence about him

had the effect of making them gradually begin to forget him without

being conscious of it.



Natasha had grown thin and pale and physically so weak that they all

talked about her health, and this pleased her. But sometimes she was

suddenly overcome by fear not only of death but of sickness, weakness,

and loss of good looks, and involuntarily she examined her bare arm

carefully, surprised at its thinness, and in the morning noticed her

drawn and, as it seemed to her, piteous face in her glass. It seemed

to her that things must be so, and yet it was dreadfully sad.



One day she went quickly upstairs and found herself out of breath.

Unconsciously she immediately invented a reason for going down, and

then, testing her strength, ran upstairs again, observing the result.



Another time when she called Dunyasha her voice trembled, so she

called again--though she could hear Dunyasha coming--called her in the

deep chest tones in which she had been wont to sing, sing, and

listened attentively to herself.



She did not know and would not have believed it, but beneath the

layer of slime that covered her soul and seemed to her impenetrable,

delicate young shoots of grass were already sprouting, which taking

root would so cover with their living verdure the grief that weighed

her down that it would soon no longer be seen or noticed. The wound

had begun to heal from within.



At the end of January Princess Mary left for Moscow, and the count

insisted on Natasha's going with her to consult the doctors.









CHAPTER IV





After the encounter at Vyazma, where Kutuzov had been unable to hold

back his troops in their anxiety to overwhelm and cut off the enemy

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and so on, the farther movement of the fleeing French, and of the

Russians who pursued them, continued as far as Krasnoe without a

battle. The flight was so rapid that the Russian army pursuing the

French could not keep up with them; cavalry and artillery horses broke

down, and the information received of the movements of the French

was never reliable.



The men in the Russian army were so worn out by this continuous

marching at the rate of twenty-seven miles a day that they could not

go any faster.



To realize the degree of exhaustion of the Russian army it is only

necessary to grasp clearly the meaning of the fact that, while not

losing more than five thousand killed and wounded after Tarutino and

less than a hundred prisoners, the Russian army which left that

place a hundred thousand strong reached Krasnoe with only fifty

thousand.



The rapidity of the Russian pursuit was just as destructive to our

army as the flight of the French was to theirs. The only difference

was that the Russian army moved voluntarily, with no such threat of

destruction as hung over the French, and that the sick Frenchmen

were left behind in enemy hands while the sick Russians left behind

were among their own people. The chief cause of the wastage of

Napoleon's army was the rapidity of its movement, and a convincing

proof of this is the corresponding decrease of the Russian army.



Kutuzov as far as was in his power, instead of trying to check the

movement of the French as was desired in Petersburg and by the Russian

army generals, directed his whole activity here, as he had done at

Tarutino and Vyazma, to hastening it on while easing the movement of

our army.



But besides this, since the exhaustion and enormous diminution of

the army caused by the rapidity of the advance had become evident,

another reason for slackening the pace and delaying presented itself

to Kutuzov. The aim of the Russian army was to pursue the French.

The road the French would take was unknown, and so the closer our

troops trod on their heels the greater distance they had to cover.

Only by following at some distance could one cut across the zigzag

path of the French. All the artful maneuvers suggested by our generals

meant fresh movements of the army and a lengthening of its marches,

whereas the only reasonable aim was to shorten those marches. To

that end Kutuzov's activity was directed during the whole campaign

from Moscow to Vilna--not casually or intermittently but so

consistently that he never once deviated from it.



Kutuzov felt and knew--not by reasoning or science but with the

whole of his Russian being--what every Russian soldier felt: that

the French were beaten, that the enemy was flying and must be driven

out; but at the same time he like the soldiers realized all the

hardship of this march, the rapidity of which was unparalleled for

such a time of the year.



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But to the generals, especially the foreign ones in the Russian

army, who wished to distinguish themselves, to astonish somebody,

and for some reason to capture a king or a duke--it seemed that now-

when any battle must be horrible and senseless--was the very time to

fight and conquer somebody. Kutuzov merely shrugged his shoulders when

one after another they presented projects of maneuvers to be made with

those soldiers--ill-shod, insufficiently clad, and half starved--who

within a month and without fighting a battle had dwindled to half

their number, and who at the best if the flight continued would have

to go a greater distance than they had already traversed, before

they reached the frontier.



This longing to distinguish themselves, to maneuver, to overthrow,

and to cut off showed itself particularly whenever the Russians

stumbled on the French army.



So it was at Krasnoe, where they expected to find one of the three

French columns and stumbled instead on Napoleon himself with sixteen

thousand men. Despite all Kutuzov's efforts to avoid that ruinous

encounter and to preserve his troops, the massacre of the broken mob

of French soldiers by worn-out Russians continued at Krasnoe for three

days.



Toll wrote a disposition: "The first column will march to so and

so," etc. And as usual nothing happened in accord with the

disposition. Prince Eugene of Wurttemberg fired from a hill over the

French crowds that were running past, and demanded reinforcements

which did not arrive. The French, avoiding the Russians, dispersed and

hid themselves in the forest by night, making their way round as

best they could, and continued their flight.



Miloradovich, who said he did not want to know anything about the

commissariat affairs of his detachment, and could never be found

when he was wanted--that chevalier sans peur et sans reproche* as he

styled himself--who was fond of parleys with the French, sent envoys

demanding their surrender, wasted time, and did not do what he was

ordered to do.





*Knight without fear and without reproach.





"I give you that column, lads," he said, riding up to the troops and

pointing out the French to the cavalry.



And the cavalry, with spurs and sabers urging on horses that could

scarcely move, trotted with much effort to the column presented to

them--that is to say, to a crowd of Frenchmen stark with cold,

frost-bitten, and starving--and the column that had been presented

to them threw down its arms and surrendered as it had long been

anxious to do.



At Krasnoe they took twenty-six thousand prisoners, several

hundred cannon, and a stick called a "marshal's staff," and disputed

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as to who had distinguished himself and were pleased with their

achievement--though they much regretted not having taken Napoleon,

or at least a marshal or a hero of some sort, and reproached one

another and especially Kutuzov for having failed to do so.



These men, carried away by their passions, were but blind tools of

the most melancholy law of necessity, but considered themselves heroes

and imagined that they were accomplishing a most noble and honorable

deed. They blamed Kutuzov and said that from the very beginning of the

campaign he had prevented their vanquishing Napoleon, that he

thought nothing but satisfying his passions and would not advance from

the Linen Factories because he was comfortable there, that at

Krasnoe he checked the advance because on learning that Napoleon was

there he had quite lost his head, and that it was probable that he had

an understanding with Napoleon and had been bribed by him, and so

on, and so on.



Not only did his contemporaries, carried away by their passions,

talk in this way, but posterity and history have acclaimed Napoleon as

grand, while Kutuzov is described by foreigners as a crafty,

dissolute, weak old courtier, and by Russians as something indefinite-

a sort of puppet useful only because he had a Russian name.









CHAPTER V





In 1812 and 1813 Kutuzov was openly accused of blundering. The

Emperor was dissatisfied with him. And in a history recently written

by order of the Highest Authorities it is said that Kutuzov was a

cunning court liar, frightened of the name of Napoleon, and that by

his blunders at Krasnoe and the Berezina he deprived the Russian

army of the glory of complete victory over the French.*





*History of the year 1812. The character of Kutuzov and

reflections on the unsatisfactory results of the battles at Krasnoe,

by Bogdanovich.





Such is the fate not of great men (grands hommes) whom the Russian

mind does not acknowledge, but of those rare and always solitary

individuals who, discerning the will of Providence, submit their

personal will to it. The hatred and contempt of the crowd punish

such men for discerning the higher laws.



For Russian historians, strange and terrible to say, Napoleon-

that most insignificant tool of history who never anywhere, even in

exile, showed human dignity--Napoleon is the object of adulation and

enthusiasm; he is grand. But Kutuzov--the man who from the beginning

to the end of his activity in 1812, never once swerving by word or

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deed from Borodino to Vilna, presented an example exceptional in

history of self-sacrifice and a present consciousness of the future

importance of what was happening--Kutuzov seems to them something

indefinite and pitiful, and when speaking of him and of the year

1812 they always seem a little ashamed.



And yet it is difficult to imagine an historical character whose

activity was so unswervingly directed to a single aim; and it would be

difficult to imagine any aim more worthy or more consonant with the

will of the whole people. Still more difficult would it be to find

an instance in history of the aim of an historical personage being

so completely accomplished as that to which all Kutuzov's efforts were

directed in 1812.



Kutuzov never talked of "forty centuries looking down from the

Pyramids," of the sacrifices he offered for the fatherland, or of what

he intended to accomplish or had accomplished; in general he said

nothing about himself, adopted no prose, always appeared to be the

simplest and most ordinary of men, and said the simplest and most

ordinary things. He wrote letters to his daughters and to Madame de

Stael, read novels, liked the society of pretty women, jested with

generals, officers, and soldiers, and never contradicted those who

tried to prove anything to him. When Count Rostopchin at the Yauza

bridge galloped up to Kutuzov with personal reproaches for having

caused the destruction of Moscow, and said: "How was it you promised

not to abandon Moscow without a battle?" Kutuzov replied: "And I shall

not abandon Moscow without a battle," though Moscow was then already

abandoned. When Arakcheev, coming to him from the Emperor, said that

Ermolov ought to be appointed chief of the artillery, Kutuzov replied:

"Yes, I was just saying so myself," though a moment before he had said

quite the contrary. What did it matter to him--who then alone amid a

senseless crowd understood the whole tremendous significance of what

was happening--what did it matter to him whether Rostopchin attributed

the calamities of Moscow to him or to himself? Still less could it

matter to him who was appointed chief of the artillery.



Not merely in these cases but continually did that old man--who by

experience of life had reached the conviction that thoughts and the

words serving as their expression are not what move people--use

quite meaningless words that happened to enter his head.



But that man, so heedless of his words, did not once during the

whole time of his activity utter one word inconsistent with the single

aim toward which he moved throughout the whole war. Obviously in spite

of himself, in very diverse circumstances, he repeatedly expressed his

real thoughts with the bitter conviction that he would not be

understood. Beginning with the battle of Borodino, from which time his

disagreement with those about him began, he alone said that the battle

of Borodino was a victory, and repeated this both verbally and in

his dispatches and reports up to the time of his death. He alone

said that the loss of Moscow is not the loss of Russia. In reply to

Lauriston's proposal of peace, he said: There can be no peace, for

such is the people's will. He alone during the retreat of the French

said that all our maneuvers are useless, everything is being

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accomplished of itself better than we could desire; that the enemy

must be offered "a golden bridge"; that neither the Tarutino, the

Vyazma, nor the Krasnoe battles were necessary; that we must keep some

force to reach the frontier with, and that he would not sacrifice a

single Russian for ten Frenchmen.



And this courtier, as he is described to us, who lies to Arakcheev

to please the Emperor, he alone--incurring thereby the Emperor's

displeasure--said in Vilna that to carry the war beyond the frontier

is useless and harmful.



Nor do words alone prove that only he understood the meaning of

the events. His actions--without the smallest deviation--were all

directed to one and the same threefold end: (1) to brace all his

strength for conflict with the French, (2) to defeat them, and (3)

to drive them out of Russia, minimizing as far as possible the

sufferings of our people and of our army.



This procrastinator Kutuzov, whose motto was "Patience and Time,"

this enemy of decisive action, gave battle at Borodino, investing

the preparations for it with unparalleled solemnity. This Kutuzov

who before the battle of Austerlitz began said that it would be

lost, he alone, in contradiction to everyone else, declared till his

death that Borodino was a victory, despite the assurance of generals

that the battle was lost and despite the fact that for an army to have

to retire after winning a battle was unprecedented. He alone during

the whole retreat insisted that battles, which were useless then,

should not be fought, and that a new war should not be begun nor the

frontiers of Russia crossed.



It is easy now to understand the significance of these events--if

only we abstain from attributing to the activity of the mass aims that

existed only in the heads of a dozen individuals--for the events and

results now lie before us.



But how did that old man, alone, in opposition to the general

opinion, so truly discern the importance of the people's view of the

events that in all his activity he was never once untrue to it?



The source of that extraordinary power of penetrating the meaning of

the events then occuring lay in the national feeling which he

possessed in full purity and strength.



Only the recognition of the fact that he possessed this feeling

caused the people in so strange a manner, contrary to the Tsar's wish,

to select him--an old man in disfavor--to be their representative in

the national war. And only that feeling placed him on that highest

human pedestal from which he, the commander in chief, devoted all

his powers not to slaying and destroying men but to saving and showing

pity on them.



That simple, modest, and therefore truly great, figure could not

be cast in the false mold of a European hero--the supposed ruler of

men--that history has invented.

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To a lackey no man can be great, for a lackey has his own conception

of greatness.









CHAPTER VI





The fifth of November was the first day of what is called the battle

of Krasnoe. Toward evening--after much disputing and many mistakes

made by generals who did not go to their proper places, and after

adjutants had been sent about with counterorders--when it had become

plain that the enemy was everywhere in flight and that there could and

would be no battle, Kutuzov left Krasnoe and went to Dobroe whither

his headquarters had that day been transferred.



The day was clear and frosty. Kutuzov rode to Dobroe on his plump

little white horse, followed by an enormous suite of discontented

generals who whispered among themselves behind his back. All along the

road groups of French prisoners captured that day (there were seven

thousand of them) were crowding to warm themselves at campfires.

Near Dobroe an immense crowd of tattered prisoners, buzzing with

talk and wrapped and bandaged in anything they had been able to get

hold of, were standing in the road beside a long row of unharnessed

French guns. At the approach of the commander in chief the buzz of

talk ceased and all eyes were fixed on Kutuzov who, wearing a white

cap with a red band and a padded overcoat that bulged on his round

shoulders, moved slowly along the road on his white horse. One of

the generals was reporting to him where the guns and prisoners had

been captured.



Kutuzov seemed preoccupied and did not listen to what the general

was saying. He screwed up his eyes with a dissatisfied look as he

gazed attentively and fixedly at these prisoners, who presented a

specially wretched appearance. Most of them were disfigured by

frost-bitten noses and cheeks, and nearly all had red, swollen and

festering eyes.



One group of the French stood close to the road, and two of them,

one of whom had his face covered with sores, were tearing a piece of

raw flesh with their hands. There was something horrible and bestial

in the fleeting glance they threw at the riders and in the

malevolent expression with which, after a glance at Kutuzov, the

soldier with the sores immediately turned away and went on with what

he was doing.



Kutuzov looked long and intently at these two soldiers. He

puckered his face, screwed up his eyes, and pensively swayed his head.

At another spot he noticed a Russian soldier laughingly patting a

Frenchman on the shoulder, saying something to him in a friendly

manner, and Kutuzov with the same expression on his face again

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swayed his head.



"What were you saying?" he asked the general, who continuing his

report directed the commander in chief's attention to some standards

captured from the French and standing in front of the Preobrazhensk

regiment.



"Ah, the standards!" said Kutuzov, evidently detaching himself

with difficulty from the thoughts that preoccupied him.



He looked about him absently. Thousands of eyes were looking at

him from all sides awaiting a word from him.



He stopped in front of the Preobrazhensk regiment, sighed deeply,

and closed his eyes. One of his suite beckoned to the soldiers

carrying the standards to advance and surround the commander in

chief with them. Kutuzov was silent for a few seconds and then,

submitting with evident reluctance to the duty imposed by his

position, raised his head and began to speak. A throng of officers

surrounded him. He looked attentively around at the circle of

officers, recognizing several of them.



"I thank you all!" he said, addressing the soldiers and then again

the officers. In the stillness around him his slowly uttered words

were distinctly heard. "I thank you all for your hard and faithful

service. The victory is complete and Russia will not forget you! Honor

to you forever."



He paused and looked around.



"Lower its head, lower it!" he said to a soldier who had

accidentally lowered the French eagle he was holding before the

Preobrazhensk standards. "Lower, lower, that's it. Hurrah lads!" he

added, addressing the men with a rapid movement of his chin.



"Hur-r-rah!" roared thousands of voices.



While the soldiers were shouting Kutuzov leaned forward in his

saddle and bowed his head, and his eye lit up with a mild and

apparently ironic gleam.



"You see, brothers..." said he when the shouts had ceased... and all

at once his voice and the expression of his face changed. It was no

longer the commander in chief speaking but an ordinary old man who

wanted to tell his comrades something very important.



There was a stir among the throng of officers and in the ranks of

the soldiers, who moved that they might hear better what he was

going to say.



"You see, brothers, I know it's hard for you, but it can't be

helped! Bear up; it won't be for long now! We'll see our visitors

off and then we'll rest. The Tsar won't forget your service. It is

hard for you, but still you are at home while they--you see what

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they have come to," said he, pointing to the prisoners. "Worse off

than our poorest beggars. While they were strong we didn't spare

ourselves, but now we may even pity them. They are human beings too.

Isn't it so, lads?"



He looked around, and in the direct, respectful, wondering gaze

fixed upon him he read sympathy with what he had said. His face grew

brighter and brighter with an old man's mild smile, which drew the

corners of his lips and eyes into a cluster of wrinkles. He ceased

speaking and bowed his head as if in perplexity.



"But after all who asked them here? Serves them right, the bloody

bastards!" he cried, suddenly lifting his head.



And flourishing his whip he rode off at a gallop for the first

time during the whole campaign, and left the broken ranks of the

soldiers laughing joyfully and shouting "Hurrah!"



Kutuzov's words were hardly understood by the troops. No one could

have repeated the field marshal's address, begun solemnly and then

changing into an old man's simplehearted talk; but the hearty

sincerity of that speech, the feeling of majestic triumph combined

with pity for the foe and consciousness of the justice of our cause,

exactly expressed by that old man's good-natured expletives, was not

merely understood but lay in the soul of every soldier and found

expression in their joyous and long-sustained shouts. Afterwards

when one of the generals addressed Kutuzov asking whether he wished

his caleche to be sent for, Kutuzov in answering unexpectedly gave a

sob, being evidently greatly moved.









CHAPTER VII





When the troops reached their night's halting place on the eighth of

November, the last day of the Krasnoe battles, it was already

growing dusk. All day it had been calm and frosty with occasional

lightly falling snow and toward evening it began to clear. Through the

falling snow a purple-black and starry sky showed itself and the frost

grew keener.



An infantry regiment which had left Tarutino three thousand strong

but now numbered only nine hundred was one of the first to arrive that

night at its halting place--a village on the highroad. The

quartermasters who met the regiment announced that all the huts were

full of sick and dead Frenchmen, cavalrymen, and members of the staff.

There was only one hut available for the regimental commander.



The commander rode up to his hut. The regiment passed through the

village and stacked its arms in front of the last huts.



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Like some huge many-limbed animal, the regiment began to prepare its

lair and its food. One part of it dispersed and waded knee-deep

through the snow into a birch forest to the right of the village,

and immediately the sound of axes and swords, the crashing of

branches, and merry voices could be heard from there. Another

section amid the regimental wagons and horses which were standing in a

group was busy getting out caldrons and rye biscuit, and feeding the

horses. A third section scattered through the village arranging

quarters for the staff officers, carrying out the French corpses

that were in the huts, and dragging away boards, dry wood, and

thatch from the roofs, for the campfires, or wattle fences to serve

for shelter.



Some fifteen men with merry shouts were shaking down the high wattle

wall of a shed, the roof of which had already been removed.



"Now then, all together--shove!" cried the voices, and the huge

surface of the wall, sprinkled with snow and creaking with frost,

was seen swaying in the gloom of the night. The lower stakes cracked

more and more and at last the wall fell, and with it the men who had

been pushing it. Loud, coarse laughter and joyous shouts ensued.



"Now then, catch hold in twos! Hand up the lever! That's it... Where

are you shoving to?"



"Now, all together! But wait a moment, boys... With a song!"



All stood silent, and a soft, pleasant velvety voice began to

sing. At the end of the third verse as the last note died away, twenty

voices roared out at once: "Oo-oo-oo-oo! That's it. All together!

Heave away, boys!..." but despite their united efforts the wattle

hardly moved, and in the silence that followed the heavy breathing

of the men was audible.



"Here, you of the Sixth Company! Devils that you are! Lend a hand...

will you? You may want us one of these days."



Some twenty men of the Sixth Company who were on their way into

the village joined the haulers, and the wattle wall, which was about

thirty-five feet long and seven feet high, moved forward along the

village street, swaying, pressing upon and cutting the shoulders of

the gasping men.



"Get along... Falling? What are you stopping for? There now..."



Merry senseless words of abuse flowed freely.



"What are you up to?" suddenly came the authoritative voice of a

sergeant major who came upon the men who were hauling their burden.

"There are gentry here; the general himself is in that hut, and you

foul-mouthed devils, you brutes, I'll give it to you!" shouted he,

hitting the first man who came in his way a swinging blow on the back.

"Can't you make less noise?"



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The men became silent. The soldier who had been struck groaned and

wiped his face, which had been scratched till it bled by his falling

against the wattle.



"There, how that devil hits out! He's made my face all bloody," said

he in a frightened whisper when the sergeant major had passed on.



"Don't you like it?" said a laughing voice, and moderating their

tones the men moved forward.



When they were out of the village they began talking again as loud

as before, interlarding their talk with the same aimless expletives.



In the hut which the men had passed, the chief officers had gathered

and were in animated talk over their tea about the events of the day

and the maneuvers suggested for tomorrow. It was proposed to make a

flank march to the left, cut off the Vice-King (Murat) and capture

him.



By the time the soldiers had dragged the wattle fence to its place

the campfires were blazing on all sides ready for cooking, the wood

crackled, the snow was melting, and black shadows of soldiers

flitted to and fro all over the occupied space where the snow had been

trodden down.



Axes and choppers were plied all around. Everything was done without

any orders being given. Stores of wood were brought for the night,

shelters were rigged up for the officers, caldrons were being

boiled, and muskets and accouterments put in order.



The wattle wall the men had brought was set up in a semicircle by

the Eighth Company as a shelter from the north, propped up by musket

rests, and a campfire was built before it. They beat the tattoo,

called the roll, had supper, and settled down round the fires for

the night--some repairing their footgear, some smoking pipes, and some

stripping themselves naked to steam the lice out of their shirts.









CHAPTER VIII





One would have thought that under the almost incredibly wretched

conditions the Russian soldiers were in at that time--lacking warm

boots and sheepskin coats, without a roof over their heads, in the

snow with eighteen degrees of frost, and without even full rations

(the commissariat did not always keep up with the troops)--they

would have presented a very sad and depressing spectacle.



On the contrary, the army had never under the best material

conditions presented a more cheerful and animated aspect. This was

because all who began to grow depressed or who lost strength were

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sifted out of the army day by day. All the physically or morally

weak had long since been left behind and only the flower of the

army--physically and mentally--remained.



More men collected behind the wattle fence of the Eighth Company

than anywhere else. Two sergeants major were sitting with them and

their campfire blazed brighter than others. For leave to sit by

their wattle they demanded contributions of fuel.



"Eh, Makeev! What has become of you, you son of a bitch? Are you

lost or have the wolves eaten you? Fetch some more wood!" shouted a

red-haired and red-faced man, screwing up his eyes and blinking

because of the smoke but not moving back from the fire. "And you,

Jackdaw, go and fetch some wood!" said he to another soldier.



This red-haired man was neither a sergeant nor a corporal, but being

robust he ordered about those weaker than himself. The soldier they

called "Jackdaw," a thin little fellow with a sharp nose, rose

obediently and was about to go but at that instant there came into the

light of the fire the slender, handsome figure of a young soldier

carrying a load of wood.



"Bring it here--that's fine!"



They split up the wood, pressed it down on the fire, blew at it with

their mouths, and fanned it with the skirts of their greatcoats,

making the flames hiss and crackle. The men drew nearer and lit

their pipes. The handsome young soldier who had brought the wood,

setting his arms akimbo, began stamping his cold feet rapidly and

deftly on the spot where he stood.



"Mother! The dew is cold but clear.... It's well that I'm a

musketeer..." he sang, pretending to hiccough after each syllable.



"Look out, your soles will fly off!" shouted the red-haired man,

noticing that the sole of the dancer's boot was hanging loose. "What a

fellow you are for dancing!"



The dancer stopped, pulled off the loose piece of leather, and threw

it on the fire.



"Right enough, friend," said he, and, having sat down, took out of

his knapsack a scrap of blue French cloth, and wrapped it round his

foot. "It's the steam that spoils them," he added, stretching out

his feet toward the fire.



"They'll soon be issuing us new ones. They say that when we've

finished hammering them, we're to receive double kits!"



"And that son of a bitch Petrov has lagged behind after all, it

seems," said one sergeant major.



"I've had an eye on him this long while," said the other.



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"Well, he's a poor sort of soldier..."



"But in the Third Company they say nine men were missing yesterday."



"Yes, it's all very well, but when a man's feet are frozen how can

he walk?"



"Eh? Don't talk nonsense!" said a sergeant major.



"Do you want to be doing the same?" said an old soldier, turning

reproachfully to the man who had spoken of frozen feet.



"Well, you know," said the sharp-nosed man they called Jackdaw in

a squeaky and unsteady voice, raising himself at the other side of the

fire, "a plump man gets thin, but for a thin one it's death. Take

me, now! I've got no strength left," he added, with sudden

resolution turning to the sergeant major. "Tell them to send me to

hospital; I'm aching all over; anyway I shan't be able to keep up."



"That'll do, that'll do!" replied the sergeant major quietly.



The soldier said no more and the talk went on.



"What a lot of those Frenchies were taken today, and the fact is

that not one of them had what you might call real boots on," said a

soldier, starting a new theme. "They were no more than make-believes."



"The Cossacks have taken their boots. They were clearing the hut for

the colonel and carried them out. It was pitiful to see them, boys,"

put in the dancer. "As they turned them over one seemed still alive

and, would you believe it, he jabbered something in their lingo."



"But they're a clean folk, lads," the first man went on; "he was

white--as white as birchbark--and some of them are such fine

fellows, you might think they were nobles."



"Well, what do you think? They make soldiers of all classes there."



"But they don't understand our talk at all," said the dancer with

a puzzled smile. "I asked him whose subject he was, and he jabbered in

his own way. A queer lot!"



"But it's strange, friends," continued the man who had wondered at

their whiteness, "the peasants at Mozhaysk were saying that when

they began burying the dead--where the battle was you know--well,

those dead had been lying there for nearly a month, and says the

peasant, 'they lie as white as paper, clean, and not as much smell

as a puff of powder smoke.'"



"Was it from the cold?" asked someone.



"You're a clever fellow! From the cold indeed! Why, it was hot. If

it had been from the cold, ours would not have rotted either. 'But,'

he says, 'go up to ours and they are all rotten and maggoty. So,' he

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says, 'we tie our faces up with kerchiefs and turn our heads away as

we drag them off: we can hardly do it. But theirs,' he says, 'are

white as paper and not so much smell as a whiff of gunpowder.'"



All were silent.



"It must be from their food," said the sergeant major. "They used to

gobble the same food as the gentry."



No one contradicted him.



"That peasant near Mozhaysk where the battle was said the men were

all called up from ten villages around and they carted for twenty days

and still didn't finish carting the dead away. And as for the

wolves, he says..."



"That was a real battle," said an old soldier. "It's the only one

worth remembering; but since that... it's only been tormenting folk."



"And do you know, Daddy, the day before yesterday we ran at them

and, my word, they didn't let us get near before they just threw

down their muskets and went on their knees. 'Pardon!' they say. That's

only one case. They say Platov took 'Poleon himself twice. But he

didn't know the right charm. He catches him and catches him--no

good! He turns into a bird in his hands and flies away. And there's no

way of killing him either."



"You're a first-class liar, Kiselev, when I come to look at you!"



"Liar, indeed! It's the real truth."



"If he fell into my hands, when I'd caught him I'd bury him in the

ground with an aspen stake to fix him down. What a lot of men he's

ruined!"



"Well, anyhow we're going to end it. He won't come here again,"

remarked the old soldier, yawning.



The conversation flagged, and the soldiers began settling down to

sleep.



"Look at the stars. It's wonderful how they shine! You would think

the women had spread out their linen," said one of the men, gazing

with admiration at the Milky Way.



"That's a sign of a good harvest next year."



"We shall want some more wood."



"You warm your back and your belly gets frozen. That's queer."



"O Lord!"



"What are you pushing for? Is the fire only for you? Look how he's

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sprawling!"



In the silence that ensued, the snoring of those who had fallen

asleep could be heard. Others turned over and warmed themselves, now

and again exchanging a few words. From a campfire a hundred paces

off came a sound of general, merry laughter.



"Hark at them roaring there in the Fifth Company!" said one of the

soldiers, "and what a lot of them there are!"



One of the men got up and went over to the Fifth Company.



"They're having such fun," said he, coming back. "Two Frenchies have

turned up. One's quite frozen and the other's an awful swaggerer. He's

singing songs...."



"Oh, I'll go across and have a look...."



And several of the men went over to the Fifth Company.









CHAPTER IX





The fifth company was bivouacking at the very edge of the forest.

A huge campfire was blazing brightly in the midst of the snow,

lighting up the branches of trees heavy with hoarfrost.



About midnight they heard the sound of steps in the snow of the

forest, and the crackling of dry branches.



"A bear, lads," said one of the men.



They all raised their heads to listen, and out of the forest into

the bright firelight stepped two strangely clad human figures clinging

to one another.



These were two Frenchmen who had been hiding in the forest. They

came up to the fire, hoarsely uttering something in a language our

soldiers did not understand. One was taller than the other; he wore an

officer's hat and seemed quite exhausted. On approaching the fire he

had been going to sit down, but fell. The other, a short sturdy

soldier with a shawl tied round his head, was stronger. He raised

his companion and said something, pointing to his mouth. The

soldiers surrounded the Frenchmen, spread a greatcoat on the ground

for the sick man, and brought some buckwheat porridge and vodka for

both of them.



The exhausted French officer was Ramballe and the man with his

head wrapped in the shawl was Morel, his orderly.



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When Morel had drunk some vodka and finished his bowl of porridge he

suddenly became unnaturally merry and chattered incessantly to the

soldiers, who could not understand him. Ramballe refused food and

resting his head on his elbow lay silent beside the campfire,

looking at the Russian soldiers with red and vacant eyes. Occasionally

he emitted a long-drawn groan and then again became silent. Morel,

pointing to his shoulders, tried to impress on the soldiers the fact

that Ramballe was an officer and ought to be warmed. A Russian officer

who had come up to the fire sent to ask his colonel whether he would

not take a French officer into his hut to warm him, and when the

messenger returned and said that the colonel wished the officer to

be brought to him, Ramballe was told to go. He rose and tried to walk,

but staggered and would have fallen had not a soldier standing by held

him up.



"You won't do it again, eh?" said one of the soldiers, winking and

turning mockingly to Ramballe.



"Oh, you fool! Why talk rubbish, lout that you are--a real peasant!"

came rebukes from all sides addressed to the jesting soldier.



They surrounded Ramballe, lifted him on the crossed arms of two

soldiers, and carried him to the hut. Ramballe put his arms around

their necks while they carried him and began wailing plaintively:



"Oh, you fine fellows, my kind, kind friends! These are men! Oh,

my brave, kind friends," and he leaned his head against the shoulder

of one of the men like a child.



Meanwhile Morel was sitting in the best place by the fire,

surrounded by the soldiers.



Morel, a short sturdy Frenchman with inflamed and streaming eyes,

was wearing a woman's cloak and had a shawl tied woman fashion round

his head over his cap. He was evidently tipsy, and was singing a

French song in a hoarse broken voice, with an arm thrown round the

nearest soldier. The soldiers simply held their sides as they

watched him.



"Now then, now then, teach us how it goes! I'll soon pick it up. How

is it?" said the man--a singer and a wag--whom Morel was embracing.



"Vive Henri Quatre! Vive ce roi valiant!" sang Morel, winking. "Ce

diable a quatre..."*





*"Long live Henry the Fourth, that valiant king! That rowdy devil."





"Vivarika! Vif-seruvaru! Sedyablyaka!" repeated the soldier,

flourishing his arm and really catching the tune.



"Bravo! Ha, ha, ha!" rose their rough, joyous laughter from all

sides.

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Morel, wrinkling up his face, laughed too.



"Well, go on, go on!"



"Qui eut le triple talent,

De boire, de battre,

Et d'etre un vert galant."*





*Who had a triple talent



For drinking, for fighting,



And for being a gallant old boy...





"It goes smoothly, too. Well, now, Zaletaev!"



"Ke..." Zaletaev, brought out with effort: "ke-e-e-e," he drawled,

laboriously pursing his lips, "le-trip-ta-la-de-bu-de-ba, e

de-tra-va-ga-la" he sang.



"Fine! Just like the Frenchie! Oh, ho ho! Do you want some more to

eat?"



"Give him some porridge: it takes a long time to get filled up after

starving."



They gave him some more porridge and Morel with a laugh set to

work on his third bowl. All the young soldiers smiled gaily as they

watched him. The older men, who thought it undignified to amuse

themselves with such nonsense, continued to lie at the opposite side

of the fire, but one would occasionally raise himself on an elbow

and glance at Morel with a smile.



"They are men too," said one of them as he wrapped himself up in his

coat. "Even wormwood grows on its own root."



"O Lord, O Lord! How starry it is! Tremendous! That means a hard

frost...."



They all grew silent. The stars, as if knowing that no one was

looking at them, began to disport themselves in the dark sky: now

flaring up, now vanishing, now trembling, they were busy whispering

something gladsome and mysterious to one another.









CHAPTER X





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The French army melted away at the uniform rate of a mathematical

progression; and that crossing of the Berezina about which so much has

been written was only one intermediate stage in its destruction, and

not at all the decisive episode of the campaign. If so much has been

and still is written about the Berezina, on the French side this is

only because at the broken bridge across that river the calamities

their army had been previously enduring were suddenly concentrated

at one moment into a tragic spectacle that remained in every memory,

and on the Russian side merely because in Petersburg--far from the

seat of war--a plan (again one of Pfuel's) had been devised to catch

Napoleon in a strategic trap at the Berezina River. Everyone assured

himself that all would happen according to plan, and therefore

insisted that it was just the crossing of the Berezina that

destroyed the French army. In reality the results of the crossing were

much less disastrous to the French--in guns and men lost--than Krasnoe

had been, as the figures show.



The sole importance of the crossing of the Berezina lies in the fact

that it plainly and indubitably proved the fallacy of all the plans

for cutting off the enemy's retreat and the soundness of the only

possible line of action--the one Kutuzov and the general mass of the

army demanded--namely, simply to follow the enemy up. The French crowd

fled at a continually increasing speed and all its energy was directed

to reaching its goal. It fled like a wounded animal and it was

impossible to block its path. This was shown not so much by the

arrangements it made for crossing as by what took place at the

bridges. When the bridges broke down, unarmed soldiers, people from

Moscow and women with children who were with the French transport,

all--carried on by vis inertiae--pressed forward into boats and into

the ice-covered water and did not, surrender.



That impulse was reasonable. The condition of fugitives and of

pursuers was equally bad. As long as they remained with their own

people each might hope for help from his fellows and the definite

place he held among them. But those who surrendered, while remaining

in the same pitiful plight, would be on a lower level to claim a share

in the necessities of life. The French did not need to be informed

of the fact that half the prisoners--with whom the Russians did not

know what to do--perished of cold and hunger despite their captors'

desire to save them; they felt that it could not be otherwise. The

most compassionate Russian commanders, those favorable to the

French--and even the Frenchmen in the Russian service--could do

nothing for the prisoners. The French perished from the conditions

to which the Russian army was itself exposed. It was impossible to

take bread and clothes from our hungry and indispensable soldiers to

give to the French who, though not harmful, or hated, or guilty,

were simply unnecessary. Some Russians even did that, but they were

exceptions.



Certain destruction lay behind the French but in front there was

hope. Their ships had been burned, there was no salvation save in

collective flight, and on that the whole strength of the French was

concentrated.



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The farther they fled the more wretched became the plight of the

remnant, especially after the Berezina, on which (in consequence of

the Petersburg plan) special hopes had been placed by the Russians,

and the keener grew the passions of the Russian commanders, blamed one

another and Kutuzov most of all. Anticipation that the failure of

the Petersburg Berezina plan would be attributed to Kutuzov led to

dissatisfaction, contempt, and ridicule, more and more strongly

expressed. The ridicule and contempt were of course expressed in a

respectful form, making it impossible for him to ask wherein he was to

blame. They did not talk seriously to him; when reporting to him or

asking for his sanction they appeared to be fulfilling a regrettable

formality, but they winked behind his back and tried to mislead him at

every turn.



Because they could not understand him all these people assumed

that it was useless to talk to the old man; that he would never

grasp the profundity of their plans, that he would answer with his

phrases (which they thought were mere phrases) about a "golden

bridge," about the impossibility of crossing the frontier with a crowd

of tatterdemalions, and so forth. They had heard all that before.

And all he said--that it was necessary to await provisions, or that

the men had no boots--was so simple, while what they proposed was so

complicated and clever, that it was evident that he was old and stupid

and that they, though not in power, were commanders of genius.



After the junction with the army of the brilliant admiral and

Petersburg hero Wittgenstein, this mood and the gossip of the staff

reached their maximum. Kutuzov saw this and merely sighed and shrugged

his shoulders. Only once, after the affair of the Berezina, did he get

angry and write to Bennigsen (who reported separately to the

Emperor) the following letter:



"On account of your spells of ill health, will your excellency

please be so good as to set off for Kaluga on receipt of this, and

there await further commands and appointments from His Imperial

Majesty."



But after Bennigsen's departure, the Grand Duke Tsarevich

Constantine Pavlovich joined the army. He had taken part in the

beginning of the campaign but had subsequently been removed from the

army by Kutuzov. Now having come to the army, he informed Kutuzov of

the Emperor's displeasure at the poor success of our forces and the

slowness of their advance. The Emperor intended to join the army

personally in a few days' time.



The old man, experienced in court as well as in military affairs-

this same Kutuzov who in August had been chosen commander in chief

against the sovereign's wishes and who had removed the Grand Duke

and heir--apparent from the army--who on his own authority and

contrary to the Emperor's will had decided on the abandonment of

Moscow, now realized at once that his day was over, that his part

was played, and that the power he was supposed to hold was no longer

his. And he understood this not merely from the attitude of the court.

He saw on the one hand that the military business in which he had

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played his part was ended and felt that his mission was

accomplished; and at the same time he began to be conscious of the

physical weariness of his aged body and of the necessity of physical

rest.



On the twenty-ninth of November Kutuzov entered Vilna--his "dear

Vilna" as he called it. Twice during his career Kutuzov had been

governor of Vilna. In that wealthy town, which had not been injured,

he found old friends and associations, besides the comforts of life of

which he had so long been deprived. And he suddenly turned from the

cares of army and state and, as far as the passions that seethed

around him allowed, immersed himself in the quiet life to which he had

formerly been accustomed, as if all that was taking place and all that

had still to be done in the realm of history did not concern him at

all.



Chichagov, one of the most zealous "cutters-off" and

"breakers-up," who had first wanted to effect a diversion in Greece

and then in Warsaw but never wished to go where he was sent:

Chichagov, noted for the boldness with which he spoke to the

Emperor, and who considered Kutuzov to be under an obligation to him

because when he was sent to make peace with Turkey in 1811

independently of Kutuzov, and found that peace had already been

concluded, he admitted to the Emperor that the merit of securing

that peace was really Kutuzov's; this Chichagov was the first to

meet Kutuzov at the castle where the latter was to stay. In undress

naval uniform, with a dirk, and holding his cap under his arm, he

handed Kutuzov a garrison report and the keys of the town. The

contemptuously respectful attitude of the younger men to the old man

in his dotage was expressed in the highest degree by the behavior of

Chichagov, who knew of the accusations that were being directed

against Kutuzov.



When speaking to Chichagov, Kutuzov incidentally mentioned that

the vehicles packed with china that had been captured from him at

Borisov had been recovered and would be restored to him.



"You mean to imply that I have nothing to eat out of.... On the

contrary, I can supply you with everything even if you want to give

dinner parties," warmly replied Chichagov, who tried by every word

he spoke to prove his own rectitude and therefore imagined Kutuzov

to be animated by the same desire.



Kutuzov, shrugging his shoulders, replied with his subtle

penetrating smile: "I meant merely to say what I said."



Contrary to the Emperor's wish Kutuzov detained the greater part

of the army at Vilna. Those about him said that he became

extraordinarily slack and physically feeble during his stay in that

town. He attended to army affairs reluctantly, left everything to

his generals, and while awaiting the Emperor's arrival led a

dissipated life.



Having left Petersburg on the seventh of December with his suite-

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Count Tolstoy, Prince Volkonski, Arakcheev, and others--the Emperor

reached Vilna on the eleventh, and in his traveling sleigh drove

straight to the castle. In spite of the severe frost some hundred

generals and staff officers in full parade uniform stood in front of

the castle, as well as a guard of honor of the Semenov regiment.



A courier who galloped to the castle in advance, in a troyka with

three foam-flecked horses, shouted "Coming!" and Konovnitsyn rushed

into the vestibule to inform Kutuzov, who was waiting in the hall

porter's little lodge.



A minute later the old man's large stout figure in full-dress

uniform, his chest covered with orders and a scarf drawn round his

stomach, waddled out into the porch. He put on his hat with its

peaks to the sides and, holding his gloves in his hand and walking

with an effort sideways down the steps to the level of the street,

took in his hand the report he had prepared for the Emperor.



There was running to and fro and whispering; another troyka

furiously up, and then all eyes were turned on an approaching sleigh

in which the figures of the Emperor and Volkonski could already be

descried.



From the habit of fifty years all this had a physically agitating

effect on the old general. He carefully and hastily felt himself all

over, readjusted his hat, and pulling himself together drew himself up

and, at the very moment when the Emperor, having alighted from the

sleigh, lifted his eyes to him, handed him the report and began

speaking in his smooth, ingratiating voice.



The Emperor with a rapid glance scanned Kutuzov from head to foot,

frowned for an instant, but immediately mastering himself went up to

the old man, extended his arms and embraced him. And this embrace too,

owing to a long-standing impression related to his innermost feelings,

had its usual effect on Kutuzov and he gave a sob.



The Emperor greeted the officers and the Semenov guard, and again

pressing the old man's hand went with him into the castle.



When alone with the field marshal the Emperor expressed his

dissatisfaction at the slowness of the pursuit and at the mistakes

made at Krasnoe and the Berezina, and informed him of his intentions

for a future campaign abroad. Kutuzov made no rejoinder or remark. The

same submissive, expressionless look with which he had listened to the

Emperor's commands on the field of Austerlitz seven years before

settled on his face now.



When Kutuzov came out of the study and with lowered head was

crossing the ballroom with his heavy waddling gait, he was arrested by

someone's voice saying:



"Your Serene Highness!"



Kutuzov raised his head and looked for a long while into the eyes of

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Count Tolstoy, who stood before him holding a silver salver on which

lay a small object. Kutuzov seemed not to understand what was expected

of him.



Suddenly he seemed to remember; a scarcely perceptible smile flashed

across his puffy face, and bowing low and respectfully he took the

object that lay on the salver. It was the Order of St. George of the

First Class.









CHAPTER XI





Next day the field marshal gave a dinner and ball which the

Emperor honored by his presence. Kutuzov had received the Order of St.

George of the First Class and the Emperor showed him the highest

honors, but everyone knew of the imperial dissatisfaction with him.

The proprieties were observed and the Emperor was the first to set

that example, but everybody understood that the old man was

blameworthy and good-for-nothing. When Kutuzov, conforming to a custom

of Catherine's day, ordered the standards that had been captured to be

lowered at the Emperor's feet on his entering the ballroom, the

Emperor made a wry face and muttered something in which some people

caught the words, "the old comedian."



The Emperor's displeasure with Kutuzov was specially increased at

Vilna by the fact that Kutuzov evidently could not or would not

understand the importance of the coming campaign.



When on the following morning the Emperor said to the officers

assembled about him: "You have not only saved Russia, you have saved

Europe!" they all understood that the war was not ended.



Kutuzov alone would not see this and openly expressed his opinion

that no fresh war could improve the position or add to the glory of

Russia, but could only spoil and lower the glorious position that

Russia had gained. He tried to prove to the Emperor the

impossibility of levying fresh troops, spoke of the hardships

already endured by the people, of the possibility of failure and so

forth.



This being the field marshal's frame of mind he was naturally

regarded as merely a hindrance and obstacle to the impending war.



To avoid unpleasant encounters with the old man, the natural

method was to do what had been done with him at Austerlitz and with

Barclay at the beginning of the Russian campaign--to transfer the

authority to the Emperor himself, thus cutting the ground from under

the commander in chief's feet without upsetting the old man by

informing him of the change.



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With this object his staff was gradually reconstructed and its

real strength removed and transferred to the Emperor. Toll,

Konovnitsyn, and Ermolov received fresh appointments. Everyone spoke

loudly of the field marshal's great weakness and failing health.



His health had to be bad for his place to be taken away and given to

another. And in fact his health was poor.



So naturally, simply, and gradually--just as he had come from Turkey

to the Treasury in Petersburg to recruit the militia, and then to

the army when he was needed there--now when his part was played out,

Kutuzov's place was taken by a new and necessary performer.



The war 1812, besides its national significance dear to every

Russian heart, was now to assume another, a European, significance.



The movement of peoples from west to east was to be succeeded by a

movement of peoples from east to west, and for this fresh war

another leader was necessary, having qualities and views differing

from Kutuzov's and animated by different motives.



Alexander I was as necessary for the movement of the peoples from

east to west and for the refixing of national frontiers as Kutuzov had

been for the salvation and glory of Russia.



Kutuzov did not understand what Europe, the balance of power, or

Napoleon meant. He could not understand it. For the representative

of the Russian people, after the enemy had been destroyed and Russia

had been liberated and raised to the summit of her glory, there was

nothing left to do as a Russian. Nothing remained for the

representative of the national war but to die, and Kutuzov died.









CHAPTER XII





As generally happens, Pierre did not feel the full effects of the

physical privation and strain he had suffered as prisoner until

after they were over. After his liberation he reached Orel, and on the

third day there, when preparing to go to Kiev, he fell ill and was

laid up for three months. He had what the doctors termed "bilious

fever." But despite the fact that the doctors treated him, bled him,

and gave him medicines to drink, he recovered.



Scarcely any impression was left on Pierre's mind by all that

happened to him from the time of his rescue till his illness. He

remembered only the dull gray weather now rainy and now snowy,

internal physical distress, and pains in his feet and side. He

remembered a general impression of the misfortunes and sufferings of

people and of being worried by the curiosity of officers and

generals who questioned him, he also remembered his difficulty in

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procuring a conveyance and horses, and above all he remembered his

incapacity to think and feel all that time. On the day of his rescue

he had seen the body of Petya Rostov. That same day he had learned

that Prince Andrew, after surviving the battle of Borodino for more

than a month had recently died in the Rostovs' house at Yaroslavl, and

Denisov who told him this news also mentioned Helene's death,

supposing that Pierre had heard of it long before. All this at the

time seemed merely strange to Pierre: he felt he could not grasp its

significance. Just then he was only anxious to get away as quickly

as possible from places where people were killing one another, to some

peaceful refuge where he could recover himself, rest, and think over

all the strange new facts he had learned; but on reaching Orel he

immediately fell ill. When he came to himself after his illness he saw

in attendance on him two of his servants, Terenty and Vaska, who had

come from Moscow; and also his cousin the eldest princess, who had

been living on his estate at Elets and hearing of his rescue and

illness had come to look after him.



It was only gradually during his convalescence that Pierre lost

the impressions he had become accustomed to during the last few months

and got used to the idea that no one would oblige him to go anywhere

tomorrow, that no one would deprive him of his warm bed, and that he

would be sure to get his dinner, tea, and supper. But for a long

time in his dreams he still saw himself in the conditions of

captivity. In the same way little by little he came to understand

the news he had been told after his rescue, about the death of

Prince Andrew, the death of his wife, and the destruction of the

French.



A joyous feeling of freedom--that complete inalienable freedom

natural to man which he had first experienced at the first halt

outside Moscow--filled Pierre's soul during his convalescence. He

was surprised to find that this inner freedom, which was independent

of external conditions, now had as it were an additional setting of

external liberty. He was alone in a strange town, without

acquaintances. No one demanded anything of him or sent him anywhere.

He had all he wanted: the thought of his wife which had been a

continual torment to him was no longer there, since she was no more.



"Oh, how good! How splendid!" said he to himself when a cleanly laid

table was moved up to him with savory beef tea, or when he lay down

for the night on a soft clean bed, or when he remembered that the

French had gone and that his wife was no more. "Oh, how good, how

splendid!"



And by old habit he asked himself the question: "Well, and what

then? What am I going to do?" And he immediately gave himself the

answer: "Well, I shall live. Ah, how splendid!"



The very question that had formerly tormented him, the thing he

had continually sought to find--the aim of life--no longer existed for

him now. That search for the aim of life had not merely disappeared

temporarily--he felt that it no longer existed for him and could not

present itself again. And this very absence of an aim gave him the

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complete, joyous sense of freedom which constituted his happiness at

this time.



He could not see an aim, for he now had faith--not faith in any kind

of rule, or words, or ideas, but faith in an ever-living,

ever-manifest God. Formerly he had sought Him in aims he set

himself. That search for an aim had been simply a search for God,

and suddenly in his captivity he had learned not by words or reasoning

but by direct feeling what his nurse had told him long ago: that God

is here and everywhere. In his captivity he had learned that in

Karataev God was greater, more infinite and unfathomable than in the

Architect of the Universe recognized by the Freemasons. He felt like a

man who after straining his eyes to see into the far distance finds

what he sought at his very feet. All his life he had looked over the

heads of the men around him, when he should have merely looked in

front of him without straining his eyes.



In the past he had never been able to find that great inscrutable

infinite something. He had only felt that it must exist somewhere

and had looked for it. In everything near and comprehensible he had

only what was limited, petty, commonplace, and senseless. He had

equipped himself with a mental telescope and looked into remote space,

where petty worldliness hiding itself in misty distance had seemed

to him great and infinite merely because it was not clearly seen.

And such had European life, politics, Freemasonry, philosophy, and

philanthropy seemed to him. But even then, at moments of weakness as

he had accounted them, his mind had penetrated to those distances

and he had there seen the same pettiness, worldliness, and

senselessness. Now, however, he had learned to see the great, eternal,

and infinite in everything, and therefore--to see it and enjoy its

contemplation--he naturally threw away the telescope through which

he had till now gazed over men's heads, and gladly regarded the

ever-changing, eternally great, unfathomable, and infinite life around

him. And the closer he looked the more tranquil and happy he became.

That dreadful question, "What for?" which had formerly destroyed all

his mental edifices, no longer existed for him. To that question,

"What for?" a simple answer was now always ready in his soul: "Because

there is a God, that God without whose will not one hair falls from

a man's head."









CHAPTER XIII





In external ways Pierre had hardly changed at all. In appearance

he was just what he used to be. As before he was absent-minded and

seemed occupied not with what was before his eyes but with something

special of his own. The difference between his former and present self

was that formerly when he did not grasp what lay before him or was

said to him, he had puckered his forehead painfully as if vainly

seeking to distinguish something at a distance. At present he still

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forgot what was said to him and still did not see what was before

his eyes, but he now looked with a scarcely perceptible and

seemingly ironic smile at what was before him and listened to what was

said, though evidently seeing and hearing something quite different.

Formerly he had appeared to be a kindhearted but unhappy man, and so

people had been inclined to avoid him. Now a smile at the joy of

life always played round his lips, and sympathy for others, shone in

his eyes with a questioning look as to whether they were as

contented as he was, and people felt pleased by his presence.



Previously he had talked a great deal, grew excited when he

talked, and seldom listened; now he was seldom carried away in

conversation and knew how to listen so that people readily told him

their most intimate secrets.



The princess, who had never liked Pierre and had been particularly

hostile to him since she had felt herself under obligations to him

after the old count's death, now after staying a short time in Orel-

where she had come intending to show Pierre that in spite of his

ingratitude she considered it her duty to nurse him--felt to her

surprise and vexation that she had become fond of him. Pierre did

not in any way seek her approval, he merely studied her with interest.

Formerly she had felt that he regarded her with indifference and

irony, and so had shrunk into herself as she did with others and had

shown him only the combative side of her nature; but now he seemed

to be trying to understand the most intimate places of her heart, and,

mistrustfully at first but afterwards gratefully, she let him see

the hidden, kindly sides of her character.



The most cunning man could not have crept into her confidence more

successfully, evoking memories of the best times of her youth and

showing sympathy with them. Yet Pierre's cunning consisted simply in

finding pleasure in drawing out the human qualities of the embittered,

hard, and (in her own way) proud princess.



"Yes, he is a very, very kind man when he is not under the influence

of bad people but of people such as myself," thought she.



His servants too--Terenty and Vaska--in their own way noticed the

change that had taken place in Pierre. They considered that he had

become much "simpler." Terenty, when he had helped him undress and

wished him good night, often lingered with his master's boots in his

hands and clothes over his arm, to see whether he would not start a

talk. And Pierre, noticing that Terenty wanted a chat, generally

kept him there.



"Well, tell me... now, how did you get food?" he would ask.



And Terenty would begin talking of the destruction of Moscow, and of

the old count, and would stand for a long time holding the clothes and

talking, or sometimes listening to Pierre's stories, and then would go

out into the hall with a pleasant sense of intimacy with his master

and affection for him.



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The doctor who attended Pierre and visited him every day, though

he considered it his duty as a doctor to pose as a man whose every

moment was of value to suffering humanity, would sit for hours with

Pierre telling him his favorite anecdotes and his observations on

the characters of his patients in general, and especially of the

ladies.



"It's a pleasure to talk to a man like that; he is not like our

provincials," he would say.



There were several prisoners from the French army in Orel, and the

doctor brought one of them, a young Italian, to see Pierre.



This officer began visiting Pierre, and the princess used to make

fun of the tenderness the Italian expressed for him.



The Italian seemed happy only when he could come to see Pierre, talk

with him, tell him about his past, his life at home, and his love, and

pour out to him his indignation against the French and especially

against Napoleon.



"If all Russians are in the least like you, it is sacrilege to fight

such a nation," he said to Pierre. "You, who have suffered so from the

French, do not even feel animosity toward them."



Pierre had evoked the passionate affection of the Italian merely

by evoking the best side of his nature and taking a pleasure in so

doing.



During the last days of Pierre's stay in Orel his old Masonic

acquaintance Count Willarski, who had introduced him to the lodge in

1807, came to see him. Willarski was married to a Russian heiress

who had a large estate in Orel province, and he occupied a temporary

post in the commissariat department in that town.



Hearing that Bezukhov was in Orel, Willarski, though they had

never been intimate, came to him with the professions of friendship

and intimacy that people who meet in a desert generally express for

one another. Willarski felt dull in Orel and was pleased to meet a man

of his own circle and, as he supposed, of similar interests.



But to his surprise Willarski soon noticed that Pierre had lagged

much behind the times, and had sunk, as he expressed it to himself,

into apathy and egotism.



"You are letting yourself go, my dear fellow," he said.



But for all that Willarski found it pleasanter now than it had

been formerly to be with Pierre, and came to see him every day. To

Pierre as he looked at and listened to Willarski, it seemed strange to

think that he had been like that himself but a short time before.



Willarski was a married man with a family, busy with his family

affairs, his wife's affairs, and his official duties. He regarded

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all these occupations as hindrances to life, and considered that

they were all contemptible because their aim was the welfare of

himself and his family. Military, administrative, political, and

Masonic interests continually absorbed his attention. And Pierre,

without trying to change the other's views and without condemning him,

but with the quiet, joyful, and amused smile now habitual to him,

was interested in this strange though very familiar phenomenon.



There was a new feature in Pierre's relations with Willarski, with

the princess, with the doctor, and with all the people he now met,

which gained for him the general good will. This was his

acknowledgment of the impossibility of changing a man's convictions by

words, and his recognition of the possibility of everyone thinking,

feeling, and seeing things each from his own point of view. This

legitimate peculiarity of each individual which used to excite and

irritate Pierre now became a basis of the sympathy he felt for, and

the interest he took in, other people. The difference, and sometimes

complete contradiction, between men's opinions and their lives, and

between one man and another, pleased him and drew from him an amused

and gentle smile.



In practical matters Pierre unexpectedly felt within himself a

center of gravity he had previously lacked. Formerly all pecuniary

questions, especially requests for money to which, as an extremely

wealthy man, he was very exposed, produced in him a state of

hopeless agitation and perplexity. "To give or not to give?" he had

asked himself. "I have it and he needs it. But someone else needs it

still more. Who needs it most? And perhaps they are both impostors?"

In the old days he had been unable to find a way out of all these

surmises and had given to all who asked as long as he had anything

to give. Formerly he had been in a similar state of perplexity with

regard to every question concerning his property, when one person

advised one thing and another something else.



Now to his surprise he found that he no longer felt either doubt

or perplexity about these questions. There was now within him a

judge who by some rule unknown to him decided what should or should

not be done.



He was as indifferent as heretofore to money matters, but now he

felt certain of what ought and what ought not to be done. The first

time he had recourse to his new judge was when a French prisoner, a

colonel, came to him and, after talking a great deal about his

exploits, concluded by making what amounted to a demand that Pierre

should give him four thousand francs to send to his wife and children.

Pierre refused without the least difficulty or effort, and was

afterwards surprised how simple and easy had been what used to

appear so insurmountably difficult. At the same time that he refused

the colonel's demand he made up his mind that he must have recourse to

artifice when leaving Orel, to induce the Italian officer to accept

some money of which he was evidently in need. A further proof to

Pierre of his own more settled outlook on practical matters was

furnished by his decision with regard to his wife's debts and to the

rebuilding of his houses in and near Moscow.

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His head steward came to him at Orel and Pierre reckoned up with him

his diminished income. The burning of Moscow had cost him, according

to the head steward's calculation, about two million rubles.



To console Pierre for these losses the head steward gave him an

estimate showing that despite these losses his income would not be

diminished but would even be increased if he refused to pay his wife's

debts which he was under no obligation to meet, and did not rebuild

his Moscow house and the country house on his Moscow estate, which had

cost him eighty thousand rubles a year and brought in nothing.



"Yes, of course that's true," said Pierre with a cheerful smile.

"I don't need all that at all. By being ruined I have become much

richer."



But in January Savelich came from Moscow and gave him an account

of the state of things there, and spoke of the estimate an architect

had made of the cost of rebuilding the town and country houses,

speaking of this as of a settled matter. About the same time he

received letters from Prince Vasili and other Petersburg acquaintances

speaking of his wife's debts. And Pierre decided that the steward's

proposals which had so pleased him were wrong and that he must go to

Petersburg and settle his wife's affairs and must rebuild in Moscow.

Why this was necessary he did not know, but he knew for certain that

it was necessary. His income would be reduced by three fourths, but he

felt it must be done.



Willarski was going to Moscow and they agreed to travel together.



During the whole time of his convalescence in Orel Pierre had

experienced a feeling of joy, freedom, and life; but when during his

journey he found himself in the open world and saw hundreds of new

faces, that feeling was intensified. Throughout his journey he felt

like a schoolboy on holiday. Everyone--the stagecoach driver, the

post-house overseers, the peasants on the roads and in the villages-

had a new significance for him. The presence and remarks of

Willarski who continually deplored the ignorance and poverty of Russia

and its backwardness compared with Europe only heightened Pierre's

pleasure. Where Willarski saw deadness Pierre saw an extraordinary

strength and vitality--the strength which in that vast space amid

the snows maintained the life of this original, peculiar, and unique

people. He did not contradict Willarski and even seemed to agree

with him--an apparent agreement being the simplest way to avoid

discussions that could lead to nothing--and he smiled joyfully as he

listened to him.









CHAPTER XIV





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It would be difficult to explain why and whither ants whose heap has

been destroyed are hurrying: some from the heap dragging bits of

rubbish, larvae, and corpses, others back to the heap, or why they

jostle, overtake one another, and fight, and it would be equally

difficult to explain what caused the Russians after the departure of

the French to throng to the place that had formerly been Moscow. But

when we watch the ants round their ruined heap, the tenacity,

energy, and immense number of the delving insects prove that despite

the destruction of the heap, something indestructible, which though

intangible is the real strength of the colony, still exists; and

similarly, though in Moscow in the month of October there was no

government no churches, shrines, riches, or houses--it was still the

Moscow it had been in August. All was destroyed, except something

intangible yet powerful and indestructible.



The motives of those who thronged from all sides to Moscow after

it had been cleared of the enemy were most diverse and personal, and

at first for the most part savage and brutal. One motive only they all

had in common: a desire to get to the place that had been called

Moscow, to apply their activities there.



Within a week Moscow already had fifteen thousand inhabitants, in

a fortnight twenty-five thousand, and so on. By the autumn of 1813 the

number, ever increasing and increasing, exceeded what it had been in

1812.



The first Russians to enter Moscow were the Cossacks of

Wintzingerode's detachment, peasants from the adjacent villages, and

residents who had fled from Moscow and had been hiding in its

vicinity. The Russians who entered Moscow, finding it plundered,

plundered it in their turn. They continued what the French had

begun. Trains of peasant carts came to Moscow to carry off to the

villages what had been abandoned in the ruined houses and the streets.

The Cossacks carried off what they could to their camps, and the

householders seized all they could find in other houses and moved it

to their own, pretending that it was their property.



But the first plunderers were followed by a second and a third

contingent, and with increasing numbers plundering became more and

more difficult and assumed more definite forms.



The French found Moscow abandoned but with all the organizations

of regular life, with diverse branches of commerce and

craftsmanship, with luxury, and governmental and religious

institutions. These forms were lifeless but still existed. There

were bazaars, shops, warehouses, market stalls, granaries--for the

most part still stocked with goods--and there were factories and

workshops, palaces and wealthy houses filled with luxuries, hospitals,

prisons, government offices, churches, and cathedrals. The longer

the French remained the more these forms of town life perished,

until finally all was merged into one confused, lifeless scene of

plunder.



The more the plundering by the French continued, the more both the

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wealth of Moscow and the strength of its plunderers was destroyed. But

plundering by the Russians, with which the reoccupation of the city

began, had an opposite effect: the longer it continued and the greater

the number of people taking part in it the more rapidly was the wealth

of the city and its regular life restored.



Besides the plunderers, very various people, some drawn by

curiosity, some by official duties, some by self-interest--house

owners, clergy, officials of all kinds, tradesmen, artisans, and

peasants--streamed into Moscow as blood flows to the heart.



Within a week the peasants who came with empty carts to carry off

plunder were stopped by the authorities and made to cart the corpses

out of the town. Other peasants, having heard of their comrades'

discomfiture, came to town bringing rye, oats, and hay, and beat

down one another's prices to below what they had been in former

days. Gangs of carpenters hoping for high pay arrived in Moscow

every day, and on all sides logs were being hewn, new houses built,

and old, charred ones repaired. Tradesmen began trading in booths.

Cookshops and taverns were opened in partially burned houses. The

clergy resumed the services in many churches that had not been burned.

Donors contributed Church property that had been stolen. Government

clerks set up their baize-covered tables and their pigeonholes of

documents in small rooms. The higher authorities and the police

organized the distribution of goods left behind by the French. The

owners of houses in which much property had been left, brought there

from other houses, complained of the injustice of taking everything to

the Faceted Palace in the Kremlin; others insisted that as the

French had gathered things from different houses into this or that

house, it would be unfair to allow its owner to keep all that was

found there. They abused the police and bribed them, made out

estimates at ten times their value for government stores that had

perished in the fire, and demanded relief. And Count Rostopchin

wrote proclamations.









CHAPTER XV





At the end of January Pierre went to Moscow and stayed in an annex

of his house which had not been burned. He called on Count

Rostopchin and on some acquaintances who were back in Moscow, and he

intended to leave for Petersburg two days later. Everybody was

celebrating the victory, everything was bubbling with life in the

ruined but reviving city. Everyone was pleased to see Pierre, everyone

wished to meet him, and everyone questioned him about what he had

seen. Pierre felt particularly well disposed toward them all, but

was now instinctively on his guard for fear of binding himself in

any way. To all questions put to him--whether important or quite

trifling--such as: Where would he live? Was he going to rebuild?

When was he going to Petersburg and would he mind taking a parcel

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for someone?--he replied: "Yes, perhaps," or, "I think so," and so on.



He had heard that the Rostovs were at Kostroma but the thought of

Natasha seldom occurred to him. If it did it was only as a pleasant

memory of the distant past. He felt himself not only free from

social obligations but also from that feeling which, it seemed to him,

he had aroused in himself.



On the third day after his arrival he heard from the Drubetskoys

that Princess Mary was in Moscow. The death, sufferings, and last days

of Prince Andrew had often occupied Pierre's thoughts and now recurred

to him with fresh vividness. Having heard at dinner that Princess Mary

was in Moscow and living in her house--which had not been burned--in

Vozdvizhenka Street, he drove that same evening to see her.



On his way to the house Pierre kept thinking of Prince Andrew, of

their friendship, of his various meetings with him, and especially

of the last one at Borodino.



"Is it possible that he died in the bitter frame of mind he was then

in? Is it possible that the meaning of life was not disclosed to him

before he died?" thought Pierre. He recalled Karataev and his death

and involuntarily began to compare these two men, so different, and

yet so similar in that they had both lived and both died and in the

love he felt for both of them.



Pierre drove up to the house of the old prince in a most serious

mood. The house had escaped the fire; it showed signs of damage but

its general aspect was unchanged. The old footman, who met Pierre with

a stern face as if wishing to make the visitor feel that the absence

of the old prince had not disturbed the order of things in the

house, informed him that the princess had gone to her own

apartments, and that she received on Sundays.



"Announce me. Perhaps she will see me," said Pierre.



"Yes, sir," said the man. "Please step into the portrait gallery."



A few minutes later the footman returned with Dessalles, who brought

word from the princess that she would be very glad to see Pierre if he

would excuse her want of ceremony and come upstairs to her apartment.



In a rather low room lit by one candle sat the princess and with her

another person dressed in black. Pierre remembered that the princess

always had lady companions, but who they were and what they were

like he never knew or remembered. "This must be one of her

companions," he thought, glancing at the lady in the black dress.



The princess rose quickly to meet him and held out her hand.



"Yes," she said, looking at his altered face after he had kissed her

hand, "so this is how we meet again. He spoke of you even at the

very last," she went on, turning her eyes from Pierre to her companion

with a shyness that surprised him for an instant.

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"I was so glad to hear of your safety. It was the first piece of

good news we had received for a long time."



Again the princess glanced round at her companion with even more

uneasiness in her manner and was about to add something, but Pierre

interrupted her.



"Just imagine--I knew nothing about him!" said he. "I thought he had

been killed. All I know I heard at second hand from others. I only

know that he fell in with the Rostovs.... What a strange coincidence!"



Pierre spoke rapidly and with animation. He glanced once at the

companion's face, saw her attentive and kindly gaze fixed on him, and,

as often happens when one is talking, felt somehow that this companion

in the black dress was a good, kind, excellent creature who would

not hinder his conversing freely with Princess Mary.



But when he mentioned the Rostovs, Princess Mary's face expressed

still greater embarrassment. She again glanced rapidly from Pierre's

face to that of the lady in the black dress and said:



"Do you really not recognize her?"



Pierre looked again at the companion's pale, delicate face with

its black eyes and peculiar mouth, and something near to him, long

forgotten and more than sweet, looked at him from those attentive

eyes.



"But no, it can't be!" he thought. "This stern, thin, pale face that

looks so much older! It cannot be she. It merely reminds me of her."

But at that moment Princess Mary said, "Natasha!" And with difficulty,

effort, and stress, like the opening of a door grown rusty on its

hinges, a smile appeared on the face with the attentive eyes, and from

that opening door came a breath of fragrance which suffused Pierre

with a happiness he had long forgotten and of which he had not even

been thinking--especially at that moment. It suffused him, seized him,

and enveloped him completely. When she smiled doubt was no longer

possible, it was Natasha and he loved her.



At that moment Pierre involuntarily betrayed to her, to Princess

Mary, and above all to himself, a secret of which he himself had

been unaware. He flushed joyfully yet with painful distress. He

tried to hide his agitation. But the more he tried to hide it the more

clearly--clearer than any words could have done--did he betray to

himself, to her, and to Princess Mary that he loved her.



"No, it's only the unexpectedness of it," thought Pierre. But as

soon as he tried to continue the conversation he had begun with

Princess Mary he again glanced at Natasha, and a still-deeper flush

suffused his face and a still-stronger agitation of mingled joy and

fear seized his soul. He became confused in his speech and stopped

in the middle of what he was saying.



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Pierre had failed to notice Natasha because he did not at all expect

to see her there, but he had failed to recognize her because the

change in her since he last saw her was immense. She had grown thin

and pale, but that was not what made her unrecognizable; she was

unrecognizable at the moment he entered because on that face whose

eyes had always shone with a suppressed smile of the joy of life,

now when he first entered and glanced at her there was not the least

shadow of a smile: only her eyes were kindly attentive and sadly

interrogative.



Pierre's confusion was not reflected by any confusion on Natasha's

part, but only by the pleasure that just perceptibly lit up her

whole face.









CHAPTER XVI





"She has come to stay with me," said Princess Mary. "The count and

countess will be here in a few days. The countess is in a dreadful

state; but it was necessary for Natasha herself to see a doctor.

They insisted on her coming with me."



"Yes, is there a family free from sorrow now?" said Pierre,

addressing Natasha. "You know it happened the very day we were

rescued. I saw him. What a delightful boy he was!"



Natasha looked at him, and by way of answer to his words her eyes

widened and lit up.



"What can one say or think of as a consolation?" said Pierre.

"Nothing! Why had such a splendid boy, so full of life, to die?"



"Yes, in these days it would be hard to live without faith..."

remarked Princess Mary.



"Yes, yes, that is really true," Pierre hastily interrupted her.



"Why is it true?" Natasha asked, looking attentively into Pierre's

eyes.



"How can you ask why?" said Princess Mary. "The thought alone of

what awaits..."



Natasha without waiting for Princess Mary to finish again looked

inquiringly at Pierre.



"And because," Pierre continued, "only one who believes that there

is a God ruling us can bear a loss such as hers and... yours."



Natasha had already opened her mouth to speak but suddenly

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stopped. Pierre hurriedly turned away from her and again addressed

Princess Mary, asking about his friend's last days.



Pierre's confusion had now almost vanished, but at the same time

he felt that his freedom had also completely gone. He felt that

there was now a judge of his every word and action whose judgment

mattered more to him than that of all the rest of the world. As he

spoke now he was considering what impression his words would make on

Natasha. He did not purposely say things to please her, but whatever

he was saying he regarded from her standpoint.



Princess Mary--reluctantly as is usual in such cases--began

telling of the condition in which she had found Prince Andrew. But

Pierre's face quivering with emotion, his questions and his eager

restless expression, gradually compelled her to go into details

which she feared to recall for her own sake.



"Yes, yes, and so...?" Pierre kept saying as he leaned toward her

with his whole body and eagerly listened to her story. "Yes, yes... so

he grew tranquil and softened? With all his soul he had always

sought one thing--to be perfectly good--so he could not be afraid of

death. The faults he had--if he had any--were not of his making. So he

did soften?... What a happy thing that he saw you again," he added,

suddenly turning to Natasha and looking at her with eyes full of

tears.



Natasha's face twitched. She frowned and lowered her eyes for a

moment. She hesitated for an instant whether to speak or not.



"Yes, that was happiness," she then said in her quiet voice with its

deep chest notes. "For me it certainly was happiness." She paused.

"And he... he... he said he was wishing for it at the very moment I

entered the room...."



Natasha's voice broke. She blushed, pressed her clasped hands on her

knees, and then controlling herself with an evident effort lifted

her head and began to speak rapidly.



"We knew nothing of it when we started from Moscow. I did not dare

to ask about him. Then suddenly Sonya told me he was traveling with

us. I had no idea and could not imagine what state he was in, all I

wanted was to see him and be with him," she said, trembling, and

breathing quickly.



And not letting them interrupt her she went on to tell what she

had never yet mentioned to anyone--all she had lived through during

those three weeks of their journey and life at Yaroslavl.



Pierre listened to her with lips parted and eyes fixed upon her full

of tears. As he listened he did not think of Prince Andrew, nor of

death, nor of what she was telling. He listened to her and felt only

pity for her, for what she was suffering now while she was speaking.



Princess Mary, frowning in her effort to hold back her tears, sat

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beside Natasha, and heard for the first time the story of those last

days of her brother's and Natasha's love.



Evidently Natasha needed to tell that painful yet joyful tale.



She spoke, mingling most trifling details with the intimate

secrets of her soul, and it seemed as if she could never finish.

Several times she repeated the same thing twice.



Dessalles' voice was heard outside the door asking whether little

Nicholas might come in to say good night.



"Well, that's all--everything," said Natasha.



She got up quickly just as Nicholas entered, almost ran to the

door which was hidden by curtains, struck her head against it, and

rushed from the room with a moan either of pain or sorrow.



Pierre gazed at the door through which she had disappeared and did

not understand why he suddenly felt all alone in the world.



Princess Mary roused him from his abstraction by drawing his

attention to her nephew who had entered the room.



At that moment of emotional tenderness young Nicholas' face, which

resembled his father's, affected Pierre so much that when he had

kissed the boy he got up quickly, took out his handkerchief, and

went to the window. He wished to take leave of Princess Mary, but

she would not let him go.



"No, Natasha and I sometimes don't go to sleep till after two, so

please don't go. I will order supper. Go downstairs, we will come

immediately."



Before Pierre left the room Princess Mary told him: "This is the

first time she has talked of him like that."









CHAPTER XVII





Pierre was shown into the large, brightly lit dining room; a few

minutes later he heard footsteps and Princess Mary entered with

Natasha. Natasha was calm, though a severe and grave expression had

again settled on her face. They all three of them now experienced that

feeling of awkwardness which usually follows after a serious and

heartfelt talk. It is impossible to go back to the same

conversation, to talk of trifles is awkward, and yet the desire to

speak is there and silence seems like affectation. They went

silently to table. The footmen drew back the chairs and pushed them up

again. Pierre unfolded his cold table napkin and, resolving to break

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the silence, looked at Natasha and at Princess Mary. They had

evidently both formed the same resolution; the eyes of both shone with

satisfaction and a confession that besides sorrow life also has joy.



"Do you take vodka, Count?" asked Princess Mary, and those words

suddenly banished the shadows of the past. "Now tell us about

yourself," said she. "One hears such improbable wonders about you."



"Yes," replied Pierre with the smile of mild irony now habitual to

him. "They even tell me wonders I myself never dreamed of! Mary

Abramovna invited me to her house and kept telling me what had

happened, or ought to have happened, to me. Stepan Stepanych also

instructed me how I ought to tell of my experiences. In general I have

noticed that it is very easy to be an interesting man (I am an

interesting man now); people invite me out and tell me all about

myself."



Natasha smiled and was on the point of speaking.



"We have been told," Princess Mary interrupted her, "that you lost

two millions in Moscow. Is that true?"



"But I am three times as rich as before," returned Pierre.



Though the position was now altered by his decision to pay his

wife's debts and to rebuild his houses, Pierre still maintained that

he had become three times as rich as before.



"What I have certainly gained is freedom," he began seriously, but

did not continue, noticing that this theme was too egotistic.



"And are you building?"



"Yes. Savelich says I must!"



"Tell me, you did not know of the countess' death when you decided

to remain in Moscow?" asked Princess Mary and immediately blushed,

noticing that her question, following his mention of freedom, ascribed

to his words a meaning he had perhaps not intended.



"No," answered Pierre, evidently not considering awkward the meaning

Princess Mary had given to his words. "I heard of it in Orel and you

cannot imagine how it shocked me. We were not an exemplary couple," he

added quickly, glancing at Natasha and noticing on her face

curiosity as to how he would speak of his wife, "but her death shocked

me terribly. When two people quarrel they are always both in fault,

and one's own guilt suddenly becomes terribly serious when the other

is no longer alive. And then such a death... without friends and

without consolation! I am very, very sorry for her," he concluded, and

was pleased to notice a look of glad approval on Natasha's face.



"Yes, and so you are once more an eligible bachelor," said

Princess Mary.



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Pierre suddenly flushed crimson and for a long time tried not to

look at Natasha. When he ventured to glance her way again her face was

cold, stern, and he fancied even contemptuous.



"And did you really see and speak to Napoleon, as we have been

told?" said Princess Mary.



Pierre laughed.



"No, not once! Everybody seems to imagine that being taken

prisoner means being Napoleon's guest. Not only did I never see him

but I heard nothing about him--I was in much lower company!"



Supper was over, and Pierre who at first declined to speak about his

captivity was gradually led on to do so.



"But it's true that you remained in Moscow to kill Napoleon?"

Natasha asked with a slight smile. "I guessed it then when we met at

the Sukharev tower, do you remember?"



Pierre admitted that it was true, and from that was gradually led by

Princess Mary's questions and especially by Natasha's into giving a

detailed account of his adventures.



At first he spoke with the amused and mild irony now customary

with him toward everybody and especially toward himself, but when he

came to describe the horrors and sufferings he had witnessed he was

unconsciously carried away and began speaking with the suppressed

emotion of a man re-experiencing in recollection strong impressions he

has lived through.



Princess Mary with a gentle smile looked now at Pierre and now at

Natasha. In the whole narrative she saw only Pierre and his

goodness. Natasha, leaning on her elbow, the expression of her face

constantly changing with the narrative, watched Pierre with an

attention that never wandered--evidently herself experiencing all that

he described. Not only her look, but her exclamations and the brief

questions she put, showed Pierre that she understood just what he

wished to convey. It was clear that she understood not only what he

said but also what he wished to, but could not, express in words.

The account Pierre gave of the incident with the child and the woman

for protecting whom he was arrested was this: "It was an awful

sight--children abandoned, some in the flames... One was snatched

out before my eyes... and there were women who had their things

snatched off and their earrings torn out..." he flushed and grew

confused. "Then a patrol arrived and all the men--all those who were

not looting, that is--were arrested, and I among them."



"I am sure you're not telling us everything; I am sure you did

something..." said Natasha and pausing added, "something fine?"



Pierre continued. When he spoke of the execution he wanted to pass

over the horrible details, but Natasha insisted that he should not

omit anything.

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Pierre began to tell about Karataev, but paused. By this time he had

risen from the table and was pacing the room, Natasha following him

with her eyes. Then he added:



"No, you can't understand what I learned from that illiterate man-

that simple fellow."



"Yes, yes, go on!" said Natasha. "Where is he?"



"They killed him almost before my eyes."



And Pierre, his voice trembling continually, went on to tell of

the last days of their retreat, of Karataev's illness and his death.



He told of his adventures as he had never yet recalled them. He now,

as it were, saw a new meaning in all he had gone through. Now that

he was telling it all to Natasha he experienced that pleasure which

a man has when women listen to him--not clever women who when

listening either try to remember what they hear to enrich their

minds and when opportunity offers to retell it, or who wish to adopt

it to some thought of their own and promptly contribute their own

clever comments prepared in their little mental workshop--but the

pleasure given by real women gifted with a capacity to select and

absorb the very best a man shows of himself. Natasha without knowing

it was all attention: she did not lose a word, no single quiver in

Pierre's voice, no look, no twitch of a muscle in his face, nor a

single gesture. She caught the unfinished word in its flight and

took it straight into her open heart, divining the secret meaning of

all Pierre's mental travail.



Princess Mary understood his story and sympathized with him, but she

now saw something else that absorbed all her attention. She saw the

possibility of love and happiness between Natasha and Pierre, and

the first thought of this filled her heart with gladness.



It was three o'clock in the morning. The footmen came in with sad

and stern faces to change the candles, but no one noticed them.



Pierre finished his story. Natasha continued to look at him intently

with bright, attentive, and animated eyes, as if trying to

understand something more which he had perhaps left untold. Pierre

in shamefaced and happy confusion glanced occasionally at her, and

tried to think what to say next to introduce a fresh subject. Princess

Mary was silent. It occurred to none of them that it was three o'clock

and time to go to bed.



"People speak of misfortunes and sufferings," remarked Pierre,

"but if at this moment I were asked: 'Would you rather be what you

were before you were taken prisoner, or go through all this again?'

then for heaven's sake let me again have captivity and horseflesh!

We imagine that when we are thrown out of our usual ruts all is

lost, but it is only then that what is new and good begins. While

there is life there is happiness. There is much, much before us. I say

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this to you," he added, turning to Natasha.



"Yes, yes," she said, answering something quite different. "I too

should wish nothing but to relive it all from the beginning."



Pierre looked intently at her.



"Yes, and nothing more." said Natasha.



"It's not true, not true!" cried Pierre. "I am not to blame for

being alive and wishing to live--nor you either."



Suddenly Natasha bent her head, covered her face with her hands, and

began to cry.



"What is it, Natasha?" said Princess Mary.



"Nothing, nothing." She smiled at Pierre through her tears. "Good

night! It is time for bed."



Pierre rose and took his leave.





Princess Mary and Natasha met as usual in the bedroom. They talked

of what Pierre had told them. Princess Mary did not express her

opinion of Pierre nor did Natasha speak of him.



"Well, good night, Mary!" said Natasha. "Do you know, I am often

afraid that by not speaking of him" (she meant Prince Andrew) "for

fear of not doing justice to our feelings, we forget him."



Princess Mary sighed deeply and thereby acknowledged the justice

of Natasha's remark, but she did not express agreement in words.



"Is it possible to forget?" said she.



"It did me so much good to tell all about it today. It was hard

and painful, but good, very good!" said Natasha. "I am sure he

really loved him. That is why I told him... Was it all right?" she

added, suddenly blushing.



"To tell Pierre? Oh, yes. What a splendid man he is!" said

Princess Mary.



"Do you know, Mary..." Natasha suddenly said with a mischievous

smile such as Princess Mary had not seen on her face for a long

time, "he has somehow grown so clean, smooth, and fresh--as if he

had just come out of a Russian bath; do you understand? Out of a moral

bath. Isn't it true?"



"Yes," replied Princess Mary. "He has greatly improved."



"With a short coat and his hair cropped; just as if, well, just as

if he had come straight from the bath... Papa used to..."

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"I understand why he" (Prince Andrew) "liked no one so much as him,"

said Princess Mary.



"Yes, and yet he is quite different. They say men are friends when

they are quite different. That must be true. Really he is quite unlike

him--in everything."



"Yes, but he's wonderful."



"Well, good night," said Natasha.



And the same mischievous smile lingered for a long time on her

face as if it had been forgotten there.









CHAPTER XVIII





It was a long time before Pierre could fall asleep that night. He

paced up and down his room, now turning his thoughts on a difficult

problem and frowning, now suddenly shrugging his shoulders and

wincing, and now smiling happily.



He was thinking of Prince Andrew, of Natasha, and of their love,

at one moment jealous of her past, then reproaching himself for that

feeling. It was already six in the morning and he still paced up and

down the room.



"Well, what's to be done if it cannot be avoided? What's to be done?

Evidently it has to be so," said he to himself, and hastily undressing

he got into bed, happy and agitated but free from hesitation or

indecision.



"Strange and impossible as such happiness seems, I must do

everything that she and I may be man and wife," he told himself.



A few days previously Pierre had decided to go to Petersburg on

the Friday. When he awoke on the Thursday, Savelich came to ask him

about packing for the journey.



"What, to Petersburg? What is Petersburg? Who is there in

Petersburg?" he asked involuntarily, though only to himself. "Oh, yes,

long ago before this happened I did for some reason mean to go to

Petersburg," he reflected. "Why? But perhaps I shall go. What a good

fellow he is and how attentive, and how he remembers everything," he

thought, looking at Savelich's old face, "and what a pleasant smile he

has!"



"Well, Savelich, do you still not wish to accept your freedom?"

Pierre asked him.



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"What's the good of freedom to me, your excellency? We lived under

the late count--the kingdom of heaven be his!--and we have lived under

you too, without ever being wronged."



"And your children?"



"The children will live just the same. With such masters one can

live."



"But what about my heirs?" said Pierre. "Supposing I suddenly

marry... it might happen," he added with an involuntary smile.



"If I may take the liberty, your excellency, it would be a good

thing."



"How easy he thinks it," thought Pierre. "He doesn't know how

terrible it is and how dangerous. Too soon or too late... it is

terrible!"



"So what are your orders? Are you starting tomorrow?" asked

Savelich.



"No, I'll put it off for a bit. I'll tell you later. You must

forgive the trouble I have put you to," said Pierre, and seeing

Savelich smile, he thought: "But how strange it is that he should

not know that now there is no Petersburg for me, and that that must be

settled first of all! But probably he knows it well enough and is only

pretending. Shall I have a talk with him and see what he thinks?"

Pierre reflected. "No, another time."



At breakfast Pierre told the princess, his cousin, that he had

been to see Princess Mary the day before and had there met--"Whom do

you think? Natasha Rostova!"



The princess seemed to see nothing more extraordinary in that than

if he had seen Anna Semenovna.



"Do you know her?" asked Pierre.



"I have seen the princess," she replied. "I heard that they were

arranging a match for her with young Rostov. It would be a very good

thing for the Rostovs, they are said to be utterly ruined."



"No; I mean do you know Natasha Rostova?"



"I heard about that affair of hers at the time. It was a great

pity."



"No, she either doesn't understand or is pretending," thought

Pierre. "Better not say anything to her either."



The princess too had prepared provisions for Pierre's journey.



"How kind they all are," thought Pierre. "What is surprising is that

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they should trouble about these things now when it can no longer be of

interest to them. And all for me!"



On the same day the Chief of Police came to Pierre, inviting him

to send a representative to the Faceted Palace to recover things

that were to be returned to their owners that day.



"And this man too," thought Pierre, looking into the face of the

Chief of Police. "What a fine, good-looking officer and how kind.

Fancy bothering about such trifies now! And they actually say he is

not honest and takes bribes. What nonsense! Besides, why shouldn't

he take bribes? That's the way he was brought up, and everybody does

it. But what a kind, pleasant face and how he smiles as he looks at

me."



Pierre went to Princess Mary's to dinner.



As he drove through the streets past the houses that had been burned

down, he was surprised by the beauty of those ruins. The

picturesqueness of the chimney stacks and tumble-down walls of the

burned-out quarters of the town, stretching out and concealing one

another, reminded him of the Rhine and the Colosseum. The cabmen he

met and their passengers, the carpenters cutting the timber for new

houses with axes, the women hawkers, and the shopkeepers, all looked

at him with cheerful beaming eyes that seemed to say: "Ah, there he

is! Let's see what will come of it!"



At the entrance to Princess Mary's house Pierre felt doubtful

whether he had really been there the night before and really seen

Natasha and talked to her. "Perhaps I imagined it; perhaps I shall

go in and find no one there." But he had hardly entered the room

before he felt her presence with his whole being by the loss of his

sense of freedom. She was in the same black dress with soft folds

and her hair was done the same way as the day before, yet she was

quite different. Had she been like this when he entered the day before

he could not for a moment have failed to recognize her.



She was as he had known her almost as a child and later on as Prince

Andrew's fiancee. A bright questioning light shone in her eyes, and on

her face was a friendly and strangely roguish expression.



Pierre dined with them and would have spent the whole evening there,

but Princess Mary was going to vespers and Pierre left the house

with her.



Next day he came early, dined, and stayed the whole evening.

Though Princess Mary and Natasha were evidently glad to see their

visitor and though all Pierre's interest was now centered in that

house, by the evening they had talked over everything and the

conversation passed from one trivial topic to another and repeatedly

broke off. He stayed so long that Princess Mary and Natasha

exchanged glances, evidently wondering when he would go. Pierre

noticed this but could not go. He felt uneasy and embarrassed, but sat

on because he simply could not get up and take his leave.

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Princess Mary, foreseeing no end to this, rose first, and

complaining of a headache began to say good night.



"So you are going to Petersburg tomorrow?" she asked.



"No, I am not going," Pierre replied hastily, in a surprised tone

and as though offended. "Yes... no... to Petersburg? Tomorrow--but I

won't say good-by yet. I will call round in case you have any

commissions for me," said he, standing before Princess Mary and

turning red, but not taking his departure.



Natasha gave him her hand and went out. Princess Mary on the other

hand instead of going away sank into an armchair, and looked sternly

and intently at him with her deep, radiant eyes. The weariness she had

plainly shown before had now quite passed off. With a deep and

long-drawn sigh she seemed to be prepared for a lengthy talk.



When Natasha left the room Pierre's confusion and awkwardness

immediately vanished and were replaced by eager excitement. He quickly

moved an armchair toward Princess Mary.



"Yes, I wanted to tell you," said he, answering her look as if she

had spoken. "Princess, help me! What am I to do? Can I hope? Princess,

my dear friend, listen! I know it all. I know I am not worthy of

her, I know it's impossible to speak of it now. But I want to be a

brother to her. No, not that, I don't, I can't..."



He paused and rubbed his face and eyes with his hands.



"Well," he went on with an evident effort at self-control and

coherence. "I don't know when I began to love her, but I have loved

her and her alone all my life, and I love her so that I cannot imagine

life without her. I cannot propose to her at present, but the

thought that perhaps she might someday be my wife and that I may be

missing that possibility... that possibility... is terrible. Tell

me, can I hope? Tell me what I am to do, dear princess!" he added

after a pause, and touched her hand as she did not reply.



"I am thinking of what you have told me," answered Princess Mary.

"This is what I will say. You are right that to speak to her of love

at present..."



Princess Mary stopped. She was going to say that to speak of love

was impossible, but she stopped because she had seen by the sudden

change in Natasha two days before that she would not only not be

hurt if Pierre spoke of his love, but that it was the very thing she

wished for.



"To speak to her now wouldn't do," said the princess all the same.



"But what am I to do?"



"Leave it to me," said Princess Mary. "I know..."

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Pierre was looking into Princess Mary's eyes.



"Well?... Well?..." he said.



"I know that she loves... will love you," Princess Mary corrected

herself.



Before her words were out, Pierre had sprung up and with a

frightened expression seized Princess Mary's hand.



"What makes you think so? You think I may hope? You think...?"



"Yes, I think so," said Princess Mary with a smile. "Write to her

parents, and leave it to me. I will tell her when I can. I wish it

to happen and my heart tells me it will."



"No, it cannot be! How happy I am! But it can't be.... How happy I

am! No, it can't be!" Pierre kept saying as he kissed Princess

Mary's hands.



"Go to Petersburg, that will be best. And I will write to you,"

she said.



"To Petersburg? Go there? Very well, I'll go. But I may come again

tomorrow?"



Next day Pierre came to say good-by. Natasha was less animated

than she had been the day before; but that day as he looked at her

Pierre sometimes felt as if he was vanishing and that neither he nor

she existed any longer, that nothing existed but happiness. "Is it

possible? No, it can't be," he told himself at every look, gesture,

and word that filled his soul with joy.



When on saying good-by he took her thin, slender hand, he could

not help holding it a little longer in his own.



"Is it possible that this hand, that face, those eyes, all this

treasure of feminine charm so strange to me now, is it possible that

it will one day be mine forever, as familiar to me as I am to

myself?... No, that's impossible!..."



"Good-by, Count," she said aloud. "I shall look forward very much to

your return," she added in a whisper.



And these simple words, her look, and the expression on her face

which accompanied them, formed for two months the subject of

inexhaustible memories, interpretations, and happy meditations for

Pierre. "'I shall look forward very much to your return....' Yes, yes,

how did she say it? Yes, 'I shall look forward very much to your

return.' Oh, how happy I am! What is happening to me? How happy I am!"

said Pierre to himself.





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CHAPTER XIX





There was nothing in Pierre's soul now at all like what had troubled

it during his courtship of Helene.



He did not repeat to himself with a sickening feeling of shame the

words he had spoken, or say: "Oh, why did I not say that?" and,

"Whatever made me say 'Je vous aime'?" On the contrary, he now

repeated in imagination every word that he or Natasha had spoken and

pictured every detail of her face and smile, and did not wish to

diminish or add anything, but only to repeat it again and again. There

was now not a shadow of doubt in his mind as to whether what he had

undertaken was right or wrong. Only one terrible doubt sometimes

crossed his mind: "Wasn't it all a dream? Isn't Princess Mary

mistaken? Am I not too conceited and self-confident? I believe all

this--and suddenly Princess Mary will tell her, and she will be sure

to smile and say: 'How strange! He must be deluding himself. Doesn't

he know that he is a man, just a man, while I...? I am something

altogether different and higher.'"



That was the only doubt often troubling Pierre. He did not now

make any plans. The happiness before him appeared so inconceivable

that if only he could attain it, it would be the end of all things.

Everything ended with that.



A joyful, unexpected frenzy, of which he had thought himself

incapable, possessed him. The whole meaning of life--not for him alone

but for the whole world--seemed to him centered in his love and the

possibility of being loved by her. At times everybody seemed to him to

be occupied with one thing only--his future happiness. Sometimes it

seemed to him that other people were all as pleased as he was

himself and merely tried to hide that pleasure by pretending to be

busy with other interests. In every word and gesture he saw

allusions to his happiness. He often surprised those he met by his

significantly happy looks and smiles which seemed to express a

secret understanding between him and them. And when he realized that

people might not be aware of his happiness, he pitied them with his

whole heart and felt a desire somehow to explain to them that all that

occupied them was a mere frivolous trifle unworthy of attention.



When it was suggested to him that he should enter the civil service,

or when the war or any general political affairs were discussed on the

assumption that everybody's welfare depended on this or that issue

of events, he would listen with a mild and pitying smile and

surprise people by his strange comments. But at this time he saw

everybody--both those who, as he imagined, understood the real meaning

of life (that is, what he was feeling) and those unfortunates who

evidently did not understand it--in the bright light of the emotion

that shone within himself, and at once without any effort saw in

everyone he met everything that was good and worthy of being loved.

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When dealing with the affairs and papers of his dead wife, her

memory aroused in him no feeling but pity that she had not known the

bliss he now knew. Prince Vasili, who having obtained a new post and

some fresh decorations was particularly proud at this time, seemed

to him a pathetic, kindly old man much to be pitied.



Often in afterlife Pierre recalled this period of blissful insanity.

All the views he formed of men and circumstances at this time remained

true for him always. He not only did not renounce them subsequently,

but when he was in doubt or inwardly at variance, he referred to the

views he had held at this time of his madness and they always proved

correct.



"I may have appeared strange and queer then," he thought, "but I was

not so mad as I seemed. On the contrary I was then wiser and had

more insight than at any other time, and understood all that is

worth understanding in life, because... because I was happy."



Pierre's insanity consisted in not waiting, as he used to do, to

discover personal attributes which he termed "good qualities" in

people before loving them; his heart was now overflowing with love,

and by loving people without cause he discovered indubitable causes

for loving them.









CHAPTER XX





After Pierre's departure that first evening, when Natasha had said

to Princess Mary with a gaily mocking smile: "He looks just, yes, just

as if he had come out of a Russian bath--in a short coat and with

his hair cropped," something hidden and unknown to herself, but

irrepressible, awoke in Natasha's soul.



Everything: her face, walk, look, and voice, was suddenly altered.

To her own surprise a power of life and hope of happiness rose to

the surface and demanded satisfaction. From that evening she seemed to

have forgotten all that had happened to her. She no longer

complained of her position, did not say a word about the past, and

no longer feared to make happy plans for the future. She spoke

little of Pierre, but when Princess Mary mentioned him a

long-extinguished light once more kindled in her eyes and her lips

curved with a strange smile.



The change that took place in Natasha at first surprised Princess

Mary; but when she understood its meaning it grieved her. "Can she

have loved my brother so little as to be able to forget him so

soon?" she thought when she reflected on the change. But when she

was with Natasha she was not vexed with her and did not reproach

her. The reawakened power of life that had seized Natasha was so

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evidently irrepressible and unexpected by her that in her presence

Princess Mary felt that she had no right to reproach her even in her

heart.



Natasha gave herself up so fully and frankly to this new feeling

that she did not try to hide the fact that she was no longer sad,

but bright and cheerful.



When Princess Mary returned to her room after her nocturnal talk

with Pierre, Natasha met her on the threshold.



"He has spoken? Yes? He has spoken?" she repeated.



And a joyful yet pathetic expression which seemed to beg forgiveness

for her joy settled on Natasha's face.



"I wanted to listen at the door, but I knew you would tell me."



Understandable and touching as the look with which Natasha gazed

at her seemed to Princess Mary, and sorry as she was to see her

agitation, these words pained her for a moment. She remembered her

brother and his love.



"But what's to be done? She can't help it," thought the princess.



And with a sad and rather stern look she told Natasha all that

Pierre had said. On hearing that he was going to Petersburg Natasha

was astounded.



"To Petersburg!" she repeated as if unable to understand.



But noticing the grieved expression on Princess Mary's face she

guessed the reason of that sadness and suddenly began to cry.



"Mary," said she, "tell me what I should do! I am afraid of being

bad. Whatever you tell me, I will do. Tell me...."



"You love him?"



"Yes," whispered Natasha.



"Then why are you crying? I am happy for your sake," said Princess

Mary, who because of those tears quite forgave Natasha's joy.



"It won't be just yet--someday. Think what fun it will be when I

am his wife and you marry Nicholas!"



"Natasha, I have asked you not to speak of that. Let us talk about

you."



They were silent awhile.



"But why go to Petersburg?" Natasha suddenly asked, and hastily

replied to her own question. "But no, no, he must... Yes, Mary, He

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must...."









FIRST EPILOGUE: 1813 --20









CHAPTER I





Seven years had passed. The storm-tossed sea of European history had

subsided within its shores and seemed to have become calm. But the

mysterious forces that move humanity (mysterious because the laws of

their motion are unknown to us) continued to operate.



Though the surface of the sea of history seemed motionless, the

movement of humanity went on as unceasingly as the flow of time.

Various groups of people formed and dissolved, the coming formation

and dissolution of kingdoms and displacement of peoples was in

course of preparation.



The sea of history was not driven spasmodically from shore to

shore as previously. It was seething in its depths. Historic figures

were not borne by the waves from one shore to another as before.

They now seemed to rotate on one spot. The historical figures at the

head of armies, who formerly reflected the movement of the masses by

ordering wars, campaigns, and battles, now reflected the restless

movement by political and diplomatic combinations, laws, and treaties.



The historians call this activity of the historical figures "the

reaction."



In dealing with this period they sternly condemn the historical

personages who, in their opinion, caused what they describe as the

reaction. All the well-known people of that period, from Alexander and

Napoleon to Madame de Stael, Photius, Schelling, Fichte,

Chateaubriand, and the rest, pass before their stern judgment seat and

are acquitted or condemned according to whether they conduced to

progress or to reaction.



According to their accounts a reaction took place at that time in

Russia also, and the chief culprit was Alexander I, the same man who

according to them was the chief cause of the liberal movement at the

commencement of his reign, being the savior of Russia.



There is no one in Russian literature now, from schoolboy essayist

to learned historian, who does not throw his little stone at Alexander

for things he did wrong at this period of his reign.

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"He ought to have acted in this way and in that way. In this case he

did well and in that case badly. He behaved admirably at the beginning

of his reign and during 1812, but acted badly by giving a constitution

to Poland, forming the Holy Alliance, entrusting power to Arakcheev,

favoring Golitsyn and mysticism, and afterwards Shishkov and

Photius. He also acted badly by concerning himself with the active

army and disbanding the Semenov regiment."



It would take a dozen pages to enumerate all the reproaches the

historians address to him, based on their knowledge of what is good

for humanity.



What do these reproaches mean?



Do not the very actions for which the historians praise Alexander

I (the liberal attempts at the beginning of his reign, his struggle

with Napoleon, the firmness he displayed in 1812 and the campaign of

1813) flow from the same sources--the circumstances of his birth,

education, and life--that made his personality what it was and from

which the actions for which they blame him (the Holy Alliance, the

restoration of Poland, and the reaction of 1820 and later) also

flowed?



In what does the substance of those reproaches lie?



It lies in the fact that an historic character like Alexander I,

standing on the highest possible pinnacle of human power with the

blinding light of history focused upon him; a character exposed to

those strongest of all influences: the intrigues, flattery, and

self-deception inseparable from power; a character who at every moment

of his life felt a responsibility for all that was happening in

Europe; and not a fictitious but a live character who like every man

had his personal habits, passions, and impulses toward goodness,

beauty, and truth--that this character--though not lacking in virtue

(the historians do not accuse him of that)--had not the same

conception of the welfare of humanity fifty years ago as a present-day

professor who from his youth upwards has been occupied with

learning: that is, with books and lectures and with taking notes

from them.



But even if we assume that fifty years ago Alexander I was

mistaken in his view of what was good for the people, we must

inevitably assume that the historian who judges Alexander will also

after the lapse of some time turn out to be mistaken in his view of

what is good for humanity. This assumption is all the more natural and

inevitable because, watching the movement of history, we see that

every year and with each new writer, opinion as to what is good for

mankind changes; so that what once seemed good, ten years later

seems bad, and vice versa. And what is more, we find at one and the

same time quite contradictory views as to what is bad and what is good

in history: some people regard giving a constitution to Poland and

forming the Holy Alliance as praiseworthy in Alexander, while others

regard it as blameworthy.

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The activity of Alexander or of Napoleon cannot be called useful

or harmful, for it is impossible to say for what it was useful or

harmful. If that activity displeases somebody, this is only because it

does not agree with his limited understanding of what is good. Whether

the preservation of my father's house in Moscow, or the glory of the

Russian arms, or the prosperity of the Petersburg and other

universities, or the freedom of Poland or the greatness of Russia,

or the balance of power in Europe, or a certain kind of European

culture called "progress" appear to me to be good or bad, I must admit

that besides these things the action of every historic character has

other more general purposes inaccessible to me.



But let us assume that what is called science can harmonize all

contradictions and possesses an unchanging standard of good and bad by

which to try historic characters and events; let us say that Alexander

could have done everything differently; let us say that with

guidance from those who blame him and who profess to know the ultimate

aim of the movement of humanity, he might have arranged matters

according to the program his present accusers would have given him--of

nationality, freedom, equality, and progress (these, I think, cover

the ground). Let us assume that this program was possible and had then

been formulated, and that Alexander had acted on it. What would then

have become of the activity of all those who opposed the tendency that

then prevailed in the government--an activity that in the opinion of

the historians was good and beneficent? Their activity would not

have existed: there would have been no life, there would have been

nothing.



If we admit that human life can be ruled by reason, the

possibility of life is destroyed.









CHAPTER II





If we assume as the historians do that great men lead humanity to

the attainment of certain ends--the greatness of Russia or of

France, the balance of power in Europe, the diffusion of the ideas

of the Revolution general progress or anything else--then it is

impossible to explain the facts of history without introducing the

conceptions of chance and genius.



If the aim of the European wars at the beginning of the nineteenth

century had been the aggrandizement of Russia, that aim might have

been accomplished without all the preceding wars and without the

invasion. If the aim was the aggrandizement of France, that might have

been attained without the Revolution and without the Empire. If the

aim was the dissemination of ideas, the printing press could have

accomplished that much better than warfare. If the aim was the

progress of civilization, it is easy to see that there are other

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ways of diffusing civilization more expedient than by the

destruction of wealth and of human lives.



Why did it happen in this and not in some other way?



Because it happened so! "Chance created the situation; genius

utilized it," says history.



But what is chance? What is genius?



The words chance and genius do not denote any really existing

thing and therefore cannot be defined. Those words only denote a

certain stage of understanding of phenomena. I do not know why a

certain event occurs; I think that I cannot know it; so I do not try

to know it and I talk about chance. I see a force producing effects

beyond the scope of ordinary human agencies; I do not understand why

this occurs and I talk of genius.



To a herd of rams, the ram the herdsman drives each evening into a

special enclosure to feed and that becomes twice as fat as the

others must seem to be a genius. And it must appear an astonishing

conjunction of genius with a whole series of extraordinary chances

that this ram, who instead of getting into the general fold every

evening goes into a special enclosure where there are oats--that

this very ram, swelling with fat, is killed for meat.



But the rams need only cease to suppose that all that happens to

them happens solely for the attainment of their sheepish aims; they

need only admit that what happens to them may also have purposes

beyond their ken, and they will at once perceive a unity and coherence

in what happened to the ram that was fattened. Even if they do not

know for what purpose they are fattened, they will at least know

that all that happened to the ram did not happen accidentally, and

will no longer need the conceptions of chance or genius.



Only by renouncing our claim to discern a purpose immediately

intelligible to us, and admitting the ultimate purpose to be beyond

our ken, may we discern the sequence of experiences in the lives of

historic characters and perceive the cause of the effect they

produce (incommensurable with ordinary human capabilities), and then

the words chance and genius become superfluous.



We need only confess that we do not know the purpose of the European

convulsions and that we know only the facts--that is, the murders,

first in France, then in Italy, in Africa, in Prussia, in Austria,

in Spain, and in Russia--and that the movements from the west to the

east and from the east to the west form the essence and purpose of

these events, and not only shall we have no need to see exceptional

ability and genius in Napoleon and Alexander, but we shall be unable

to consider them to be anything but like other men, and we shall not

be obliged to have recourse to chance for an explanation of those

small events which made these people what they were, but it will be

clear that all those small events were inevitable.



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By discarding a claim to knowledge of the ultimate purpose, we shall

clearly perceive that just as one cannot imagine a blossom or seed for

any single plant better suited to it than those it produces, so it

is impossible to imagine any two people more completely adapted down

to the smallest detail for the purpose they had to fulfill, than

Napoleon and Alexander with all their antecedents.









CHAPTER III





The fundamental and essential significance of the European events of

the beginning of the nineteenth century lies in the movement of the

mass of the European peoples from west to east and afterwards from

east to west. The commencement of that movement was the movement

from west to east. For the peoples of the west to be able to make

their warlike movement to Moscow it was necessary: (1) that they

should form themselves into a military group of a size able to

endure a collision with the warlike military group of the east, (2)

that they should abandon all established traditions and customs, and

(3) that during their military movement they should have at their head

a man who could justify to himself and to them the deceptions,

robberies, and murders which would have to be committed during that

movement.



And beginning with the French Revolution the old inadequately

large group was destroyed, as well as the old habits and traditions,

and step by step a group was formed of larger dimensions with new

customs and traditions, and a man was produced who would stand at

the head of the coming movement and bear the responsibility for all

that had to be done.



A man without convictions, without habits, without traditions,

without a name, and not even a Frenchman, emerges--by what seem the

strangest chances--from among all the seething French parties, and

without joining any one of them is borne forward to a prominent

position.



The ignorance of his colleagues, the weakness and insignificance

of his opponents, the frankness of his falsehoods, and the dazzling

and self-confident limitations of this man raise him to the head of

the army. The brilliant qualities of the soldiers of the army sent

to Italy, his opponents' reluctance to fight, and his own childish

audacity and self-confidence secure him military fame. Innumerable

so called chances accompany him everywhere. The disfavor into which he

falls with the rulers of France turns to his advantage. His attempts

to avoid his predestined path are unsuccessful: he is not received

into the Russian service, and the appointment he seeks in Turkey comes

to nothing. During the war in Italy he is several times on the verge

of destruction and each time is saved in an unexpected manner. Owing

to various diplomatic considerations the Russian armies--just those

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which might have destroyed his prestige--do not appear upon the

scene till he is no longer there.



On his return from Italy he finds the government in Paris in a

process of dissolution in which all those who are in it are inevitably

wiped out and destroyed. And by chance an escape from this dangerous

position presents itself in the form of an aimless and senseless

expedition to Africa. Again so-called chance accompanies him.

Impregnable Malta surrenders without a shot; his most reckless schemes

are crowned with success. The enemy's fleet, which subsequently did

not let a single boat pass, allows his entire army to elude it. In

Africa a whole series of outrages are committed against the almost

unarmed inhabitants. And the men who commit these crimes, especially

their leader, assure themselves that this is admirable, this is glory-

it resembles Caesar and Alexander the Great and is therefore good.



This ideal of glory and grandeur--which consists not merely in

considering nothing wrong that one does but in priding oneself on

every crime one commits, ascribing to it an incomprehensible

supernatural significance--that ideal, destined to guide this man

and his associates, had scope for its development in Africa.

Whatever he does succeeds. The plague does not touch him. The

cruelty of murdering prisoners is not imputed to him as a fault. His

childishly rash, uncalled-for, and ignoble departure from Africa,

leaving his comrades in distress, is set down to his credit, and again

the enemy's fleet twice lets him slip past. When, intoxicated by the

crimes he has committed so successfully, he reaches Paris, the

dissolution of the republican government, which a year earlier might

have ruined him, has reached its extreme limit, and his presence there

now as a newcomer free from party entanglements can only serve to

exalt him--and though he himself has no plan, he is quite ready for

his new role.



He had no plan, he was afraid of everything, but the parties

snatched at him and demanded his participation.



He alone--with his ideal of glory and grandeur developed in Italy

and Egypt, his insane self-adulation, his boldness in crime and

frankness in lying--he alone could justify what had to be done.



He is needed for the place that awaits him, and so almost apart from

his will and despite his indecision, his lack of a plan, and all his

mistakes, he is drawn into a conspiracy that aims at seizing power and

the conspiracy is crowned with success.



He is pushed into a meeting of the legislature. In alarm he wishes

to flee, considering himself lost. He pretends to fall into a swoon

and says senseless things that should have ruined him. But the once

proud and shrewd rulers of France, feeling that their part is played

out, are even more bewildered than he, and do not say the words they

should have said to destroy him and retain their power.



Chance, millions of chances, give him power, and all men as if by

agreement co-operate to confirm that power. Chance forms the

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characters of the rulers of France, who submit to him; chance forms

the character of Paul I of Russia who recognizes his government;

chance contrives a plot against him which not only fails to harm him

but confirms his power. Chance puts the Duc d'Enghien in his hands and

unexpectedly causes him to kill him--thereby convincing the mob more

forcibly than in any other way that he had the right, since he had the

might. Chance contrives that though he directs all his efforts to

prepare an expedition against England (which would inevitably have

ruined him) he never carries out that intention, but unexpectedly

falls upon Mack and the Austrians, who surrender without a battle.

Chance and genius give him the victory at Austerlitz; and by chance

all men, not only the French but all Europe--except England which does

not take part in the events about to happen--despite their former

horror and detestation of his crimes, now recognize his authority, the

title he has given himself, and his ideal of grandeur and glory, which

seems excellent and reasonable to them all.



As if measuring themselves and preparing for the coming movement,

the western forces push toward the east several times in 1805, 1806,

1807, and 1809, gaining strength and growing. In 1811 the group of

people that had formed in France unites into one group with the

peoples of Central Europe. The strength of the justification of the

man who stands at the head of the movement grows with the increased

size of the group. During the ten-year preparatory period this man had

formed relations with all the crowned heads of Europe. The discredited

rulers of the world can oppose no reasonable ideal to the insensate

Napoleonic ideal of glory and grandeur. One after another they

hasten to display their insignificance before him. The King of Prussia

sends his wife to seek the great man's mercy; the Emperor of Austria

considers it a favor that this man receives a daughter the Caesars

into his bed; the Pope, the guardian of all that the nations hold

sacred, utilizes religion for the aggrandizement of the great man.

It is not Napoleon who prepares himself for the accomplishment of

his role, so much as all those round him who prepare him to take on

himself the whole responsibility for what is happening and has to

happen. There is no step, no crime or petty fraud he commits, which in

the mouths of those around him is not at once represented as a great

deed. The most suitable fete the Germans can devise for him is a

celebration of Jena and Auerstadt. Not only is he great, but so are

his ancestors, his brothers, his stepsons, and his brothers-in-law.

Everything is done to deprive him of the remains of his reason and

to prepare him for his terrible part. And when he is ready so too

are the forces.



The invasion pushes eastward and reaches its final goal--Moscow.

That city is taken; the Russian army suffers heavier losses than the

opposing armies had suffered in the former war from Austerlitz to

Wagram. But suddenly instead of those chances and that genius which

hitherto had so consistently led him by an uninterrupted series of

successes to the predestined goal, an innumerable sequence of

inverse chances occur--from the cold in his head at Borodino to the

sparks which set Moscow on fire, and the frosts--and instead of

genius, stupidity and immeasurable baseness become evident.



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The invaders flee, turn back, flee again, and all the chances are

now not for Napoleon but always against him.



A countermovement is then accomplished from east to west with a

remarkable resemblance to the preceding movement from west to east.

Attempted drives from east to west--similar to the contrary

movements of 1805, 1807, and 1809--precede the great westward

movement; there is the same coalescence into a group of enormous

dimensions; the same adhesion of the people of Central Europe to the

movement; the same hesitation midway, and the same increasing rapidity

as the goal is approached.



Paris, the ultimate goal, is reached. The Napoleonic government

and army are destroyed. Napoleon himself is no longer of any

account; all his actions are evidently pitiful and mean, but again

an inexplicable chance occurs. The allies detest Napoleon whom they

regard as the cause of their sufferings. Deprived of power and

authority, his crimes and his craft exposed, he should have appeared

to them what he appeared ten years previously and one year later--an

outlawed brigand. But by some strange chance no one perceives this.

His part is not yet ended. The man who ten years before and a year

later was considered an outlawed brigand is sent to an island two

days' sail from France, which for some reason is presented to him as

his dominion, and guards are given to him and millions of money are

paid him.









CHAPTER IV





The flood of nations begins to subside into its normal channels. The

waves of the great movement abate, and on the calm surface eddies

are formed in which float the diplomatists, who imagine that they have

caused the floods to abate.



But the smooth sea again suddenly becomes disturbed. The

diplomatists think that their disagreements are the cause of this

fresh pressure of natural forces; they anticipate war between their

sovereigns; the position seems to them insoluble. But the wave they

feel to be rising does not come from the quarter they expect. It rises

again from the same point as before--Paris. The last backwash of the

movement from the west occurs: a backwash which serves to solve the

apparently insuperable diplomatic difficulties and ends the military

movement of that period of history.



The man who had devastated France returns to France alone, without

any conspiracy and without soldiers. Any guard might arrest him, but

by strange chance no one does so and all rapturously greet the man

they cursed the day before and will curse again a month later.



This man is still needed to justify the final collective act.

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That act is performed.



The last role is played. The actor is bidden to disrobe and wash off

his powder and paint: he will not be wanted any more.



And some years pass during which he plays a pitiful comedy to

himself in solitude on his island, justifying his actions by intrigues

and lies when the justification is no longer needed, and displaying to

the whole world what it was that people had mistaken for strength as

long as an unseen hand directed his actions.



The manager having brought the drama to a close and stripped the

actor shows him to us.



"See what you believed in! This is he! Do you now see that it was

not he but I who moved you?"



But dazed by the force of the movement, it was long before people

understood this.



Still greater coherence and inevitability is seen in the life of

Alexander I, the man who stood at the head of the countermovement from

east to west.



What was needed for him who, overshadowing others, stood at the head

of that movement from east to west?



What was needed was a sense of justice and a sympathy with

European affairs, but a remote sympathy not dulled by petty interests;

a moral superiority over those sovereigns of the day who co-operated

with him; a mild and attractive personality; and a personal

grievance against Napoleon. And all this was found in Alexander I; all

this had been prepared by innumerable so-called chances in his life:

his education, his early liberalism, the advisers who surrounded

him, and by Austerlitz, and Tilsit, and Erfurt.



During the national war he was inactive because he was not needed.

But as soon as the necessity for a general European war presented

itself he appeared in his place at the given moment and, uniting the

nations of Europe, led them to the goal.



The goal is reached. After the final war of 1815 Alexander possesses

all possible power. How does he use it?



Alexander I--the pacifier of Europe, the man who from his early

years had striven only for his people's welfare, the originator of the

liberal innovations in his fatherland--now that he seemed to possess

the utmost power and therefore to have the possibility of bringing

about the welfare of his peoples--at the time when Napoleon in exile

was drawing up childish and mendacious plans of how he would have made

mankind happy had he retained power--Alexander I, having fulfilled his

mission and feeling the hand of God upon him, suddenly recognizes

the insignificance of that supposed power, turns away from it, and

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gives it into the hands of contemptible men whom he despises, saying

only:



"Not unto us, not unto us, but unto Thy Name!... I too am a man like

the rest of you. Let me live like a man and think of my soul and of

God."



As the sun and each atom of ether is a sphere complete in itself,

and yet at the same time only a part of a whole too immense for man to

comprehend, so each individual has within himself his own aims and yet

has them to serve a general purpose incomprehensible to man.



A bee settling on a flower has stung a child. And the child is

afraid of bees and declares that bees exist to sting people. A poet

admires the bee sucking from the chalice of a flower and says it

exists to suck the fragrance of flowers. A beekeeper, seeing the bee

collect pollen from flowers and carry it to the hive, says that it

exists to gather honey. Another beekeeper who has studied the life

of the hive more closely says that the bee gathers pollen dust to feed

the young bees and rear a queen, and that it exists to perpetuate

its race. A botanist notices that the bee flying with the pollen of

a male flower to a pistil fertilizes the latter, and sees in this

the purpose of the bee's existence. Another, observing the migration

of plants, notices that the bee helps in this work, and may say that

in this lies the purpose of the bee. But the ultimate purpose of the

bee is not exhausted by the first, the second, or any of the processes

the human mind can discern. The higher the human intellect rises in

the discovery of these purposes, the more obvious it becomes, that the

ultimate purpose is beyond our comprehension.



All that is accessible to man is the relation of the life of the bee

to other manifestations of life. And so it is with the purpose of

historic characters and nations.









CHAPTER V





Natasha's wedding to Bezukhov, which took place in 1813, was the

last happy event in the family of the old Rostovs. Count Ilya Rostov

died that same year and, as always happens, after the father's death

the family group broke up.



The events of the previous year: the burning of Moscow and the

flight from it, the death of Prince Andrew, Natasha's despair, Petya's

death, and the old countess' grief fell blow after blow on the old

count's head. He seemed to be unable to understand the meaning of

all these events, and bowed his old head in a spiritual sense as if

expecting and inviting further blows which would finish him. He seemed

now frightened and distraught and now unnaturally animated and

enterprising.

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The arrangements for Natasha's marriage occupied him for a while. He

ordered dinners and suppers and obviously tried to appear cheerful,

but his cheerfulness was not infectious as it used to be: on the

contrary it evoked the compassion of those who knew and liked him.



When Pierre and his wife had left, he grew very quiet and began to

complain of depression. A few days later he fell ill and took to his

bed. He realized from the first that he would not get up again,

despite the doctor's encouragement. The countess passed a fortnight in

an armchair by his pillow without undressing. Every time she gave

him his medicine he sobbed and silently kissed her hand. On his last

day, sobbing, he asked her and his absent son to forgive him for

having dissipated their property--that being the chief fault of

which he was conscious. After receiving communion and unction he

quietly died; and next day a throng of acquaintances who came to pay

their last respects to the deceased filled the house rented by the

Rostovs. All these acquaintances, who had so often dined and danced at

his house and had so often laughed at him, now said, with a common

feeling of self-reproach and emotion, as if justifying themselves:

"Well, whatever he may have been he was a most worthy man. You don't

meet such men nowadays.... And which of us has not weaknesses of his

own?"



It was just when the count's affairs had become so involved that

it was impossible to say what would happen if he lived another year

that he unexpectedly died.



Nicholas was with the Russian army in Paris when the news of his

father's death reached him. He at once resigned his commission, and

without waiting for it to be accepted took leave of absence and went

to Moscow. The state of the count's affairs became quite obvious a

month after his death, surprising everyone by the immense total of

small debts the existence of which no one had suspected. The debts

amounted to double the value of the property.



Friends and relations advised Nicholas to decline the inheritance.

But he regarded such a refusal as a slur on his father's memory, which

he held sacred, and therefore would not hear of refusing and

accepted the inheritance together with the obligation to pay the

debts.



The creditors who had so long been silent, restrained by a vague but

powerful influence exerted on them while he lived by the count's

careless good nature, all proceeded to enforce their claims at once.

As always happens in such cases rivalry sprang up as to which should

get paid first, and those who like Mitenka held promissory notes given

them as presents now became the most exacting of the creditors.

Nicholas was allowed no respite and no peace, and those who had seemed

to pity the old man--the cause of their losses (if they were

losses)--now remorselessly pursued the young heir who had

voluntarily undertaken the debts and was obviously not guilty of

contracting them.



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Not one of the plans Nicholas tried succeeded; the estate was sold

by auction for half its value, and half the debts still remained

unpaid. Nicholas accepted thirty thousand rubles offered him by his

brother-in-law Bezukhov to pay off debts he regarded as genuinely

due for value received. And to avoid being imprisoned for the

remainder, as the creditors threatened, he re-entered the government

service.



He could not rejoin the army where he would have been made colonel

at the next vacancy, for his mother now clung to him as her one hold

on life; and so despite his reluctance to remain in Moscow among people

who had known him before, and despite his abhorrence of the civil

service, he accepted a post in Moscow in that service, doffed the

uniform of which he was so fond, and moved with his mother and Sonya

to a small house on the Sivtsev Vrazhek.



Natasha and Pierre were living in Petersburg at the time and had

no clear idea of Nicholas' circumstances. Having borrowed money from

his brother-in-law, Nicholas tried to hide his wretched condition from

him. His position was the more difficult because with his salary of

twelve hundred rubles he had not only to keep himself, his mother, and

Sonya, but had to shield his mother from knowledge of their poverty.

The countess could not conceive of life without the luxurious

conditions she had been used to from childhood and, unable to

realize how hard it was for her son, kept demanding now a carriage

(which they did not keep) to send for a friend, now some expensive

article of food for herself, or wine for her son, or money to buy a

present as a surprise for Natasha or Sonya, or for Nicholas himself.



Sonya kept house, attended on her aunt, read to her, put up with her

whims and secret ill-will, and helped Nicholas to conceal their

poverty from the old countess. Nicholas felt himself irredeemably

indebted to Sonya for all she was doing for his mother and greatly

admired her patience and devotion, but tried to keep aloof from her.



He seemed in his heart to reproach her for being too perfect, and

because there was nothing to reproach her with. She had all that

people are valued for, but little that could have made him love her.

He felt that the more he valued her the less he loved her. He had

taken her at her word when she wrote giving him his freedom and now

behaved as if all that had passed between them had been long forgotten

and could never in any case be renewed.



Nicholas' position became worse and worse. The idea of putting

something aside out of his salary proved a dream. Not only did he

not save anything, but to comply with his mother's demands he even

incurred some small debts. He could see no way out of this

situation. The idea of marrying some rich woman, which was suggested

to him by his female relations, was repugnant to him. The other way

out--his mother's death--never entered his head. He wished for nothing

and hoped for nothing, and deep in his heart experienced a gloomy

and stern satisfaction in an uncomplaining endurance of his

position. He tried to avoid his old acquaintances with their

commiseration and offensive offers of assistance; he avoided all

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distraction and recreation, and even at home did nothing but play

cards with his mother, pace silently up and down the room, and smoke

one pipe after another. He seemed carefully to cherish within

himself the gloomy mood which alone enabled him to endure his

position.









CHAPTER VI





At the beginning of winter Princess Mary came to Moscow. From

reports current in town she learned how the Rostovs were situated, and

how "the son has sacrificed himself for his mother," as people were

saying.



"I never expected anything else of him," said Princess Mary to

herself, feeling a joyous sense of her love for him. Remembering her

friendly relations with all the Rostovs which had made her almost a

member of the family, she thought it her duty to go to see them. But

remembering her relations with Nicholas in Voronezh she was shy

about doing so. Making a great effort she did however go to call on

them a few weeks after her arrival in Moscow.



Nicholas was the first to meet her, as the countess' room could only

be reached through his. But instead of being greeted with pleasure

as she had expected, at his first glance at her his face assumed a

cold, stiff, proud expression she had not seen on it before. He

inquired about her health, led the way to his mother, and having sat

there for five minutes left the room.



When the princess came out of the countess' room Nicholas met her

again, and with marked solemnity and stiffness accompanied her to

the anteroom. To her remarks about his mother's health he made no

reply. "What's that to you? Leave me in peace," his looks seemed to

say.



"Why does she come prowling here? What does she want? I can't bear

these ladies and all these civilities!" said he aloud in Sonya's

presence, evidently unable to repress his vexation, after the

princess' carriage had disappeared.



"Oh, Nicholas, how can you talk like that?" cried Sonya, hardly able

to conceal her delight. "She is so kind and Mamma is so fond of her!"



Nicholas did not reply and tried to avoid speaking of the princess

any more. But after her visit the old countess spoke of her several

times a day.



She sang her praises, insisted that her son must call on her,

expressed a wish to see her often, but yet always became ill-humored

when she began to talk about her.

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Nicholas tried to keep silence when his mother spoke of the

princess, but his silence irritated her.



"She is a very admirable and excellent young woman," said she,

"and you must go and call on her. You would at least be seeing

somebody, and I think it must be dull for you only seeing us."



"But I don't in the least want to, Mamma."



"You used to want to, and now you don't. Really I don't understand

you, my dear. One day you are dull, and the next you refuse to see

anyone."



"But I never said I was dull."



"Why, you said yourself you don't want even to see her. She is a

very admirable young woman and you always liked her, but now

suddenly you have got some notion or other in your head. You hide

everything from me."



"Not at all, Mamma."



"If I were asking you to do something disagreeable now--but I only

ask you to return a call. One would think mere politeness required

it.... Well, I have asked you, and now I won't interfere any more

since you have secrets from your mother."



"Well, then, I'll go if you wish it."



"It doesn't matter to me. I only wish it for your sake."



Nicholas sighed, bit his mustache, and laid out the cards for a

patience, trying to divert his mother's attention to another topic.



The same conversation was repeated next day and the day after, and

the day after that.



After her visit to the Rostovs and her unexpectedly chilly reception

by Nicholas, Princess Mary confessed to herself that she had been

right in not wishing to be the first to call.



"I expected nothing else," she told herself, calling her pride to

her aid. "I have nothing to do with him and I only wanted to see the

old lady, who was always kind to me and to whom I am under many

obligations."



But she could not pacify herself with these reflections; a feeling

akin to remorse troubled her when she thought of her visit. Though she

had firmly resolved not to call on the Rostovs again and to forget the

whole matter, she felt herself all the time in an awkward position.

And when she asked herself what distressed her, she had to admit

that it was her relation to Rostov. His cold, polite manner did not

express his feeling for her (she knew that) but it concealed

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something, and until she could discover what that something was, she

felt that she could not be at ease.



One day in midwinter when sitting in the schoolroom attending to her

nephew's lessons, she was informed that Rostov had called. With a firm

resolution not to betray herself and not show her agitation, she

sent for Mademoiselle Bourienne and went with her to the drawing room.



Her first glance at Nicholas' face told her that he had only come to

fulfill the demands of politeness, and she firmly resolved to maintain

the tone in which he addressed her.



They spoke of the countess' health, of their mutual friends, of

the latest war news, and when the ten minutes required by propriety

had elapsed after which a visitor may rise, Nicholas got up to say

good-by.



With Mademoiselle Bourienne's help the princess had maintained the

conversation very well, but at the very last moment, just when he

rose, she was so tired of talking of what did not interest her, and

her mind was so full of the question why she alone was granted so

little happiness in life, that in a fit of absent-mindedness she sat

still, her luminous eyes gazing fixedly before her, not noticing

that he had risen.



Nicholas glanced at her and, wishing to appear not to notice her

abstraction, made some remark to Mademoiselle Bourienne and then again

looked at the princess. She still sat motionless with a look of

suffering on her gentle face. He suddenly felt sorry for her and was

vaguely conscious that he might be the cause of the sadness her face

expressed. He wished to help her and say something pleasant, but could

think of nothing to say.



"Good-by, Princess!" said he.



She started, flushed, and sighed deeply.



"Oh, I beg your pardon," she said as if waking up. "Are you going

already, Count? Well then, good-by! Oh, but the cushion for the

countess!"



"Wait a moment, I'll fetch it," said Mademoiselle Bourienne, and she

left the room.



They both sat silent, with an occasional glance at one another.



"Yes, Princess," said Nicholas at last with a sad smile, "it doesn't

seem long ago since we first met at Bogucharovo, but how much water

has flowed since then! In what distress we all seemed to be then,

yet I would give much to bring back that time... but there's no

bringing it back."



Princess Mary gazed intently into his eyes with her own luminous

ones as he said this. She seemed to be trying to fathom the hidden

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meaning of his words which would explain his feeling for her.



"Yes, yes," said she, "but you have no reason to regret the past,

Count. As I understand your present life, I think you will always

recall it with satisfaction, because the self-sacrifice that fills

it now..."



"I cannot accept your praise," he interrupted her hurriedly. "On the

contrary I continually reproach myself.... But this is not at all an

interesting or cheerful subject."



His face again resumed its former stiff and cold expression. But the

princess had caught a glimpse of the man she had known and loved,

and it was to him that she now spoke.



"I thought you would allow me to tell you this," she said. "I had

come so near to you... and to all your family that I thought you would

not consider my sympathy misplaced, but I was mistaken," and

suddenly her voice trembled. "I don't know why," she continued,

recovering herself, "but you used to be different, and..."



"There are a thousand reasons why," laying special emphasis on the

why. "Thank you, Princess," he added softly. "Sometimes it is hard."



"So that's why! That's why!" a voice whispered in Princess Mary's

soul. "No, it was not only that gay, kind, and frank look, not only

that handsome exterior, that I loved in him. I divined his noble,

resolute, self-sacrificing spirit too," she said to herself. "Yes,

he is poor now and I am rich.... Yes, that's the only reason....

Yes, were it not for that..." And remembering his former tenderness,

and looking now at his kind, sorrowful face, she suddenly understood

the cause of his coldness.



"But why, Count, why?" she almost cried, unconsciously moving closer

to him. "Why? Tell me. You must tell me!"



He was silent.



"I don't understand your why, Count," she continued, "but it's

hard for me... I confess it. For some reason you wish to deprive me of

our former friendship. And that hurts me." There were tears in her

eyes and in her voice. "I have had so little happiness in life that

every loss is hard for me to bear.... Excuse me, good-by!" and

suddenly she began to cry and was hurrying from the room.



"Princess, for God's sake!" he exclaimed, trying to stop her.

"Princess!"



She turned round. For a few seconds they gazed silently into one

another's eyes--and what had seemed impossible and remote suddenly

became possible, inevitable, and very near.









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CHAPTER VII





In the winter of 1813 Nicholas married Princess Mary and moved to

Bald Hills with his wife, his mother, and Sonya.



Within four years he had paid off all his remaining debts without

selling any of his wife's property, and having received a small

inheritance on the death of a cousin he paid his debt to Pierre as

well.



In another three years, by 1820, he had so managed his affairs

that he was able to buy a small estate adjoining Bald Hills and was

negotiating to buy back Otradnoe--that being his pet dream.



Having started farming from necessity, he soon grew so devoted to it

that it became his favorite and almost his sole occupation. Nicholas

was a plain farmer: he did not like innovations, especially the

English ones then coming into vogue. He laughed at theoretical

treatises on estate management, disliked factories, the raising of

expensive products, and the buying of expensive seed corn, and did not

make a hobby of any particular part of the work on his estate. He

always had before his mind's eye the estate as a whole and not any

particular part of it. The chief thing in his eyes was not the

nitrogen in the soil, nor the oxygen in the air, nor manures, nor

special plows, but that most important agent by which nitrogen,

oxygen, manure, and plow were made effective--the peasant laborer.

When Nicholas first began farming and began to understand its

different branches, it was the serf who especially attracted his

attention. The peasant seemed to him not merely a tool, but also a

judge of farming and an end in himself. At first he watched the serfs,

trying to understand their aims and what they considered good and bad,

and only pretended to direct them and give orders while in reality

learning from them their methods, their manner of speech, and their

judgment of what was good and bad. Only when he had understood the

peasants' tastes and aspirations, had learned to talk their

language, to grasp the hidden meaning of their words, and felt akin to

them did he begin boldly to manage his serfs, that is, to perform

toward them the duties demanded of him. And Nicholas' management

produced very brilliant results.



Guided by some gift of insight, on taking up the management of the

estates he at once unerringly appointed as bailiff, village elder, and

delegate, the very men the serfs would themselves have chosen had they

had the right to choose, and these posts never changed hands. Before

analyzing the properties of manure, before entering into the debit and

credit (as he ironically called it), he found out how many cattle

the peasants had and increased the number by all possible means. He

kept the peasant families together in the largest groups possible, not

allowing the family groups to divide into separate households. He

was hard alike on the lazy, the depraved, and the weak, and tried to

get them expelled from the commune.

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He was as careful of the sowing and reaping of the peasants' hay and

corn as of his own, and few landowners had their crops sown and

harvested so early and so well, or got so good a return, as did

Nicholas.



He disliked having anything to do with the domestic serfs--the

"drones" as he called them--and everyone said he spoiled them by his

laxity. When a decision had to be taken regarding a domestic serf,

especially if one had to be punished, he always felt undecided and

consulted everybody in the house; but when it was possible to have a

domestic serf conscripted instead of a land worker he did so without

the least hesitation. He never felt any hesitation in dealing with the

peasants. He knew that his every decision would be approved by them

all with very few exceptions.



He did not allow himself either to be hard on or punish a man, or to

make things easy for or reward anyone, merely because he felt inclined

to do so. He could not have said by what standard he judged what he

should or should not do, but the standard was quite firm and

definite in his own mind.



Often, speaking with vexation of some failure or irregularity, he

would say: "What can one do with our Russian peasants?" and imagined

that he could not bear them.



Yet he loved "our Russian peasants" and their way of life with his

whole soul, and for that very reason had understood and assimilated

the one way and manner of farming which produced good results.



Countess Mary was jealous of this passion of her husband's and

regretted that she could not share it; but she could not understand

the joys and vexations he derived from that world, to her so remote

and alien. She could not understand why he was so particularly

animated and happy when, after getting up at daybreak and spending the

whole morning in the fields or on the threshing floor, he returned

from the sowing or mowing or reaping to have tea with her. She did not

understand why he spoke with such admiration and delight of the

farming of the thrifty and well-to-do peasant Matthew Ermishin, who

with his family had carted corn all night; or of the fact that his

(Nicholas') sheaves were already stacked before anyone else had his

harvest in. She did not understand why he stepped out from the

window to the veranda and smiled under his mustache and winked so

joyfully, when warm steady rain began to fall on the dry and thirsty

shoots of the young oats, or why when the wind carried away a

threatening cloud during the hay harvest he would return from the

barn, flushed, sunburned, and perspiring, with a smell of wormwood and

gentian in his hair and, gleefully rubbing his hands, would say:

"Well, one more day and my grain and the peasants' will all be under

cover."



Still less did she understand why he, kindhearted and always ready

to anticipate her wishes, should become almost desperate when she

brought him a petition from some peasant men or women who had appealed

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to her to be excused some work; why he, that kind Nicholas, should

obstinately refuse her, angrily asking her not to interfere in what

was not her business. She felt he had a world apart, which he loved

passionately and which had laws she had not fathomed.



Sometimes when, trying to understand him, she spoke of the good work

he was doing for his serfs, he would be vexed and reply: "Not in the

least; it never entered my head and I wouldn't do that for their good!

That's all poetry and old wives' talk--all that doing good to one's

neighbor! What I want is that our children should not have to go

begging. I must put our affairs in order while I am alive, that's all.

And to do that, order and strictness are essential.... That's all

about it!" said he, clenching his vigorous fist. "And fairness, of

course," he added, "for if the peasant is naked and hungry and has

only one miserable horse, he can do no good either for himself or

for me."



And all Nicholas did was fruitful--probably just because he

refused to allow himself to think that he was doing good to others for

virtue's sake. His means increased rapidly; serfs from neighboring

estates came to beg him to buy them, and long after his death the

memory of his administration was devoutly preserved among the serfs.

"He was a master... the peasants' affairs first and then his own. Of

course he was not to be trifled with either--in a word, he was a

real master!"









CHAPTER VIII



One matter connected with his management sometimes worried Nicholas,

and that was his quick temper together with his old hussar habit of

making free use of his fists. At first he saw nothing reprehensible in

this, but in the second year of his marriage his view of that form

of punishment suddenly changed.



Once in summer he had sent for the village elder from Bogucharovo, a

man who had succeeded to the post when Dron died and who was accused

of dishonesty and various irregularities. Nicholas went out into the

porch to question him, and immediately after the elder had given a few

replies the sound of cries and blows were heard. On returning to lunch

Nicholas went up to his wife, who sat with her head bent low over

her embroidery frame, and as usual began to tell her what he had

been doing that morning. Among other things he spoke of the

Bogucharovo elder. Countess Mary turned red and then pale, but

continued to sit with head bowed and lips compressed and gave her

husband no reply.



"Such an insolent scoundrel!" he cried, growing hot again at the

mere recollection of him. "If he had told me he was drunk and did

not see... But what is the matter with you, Mary?" he suddenly asked.



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Countess Mary raised her head and tried to speak, but hastily looked

down again and her lips puckered.



"Why, whatever is the matter, my dearest?"



The looks of the plain Countess Mary always improved when she was in

tears. She never cried from pain or vexation, but always from sorrow

or pity, and when she wept her radiant eyes acquired an irresistible

charm.



The moment Nicholas took her hand she could no longer restrain

herself and began to cry.



"Nicholas, I saw it... he was to blame, but why do you... Nicholas!"

and she covered her face with her hands.



Nicholas said nothing. He flushed crimson, left her side, and

paced up and down the room. He understood what she was weeping

about, but could not in his heart at once agree with her that what

he had regarded from childhood as quite an everyday event was wrong.

"Is it just sentimentality, old wives' tales, or is she right?" he

asked himself. Before he had solved that point he glanced again at her

face filled with love and pain, and he suddenly realized that she

was right and that he had long been sinning against himself.



"Mary," he said softly, going up to her, "it will never happen

again; I give you my word. Never," he repeated in a trembling voice

like a boy asking for forgiveness.



The tears flowed faster still from the countess' eyes. She took

his hand and kissed it.



"Nicholas, when did you break your cameo?" she asked to change the

subject, looking at his finger on which he wore a ring with a cameo

of Laocoon's head.



"Today--it was the same affair. Oh, Mary, don't remind me of it!"

and again he flushed. "I give you my word of honor it shan't occur

again, and let this always be a reminder to me," and he pointed to the

broken ring.



After that, when in discussions with his village elders or

stewards the blood rushed to his face and his fists began to clench,

Nicholas would turn the broken ring on his finger and would drop his

eyes before the man who was making him angry. But he did forget

himself once or twice within a twelvemonth, and then he would go and

confess to his wife, and would again promise that this should really

be the very last time.



"Mary, you must despise me!" he would say. "I deserve it."



"You should go, go away at once, if you don't feel strong enough

to control yourself," she would reply sadly, trying to comfort her

husband.

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Among the gentry of the province Nicholas was respected but not

liked. He did not concern himself with the interests of his own class,

and consequently some thought him proud and others thought him stupid.

The whole summer, from spring sowing to harvest, he was busy with

the work on his farm. In autumn he gave himself up to hunting with the

same business like seriousness--leaving home for a month, or even two,

with his hunt. In winter he visited his other villages or spent his

time reading. The books he read were chiefly historical, and on

these he spent a certain sum every year. He was collecting, as he

said, a serious library, and he made it a rule to read through all the

books he bought. He would sit in his study with a grave air,

reading--a task he first imposed upon himself as a duty, but which

afterwards became a habit affording him a special kind of pleasure and

a consciousness of being occupied with serious matters. In winter,

except for business excursions, he spent most of his time at home

making himself one with his family and entering into all the details

of his children's relations with their mother. The harmony between him

and his wife grew closer and closer and he daily discovered fresh

spiritual treasures in her.



From the time of his marriage Sonya had lived in his house. Before

that, Nicholas had told his wife all that had passed between himself

and Sonya, blaming himself and commending her. He had asked Princess

Mary to be gentle and kind to his cousin. She thoroughly realized

the wrong he had done Sonya, felt herself to blame toward her, and

imagined that her wealth had influenced Nicholas' choice. She could

not find fault with Sonya in any way and tried to be fond of her,

but often felt ill-will toward her which she could not overcome.



Once she had a talk with her friend Natasha about Sonya and about

her own injustice toward her.



"You know," said Natasha, "you have read the Gospels a great deal-

there is a passage in them that just fits Sonya."



"What?" asked Countess Mary, surprised.



"'To him that hath shall be given, and from him that hath not

shall be taken away.' You remember? She is one that hath not; why, I

don't know. Perhaps she lacks egotism, I don't know, but from her is

taken away, and everything has been taken away. Sometimes I am

dreadfully sorry for her. Formerly I very much wanted Nicholas to

marry her, but I always had a sort of presentiment that it would not

come off. She is a sterile flower, you know--like some strawberry

blossoms. Sometimes I am sorry for her, and sometimes I think she

doesn't feel it as you or I would."



Though Countess Mary told Natasha that those words in the Gospel

must be understood differently, yet looking at Sonya she agreed with

Natasha's explanation. It really seemed that Sonya did not feel her

position trying, and had grown quite reconciled to her lot as a

sterile flower. She seemed to be fond not so much of individuals as of

the family as a whole. Like a cat, she had attached herself not to the

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people but to the home. She waited on the old countess, petted and

spoiled the children, was always ready to render the small services

for which she had a gift, and all this was unconsciously accepted from

her with insufficient gratitude.



The country seat at Bald Hills had been rebuilt, though not on the

same scale as under the old prince.



The buildings, begun under straitened circumstances, were more

than simple. The immense house on the old stone foundations was of

wood, plastered only inside. It had bare deal floors and was furnished

with very simple hard sofas, armchairs, tables, and chairs made by

their own serf carpenters out of their own birchwood. The house was

spacious and had rooms for the house serfs and apartments for

visitors. Whole families of the Rostovs' and Bolkonskis' relations

sometimes came to Bald Hills with sixteen horses and dozens of

servants and stayed for months. Besides that, four times a year, on

the name days and birthdays of the hosts, as many as a hundred

visitors would gather there for a day or two. The rest of the year

life pursued its unbroken routine with its ordinary occupations, and

its breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and suppers, provided out of the

produce of the estate.









CHAPTER IX





It was the eve of St. Nicholas, the fifth of December, 1820. Natasha

had been staying at her brother's with her husband and children

since early autumn. Pierre had gone to Petersburg on business of his

own for three weeks as he said, but had remained there nearly seven

weeks and was expected back every minute.



Besides the Bezukhov family, Nicholas' old friend the retired

General Vasili Dmitrich Denisov was staying with the Rostovs this

fifth of December.



On the sixth, which was his name day when the house would be full of

visitors, Nicholas knew he would have to exchange his Tartar tunic for

a tail coat, and put on narrow boots with pointed toes, and drive to

the new church he had built, and then receive visitors who would

come to congratulate him, offer them refreshments, and talk about

the elections of the nobility; but he considered himself entitled to

spend the eve of that day in his usual way. He examined the

bailiff's accounts of the village in Ryazan which belonged to his

wife's nephew, wrote two business letters, and walked over to the

granaries, cattle yards and stables before dinner. Having taken

precautions against the general drunkenness to be expected on the

morrow because it was a great saint's day, he returned to dinner,

and without having time for a private talk with his wife sat down at

the long table laid for twenty persons, at which the whole household

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had assembled. At that table were his mother, his mother's old lady

companion Belova, his wife, their three children with their

governess and tutor, his wife's nephew with his tutor, Sonya, Denisov,

Natasha, her three children, their governess, and old Michael

Ivanovich, the late prince's architect, who was living on in

retirement at Bald Hills.



Countess Mary sat at the other end of the table. When her husband

took his place she concluded, from the rapid manner in which after

taking up his table napkin he pushed back the tumbler and wineglass

standing before him, that he was out of humor, as was sometimes the

case when he came in to dinner straight from the farm--especially

before the soup. Countess Mary well knew that mood of his, and when

she herself was in a good frame of mind quietly waited till he had had

his soup and then began to talk to him and make him admit that there

was no cause for his ill-humor. But today she quite forgot that and

was hurt that he should be angry with her without any reason, and

she felt unhappy. She asked him where he had been. He replied. She

again inquired whether everything was going well on the farm. Her

unnatural tone made him wince unpleasantly and he replied hastily.



"Then I'm not mistaken," thought Countess Mary. "Why is he cross

with me?" She concluded from his tone that he was vexed with her and

wished to end the conversation. She knew her remarks sounded

unnatural, but could not refrain from asking some more questions.



Thanks to Denisov the conversation at table soon became general

and lively, and she did not talk to her husband. When they left the

table and went as usual to thank the old countess, Countess Mary

held out her hand and kissed her husband, and asked him why he was

angry with her.



"You always have such strange fancies! I didn't even think of

being angry," he replied.



But the word always seemed to her to imply: "Yes, I am angry but I

won't tell you why."



Nicholas and his wife lived together so happily that even Sonya

and the old countess, who felt jealous and would have liked them to

disagree, could find nothing to reproach them with; but even they

had their moments of antagonism. Occasionally, and it was always

just after they had been happiest together, they suddenly had a

feeling of estrangement and hostility, which occurred most

frequently during Countess Mary's pregnancies, and this was such a

time.



"Well, messieurs et mesdames," said Nicholas loudly and with

apparent cheerfulness (it seemed to Countess Mary that he did it on

purpose to vex her), "I have been on my feet since six this morning.

Tomorrow I shall have to suffer, so today I'll go and rest."



And without a word to his wife he went to the little sitting room

and lay down on the sofa.

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"That's always the way," thought Countess Mary. "He talks to

everyone except me. I see... I see that I am repulsive to him,

especially when I am in this condition." She looked down at her

expanded figure and in the glass at her pale, sallow, emaciated face

in which her eyes now looked larger than ever.



And everything annoyed her--Denisov's shouting and laughter,

Natasha's talk, and especially a quick glance Sonya gave her.



Sonya was always the first excuse Countess Mary found for feeling

irritated.



Having sat awhile with her visitors without understanding anything

of what they were saying, she softly left the room and went to the

nursery.



The children were playing at "going to Moscow" in a carriage made of

chairs and invited her to go with them. She sat down and played with

them a little, but the thought of her husband and his unreasonable

crossness worried her. She got up and, walking on tiptoe with

difficulty, went to the small sitting room.



"Perhaps he is not asleep; I'll have an explanation with him," she

said to herself. Little Andrew, her eldest boy, imitating his

mother, followed her on tiptoe. She not notice him.



"Mary, dear, I think he is asleep--he was so tired," said Sonya,

meeting her in the large sitting room (it seemed to Countess Mary that

she crossed her path everywhere). "Andrew may wake him."



Countess Mary looked round, saw little Andrew following her, felt

that Sonya was right, and for that very reason flushed and with

evident difficulty refrained from saying something harsh. She made

no reply, but to avoid obeying Sonya beckoned to Andrew to follow

her quietly and went to the door. Sonya went away by another door.

From the room in which Nicholas was sleeping came the sound of his

even breathing, every slightest tone of which was familiar to his

wife. As she listened to it she saw before her his smooth handsome

forehead, his mustache, and his whole face, as she had so often seen

it in the stillness of the night when he slept. Nicholas suddenly

moved and cleared his throat. And at that moment little Andrew shouted

from outside the door: "Papa! Mamma's standing here!" Countess Mary

turned pale with fright and made signs to the boy. He grew silent, and

quiet ensued for a moment, terrible to Countess Mary. She knew how

Nicholas disliked being waked. Then through the door she heard

Nicholas clearing his throat again and stirring, and his voice said

crossly:



"I can't get a moment's peace.... Mary, is that you? Why did you

bring him here?"



"I only came in to look and did not notice... forgive me..."



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Nicholas coughed and said no more. Countess Mary moved away from the

door and took the boy back to the nursery. Five minutes later little

black-eyed three-year-old Natasha, her father's pet, having learned

from her brother that Papa was asleep and Mamma was in the sitting

room, ran to her father unobserved by her mother. The dark-eyed little

girl boldly opened the creaking door, went up to the sofa with

energetic steps of her sturdy little legs, and having examined the

position of her father, who was asleep with his back to her, rose on

tiptoe and kissed the hand which lay under his head. Nicholas turned

with a tender smile on his face.



"Natasha, Natasha!" came Countess Mary's frightened whisper from the

door. "Papa wants to sleep."



"No, Mamma, he doesn't want to sleep," said little Natasha with

conviction. "He's laughing."



Nicholas lowered his legs, rose, and took his daughter in his arms.



"Come in, Mary," he said to his wife.



She went in and sat down by her husband.



"I did not notice him following me," she said timidly. "I just

looked in."



Holding his little girl with one arm, Nicholas glanced at his wife

and, seeing her guilty expression, put his other arm around her and

kissed her hair.



"May I kiss Mamma?" he asked Natasha.



Natasha smiled bashfully.



"Again!" she commanded, pointing with a peremptory gesture to the

spot where Nicholas had placed the kiss.



"I don't know why you think I am cross," said Nicholas, replying

to the question he knew was in his wife's mind.



"You have no idea how unhappy, how lonely, I feel when you are

like that. It always seems to me... "



"Mary, don't talk nonsense. You ought to be ashamed of yourself!" he

said gaily.



"It seems to be that you can't love me, that I am so plain...

always... and now... in this cond..."



"Oh, how absurd you are! It is not beauty that endears, it's love

that makes us see beauty. It is only Malvinas and women of that kind

who are loved for their beauty. But do I love my wife? I don't love

her, but... I don't know how to put it. Without you, or when something

comes between us like this, I seem lost and can't do anything. Now

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do I love my finger? I don't love it, but just try to cut it off!"



"I'm not like that myself, but I understand. So you're not angry

with me?"



"Awfully angry!" he said, smiling and getting up. And smoothing

his hair he began to pace the room.



"Do you know, Mary, what I've been thinking?" he began,

immediately thinking aloud in his wife's presence now that they had

made it up.



He did not ask if she was ready to listen to him. He did not care. A

thought had occurred to him and so it belonged to her also. And he

told her of his intention to persuade Pierre to stay with them till

spring.



Countess Mary listened till he had finished, made some remark, and

in her turn began thinking aloud. Her thoughts were about the

children.



"You can see the woman in her already," she said in French, pointing

to little Natasha. "You reproach us women with being illogical. Here

is our logic. I say: 'Papa wants to sleep!' but she says, 'No, he's

laughing.' And she was right," said Countess Mary with a happy smile.



"Yes, yes." And Nicholas, taking his little daughter in his strong

hand, lifted her high, placed her on his shoulder, held her by the

legs, and paced the room with her. There was an expression of carefree

happiness on the faces of both father and daughter.



"But you know you may be unfair. You are too fond of this one,"

his wife whispered in French.



"Yes, but what am I to do?... I try not to show..."



At that moment they heard the sound of the door pulley and footsteps

in the hall and anteroom, as if someone had arrived.



"Somebody has come."



"I am sure it is Pierre. I will go and see," said Countess Mary

and left the room.



In her absence Nicholas allowed himself to give his little

daughter a gallop round the room. Out of breath, he took the

laughing child quickly from his shoulder and pressed her to his heart.

His capers reminded him of dancing, and looking at the child's round

happy little face he thought of what she would be like when he was

an old man, taking her into society and dancing the mazurka with her

as his old father had danced Daniel Cooper with his daughter.



"It is he, it is he, Nicholas!" said Countess Mary, re-entering

the room a few minutes later. "Now our Natasha has come to life. You

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should have seen her ecstasy, and how he caught it for having stayed

away so long. Well, come along now, quick, quick! It's time you two

were parted," she added, looking smilingly at the little girl who

clung to her father.



Nicholas went out holding the child by the hand.



Countess Mary remained in the sitting room.



"I should never, never have believed that one could be so happy,"

she whispered to herself. A smile lit up her face but at the same time

she sighed, and her deep eyes expressed a quiet sadness as though

she felt, through her happiness, that there is another sort of

happiness unattainable in this life and of which she involuntarily

thought at that instant.









CHAPTER X





Natasha had married in the early spring of 1813, and in 1820 already

had three daughters besides a son for whom she had longed and whom she

was now nursing. She had grown stouter and broader, so that it was

difficult to recognize in this robust, motherly woman the slim, lively

Natasha of former days. Her features were more defined and had a calm,

soft, and serene expression. In her face there was none of the

ever-glowing animation that had formerly burned there and

constituted its charm. Now her face and body were of all that one saw,

and her soul was not visible at all. All that struck the eye was a

strong, handsome, and fertile woman. The old fire very rarely

kindled in her face now. That happened only when, as was the case that

day, her husband returned home, or a sick child was convalescent, or

when she and Countess Mary spoke of Prince Andrew (she never mentioned

him to her husband, who she imagined was jealous of Prince Andrew's

memory), or on the rare occasions when something happened to induce

her to sing, a practice she had quite abandoned since her marriage. At

the rare moments when the old fire did kindle in her handsome, fully

developed body she was even more attractive than in former days.



Since their marriage Natasha and her husband had lived in Moscow, in

Petersburg, on their estate near Moscow, or with her mother, that is

to say, in Nicholas' house. The young Countess Bezukhova was not often

seen in society, and those who met her there were not pleased with her

and found her neither attractive nor amiable. Not that Natasha liked

solitude--she did not know whether she liked it or not, she even

thought that she did not--but with her pregnancies, her

confinements, the nursing of her children, and sharing every moment of

her husband's life, she had demands on her time which could be

satisfied only by renouncing society. All who had known Natasha before

her marriage wondered at the change in her as at something

extraordinary. Only the old countess with her maternal instinct had

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realized that all Natasha's outbursts had been due to her need of

children and a husband--as she herself had once exclaimed at

Otradnoe not so much in fun as in earnest--and her mother was now

surprised at the surprise expressed by those who had never

understood Natasha, and she kept saying that she had always known that

Natasha would make an exemplary wife and mother.



"Only she lets her love of her husband and children overflow all

bounds," said the countess, "so that it even becomes absurd."



Natasha did not follow the golden rule advocated by clever folk,

especially by the French, which says that a girl should not let

herself go when she marries, should not neglect her accomplishments,

should be even more careful of her appearance than when she was

unmarried, and should fascinate her husband as much as she did

before he became her husband. Natasha on the contrary had at once

abandoned all her witchery, of which her singing had been an unusually

powerful part. She gave it up just because it was so powerfully

seductive. She took no pains with her manners or with of speech, or

with her toilet, or to show herself to her husband in her most

becoming attitudes, or to avoid inconveniencing him by being too

exacting. She acted in contradiction to all those rules. She felt that

the allurements instinct had formerly taught her to use would now be

merely ridiculous in the eyes of her husband, to whom she had from the

first moment given herself up entirely--that is, with her whole

soul, leaving no corner of it hidden from him. She felt that her unity

with her husband was not maintained by the poetic feelings that had

attracted him to her, but by something else--indefinite but firm as

the bond between her own body and soul.



To fluff out her curls, put on fashionable dresses, and sing

romantic songs to fascinate her husband would have seemed as strange

as to adorn herself to attract herself. To adorn herself for others

might perhaps have been agreeable--she did not know--but she had no

time at all for it. The chief reason for devoting no time either to

singing, to dress, or to choosing her words was that she really had no

time to spare for these things.



We know that man has the faculty of becoming completely absorbed

in a subject however trivial it may be, and that there is no subject

so trivial that it will not grow to infinite proportions if one's

entire attention is devoted to it.



The subject which wholly engrossed Natasha's attention was her

family: that is, her husband whom she had to keep so that he should

belong entirely to her and to the home, and the children whom she

had to bear, bring into the world, nurse, and bring up.



And the deeper she penetrated, not with her mind only but with her

whole soul, her whole being, into the subject that absorbed her, the

larger did that subject grow and the weaker and more inadequate did

her powers appear, so that she concentrated them wholly on that one

thing and yet was unable to accomplish all that she considered

necessary.

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There were then as now conversations and discussions about women's

rights, the relations of husband and wife and their freedom and

rights, though these themes were not yet termed questions as they

are now; but these topics were not merely uninteresting to Natasha,

she positively did not understand them.



These questions, then as now, existed only for those who see nothing

in marriage but the pleasure married people get from one another, that

is, only the beginnings of marriage and not its whole significance,

which lies in the family.



Discussions and questions of that kind, which are like the

question of how to get the greatest gratification from one's dinner,

did not then and do not now exist for those for whom the purpose of

a dinner is the nourishment it affords; and the purpose of marriage is

the family.



If the purpose of dinner is to nourish the body, a man who eats

two dinners at once may perhaps get more enjoyment but will not attain

his purpose, for his stomach will not digest the two dinners.



If the purpose of marriage is the family, the person who wishes to

have many wives or husbands may perhaps obtain much pleasure, but in

that case will not have a family.



If the purpose of food is nourishment and the purpose of marriage is

the family, the whole question resolves itself into not eating more

than one can digest, and not having more wives or husbands than are

needed for the family--that is, one wife or one husband. Natasha

needed a husband. A husband was given her and he gave her a family.

And she not only saw no need of any other or better husband, but as

all the powers of her soul were intent on serving that husband and

family, she could not imagine and saw no interest in imagining how

it would be if things were different.



Natasha did not care for society in general, but prized the more the

society of her relatives--Countess Mary, and her brother, her

mother, and Sonya. She valued the company of those to whom she could

come striding disheveled from the nursery in her dressing gown, and

with joyful face show a yellow instead of a green stain on baby's

napkin, and from whom she could hear reassuring words to the effect

that baby was much better.



To such an extent had Natasha let herself go that the way she

dressed and did her hair, her ill-chosen words, and her jealousy-

she was jealous of Sonya, of the governess, and of every woman, pretty

or plain--were habitual subjects of jest to those about her. The

general opinion was that Pierre was under his wife's thumb, which

was really true. From the very first days of their married life

Natasha had announced her demands. Pierre was greatly surprised by his

wife's view, to him a perfectly novel one, that every moment of his

life belonged to her and to the family. His wife's demands

astonished him, but they also flattered him, and he submitted to them.

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Pierre's subjection consisted in the fact that he not only dared not

flirt with, but dared not even speak smilingly to, any other woman;

did not dare dine at the Club as a pastime, did not dare spend money a

whim, and did not dare absent himself for any length of time, except

on business--in which his wife included his intellectual pursuits,

which she did not in the least understand but to which she

attributed great importance. To make up for this, at home Pierre had

the right to regulate his life and that of the whole family exactly as

he chose. At home Natasha placed herself in the position of a slave to

her husband, and the whole household went on tiptoe when he was

occupied--that is, was reading or writing in his study. Pierre had but

to show a partiality for anything to get just what he liked done

always. He had only to express a wish and Natasha would jump up and

run to fulfill it.



The entire household was governed according to Pierre's supposed

orders, that is, by his wishes which Natasha tried to guess. Their way

of life and place of residence, their acquaintances and ties,

Natasha's occupations, the children's upbringing, were all selected

not merely with regard to Pierre's expressed wishes, but to what

Natasha from the thoughts he expressed in conversation supposed his

wishes to be. And she deduced the essentials of his wishes quite

correctly, and having once arrived at them clung to them

tenaciously. When Pierre himself wanted to change his mind she would

fight him with his own weapons.



Thus in a time of trouble ever memorable to him after the birth of

their first child who was delicate, when they had to change the wet

nurse three times and Natasha fell ill from despair, Pierre one day

told her of Rousseau's view, with which he quite agreed, that to

have a wet nurse is unnatural and harmful. When her next baby was

born, despite the opposition of her mother, the doctors, and even of

her husband himself--who were all vigorously opposed to her nursing

her baby herself, a thing then unheard of and considered injurious-

she insisted on having her own way, and after that nursed all her

babies herself.



It very often happened that in a moment of irritation husband and

wife would have a dispute, but long afterwards Pierre to his

surprise and delight would find in his wife's ideas and actions the

very thought against which she had argued, but divested of

everything superfluous that in the excitement of the dispute he had

added when expressing his opinion.



After seven years of marriage Pierre had the joyous and firm

consciousness that he was not a bad man, and he felt this because he

saw himself reflected in his wife. He felt the good and bad within

himself inextricably mingled and overlapping. But only what was really

good in him was reflected in his wife, all that was not quite good was

rejected. And this was not the result of logical reasoning but was a

direct and mysterious reflection.





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CHAPTER XI





Two months previously when Pierre was already staying with the

Rostovs he had received a letter from Prince Theodore, asking him to

come to Petersburg to confer on some important questions that were

being discussed there by a society of which Pierre was one of the

principal founders.



On reading that letter (she always read her husband's letters)

Natasha herself suggested that he should go to Petersburg, though

she would feel his absence very acutely. She attributed immense

importance to all her husband's intellectual and abstract interests

though she did not understand them, and she always dreaded being a

hindrance to him in such matters. To Pierre's timid look of inquiry

after reading the letter she replied by asking him to go, but to fix a

definite date for his return. He was given four weeks' leave of

absence.



Ever since that leave of absence had expired, more than a

fortnight before, Natasha had been in a constant state of alarm,

depression, and irritability.



Denisov, now a general on the retired list and much dissatisfied

with the present state of affairs, had arrived during that

fortnight. He looked at Natasha with sorrow and surprise as at a bad

likeness of a person once dear. A dull, dejected look, random replies,

and talk about the nursery was all he saw and heard from his former

enchantress.



Natasha was sad and irritable all that time, especially when her

mother, her brother, Sonya, or Countess Mary in their efforts to

console her tried to excuse Pierre and suggested reasons for his delay

in returning.



"It's all nonsense, all rubbish--those discussions which lead to

nothing and all those idiotic societies!" Natasha declared of the very

affairs in the immense importance of which she firmly believed.



And she would go to the nursery to nurse Petya, her only boy. No one

else could tell her anything so comforting or so reasonable as this

little three-month-old creature when he lay at her breast and she

was conscious of the movement of his lips and the snuffling of his

little nose. That creature said: "You are angry, you are jealous,

you would like to pay him out, you are afraid--but here am I! And I am

he..." and that was unanswerable. It was more than true.



During that fortnight of anxiety Natasha resorted to the baby for

comfort so often, and fussed over him so much, that she overfed him

and he fell ill. She was terrified by his illness, and yet that was

just what she needed. While attending to him she bore the anxiety

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about her husband more easily.



She was nursing her boy when the sound of Pierre's sleigh was

heard at the front door, and the old nurse--knowing how to please

her mistress--entered the room inaudibly but hurriedly and with a

beaming face.



"Has he come?" Natasha asked quickly in a whisper, afraid to move

lest she should rouse the dozing baby.



"He's come, ma'am," whispered the nurse.



The blood rushed to Natasha's face and her feet involuntarily moved,

but she could not jump up and run out. The baby again opened his

eyes and looked at her. "You're here?" he seemed to be saying, and

again lazily smacked his lips.



Cautiously withdrawing her breast, Natasha rocked him a little,

handed him to the nurse, and went with rapid steps toward the door.

But at the door she stopped as if her conscience reproached her for

having in her joy left the child too soon, and she glanced round.

The nurse with raised elbows was lifting the infant over the rail of

his cot.



"Go, ma'am! Don't worry, go!" she whispered, smiling, with the

kind of familiarity that grows up between a nurse and her mistress.



Natasha ran with light footsteps to the anteroom.



Denisov, who had come out of the study into the dancing room with

his pipe, now for the first time recognized the old Natasha. A flood

of brilliant, joyful light poured from her transfigured face.



"He's come!" she exclaimed as she ran past, and Denisov felt that he

too was delighted that Pierre, whom he did not much care for, had

returned.



On reaching the vestibule Natasha saw a tall figure in a fur coat

unwinding his scarf. "It's he! It's really he! He has come!" she

said to herself, and rushing at him embraced him, pressed his head

to her breast, and then pushed him back and gazed at his ruddy,

happy face, covered with hoarfrost. "Yes, it is he, happy and

contented..."



Then all at once she remembered the tortures of suspense she had

experienced for the last fortnight, and the joy that had lit up her

face vanished; she frowned and overwhelmed Pierre with a torrent of

reproaches and angry words.



"Yes, it's all very well for you. You are pleased, you've had a good

time.... But what about me? You might at least have shown

consideration for the children. I am nursing and my milk was

spoiled.... Petya was at death's door. But you were enjoying yourself.

Yes, enjoying..."

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Pierre knew he was not to blame, for he could not have come

sooner; he knew this outburst was unseemly and would blow over in a

minute or two; above all he knew that he himself was bright and happy.

He wanted to smile but dared not even think of doing so. He made a

piteous, frightened face and bent down.



"I could not, on my honor. But how is Petya?"



"All right now. Come along! I wonder you're not ashamed! If only you

could see what I was like without you, how I suffered!"



"You are well?"



"Come, come!" she said, not letting go of his arm. And they went

to their rooms.



When Nicholas and his wife came to look for Pierre he was in the

nursery holding his baby son, who was again awake, on his huge right

palm and dandling him. A blissful bright smile was fixed on the baby's

broad face with its toothless open mouth. The storm was long since

over and there was bright, joyous sunshine on Natasha's face as she

gazed tenderly at her husband and child.



"And have you talked everything well over with Prince Theodore?" she

asked.



"Yes, capitally."



"You see, he holds it up." (She meant the baby's head.) "But how

he did frighten me... You've seen the princess? Is it true she's in

love with that..."



"Yes, just fancy..."



At that moment Nicholas and Countess Mary came in. Pierre with the

baby on his hand stooped, kissed them, and replied to their inquiries.

But in spite of much that was interesting and had to be discussed, the

baby with the little cap on its unsteady head evidently absorbed all

his attention.



"How sweet!" said Countess Mary, looking at and playing with the

baby. "Now, Nicholas," she added, turning to her husband, "I can't

understand how it is you don't see the charm of these delicious

marvels."



"I don't and can't," replied Nicholas, looking coldly at the baby.

"A lump of flesh. Come along, Pierre!"



"And yet he's such an affectionate father," said Countess Mary,

vindicating her husband, "but only after they are a year old or so..."



"Now, Pierre nurses them splendidly," said Natasha. "He says his

hand is just made for a baby's seat. Just look!"

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"Only not for this..." Pierre suddenly exclaimed with a laugh, and

shifting the baby he gave him to the nurse.









CHAPTER XII





As in every large household, there were at Bald Hills several

perfectly distinct worlds which merged into one harmonious whole,

though each retained its own peculiarities and made concessions to the

others. Every event, joyful or sad, that took place in that house

was important to all these worlds, but each had its own special

reasons to rejoice or grieve over that occurrence independently of the

others.



For instance, Pierre's return was a joyful and important event and

they all felt it to be so.



The servants--the most reliable judges of their masters because they

judge not by their conversation or expressions of feeling but by their

acts and way of life--were glad of Pierre's return because they knew

that when he was there Count Nicholas would cease going every day

to attend to the estate, and would be in better spirits and temper,

and also because they would all receive handsome presents for the

holidays.



The children and their governesses were glad of Pierre's return

because no one else drew them into the social life of the household as

he did. He alone could play on the clavichord that ecossaise (his only

piece) to which, as he said, all possible dances could be danced,

and they felt sure he had brought presents for them all.



Young Nicholas, now a slim lad of fifteen, delicate and intelligent,

with curly light-brown hair and beautiful eyes, was delighted

because Uncle Pierre as he called him was the object of his

rapturous and passionate affection. No one had instilled into him this

love for Pierre whom he saw only occasionally. Countess Mary who had

brought him up had done her utmost to make him love her husband as she

loved him, and little Nicholas did love his uncle, but loved him

with just a shade of contempt. Pierre, however, he adored. He did

not want to be an hussar or a Knight of St. George like his uncle

Nicholas; he wanted to be learned, wise, and kind like Pierre. In

Pierre's presence his face always shone with pleasure and he flushed

and was breathless when Pierre spoke to him. He did not miss a

single word he uttered, and would afterwards, with Dessalles or by

himself, recall and reconsider the meaning of everything Pierre had

said. Pierre's past life and his unhappiness prior to 1812 (of which

young Nicholas had formed a vague poetic picture from some words he

had overheard), his adventures in Moscow, his captivity, Platon

Karataev (of whom he had heard from Pierre), his love for Natasha

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(of whom the lad was also particularly fond), and especially

Pierre's friendship with the father whom Nicholas could not

remember--all this made Pierre in his eyes a hero and a saint.



From broken remarks about Natasha and his father, from the emotion

with which Pierre spoke of that dead father, and from the careful,

reverent tenderness with which Natasha spoke of him, the boy, who

was only just beginning to guess what love is, derived the notion that

his father had loved Natasha and when dying had left her to his

friend. But the father whom the boy did not remember appeared to him a

divinity who could not be pictured, and of whom he never thought

without a swelling heart and tears of sadness and rapture. So the

boy also was happy that Pierre had arrived.



The guests welcomed Pierre because he always helped to enliven and

unite any company he was in.



The grown-up members of the family, not to mention his wife, were

pleased to have back a friend whose presence made life run more

smoothly and peacefully.



The old ladies were pleased with the presents he brought them, and

especially that Natasha would now be herself again.



Pierre felt the different outlooks of these various worlds and

made haste to satisfy all their expectations.



Though the most absent-minded and forgetful of men, Pierre, with the

aid of a list his wife drew up, had now bought everything, not

forgetting his mother--and brother-in-law's commissions, nor the dress

material for a present to Belova, nor toys for his wife's nephews.

In the early days of his marriage it had seemed strange to him that

his wife should expect him not to forget to procure all the things

he undertook to buy, and he had been taken aback by her serious

annoyance when on his first trip he forgot everything. But in time

he grew used to this demand. Knowing that Natasha asked nothing for

herself, and gave him commissions for others only when he himself

had offered to undertake them, he now found an unexpected and

childlike pleasure in this purchase of presents for everyone in the

house, and never forgot anything. If he now incurred Natasha's censure

it was only for buying too many and too expensive things. To her other

defects (as most people thought them, but which to Pierre were

qualities) of untidiness and neglect of herself, she now added

stinginess.



From the time that Pierre began life as a family man on a footing

entailing heavy expenditure, he had noticed to his surprise that he

spent only half as much as before, and that his affairs--which had

been in disorder of late, chiefly because of his first wife's debts-

had begun to improve.



Life was cheaper because it was circumscribed: that most expensive

luxury, the kind of life that can be changed at any moment, was no

longer his nor did he wish for it. He felt that his way of life had

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now been settled once for all till death and that to change it was not

in his power, and so that way of life proved economical.



With a merry, smiling face Pierre was sorting his purchases.



"What do you think of this?" said he, unrolling a piece of stuff

like a shopman.



Natasha, who was sitting opposite to him with her eldest daughter on

her lap, turned her sparkling eyes swiftly from her husband to the

things he showed her.



"That's for Belova? Excellent!" She felt the quality of the

material. "It was a ruble an arshin, I suppose?"



Pierre told her the price.



"Too dear!" Natasha remarked. "How pleased the children will be

and Mamma too! Only you need not have bought me this," she added,

unable to suppress a smile as she gazed admiringly at a gold comb

set with pearls, of a kind then just coming into fashion.



"Adele tempted me: she kept on telling me to buy it," returned

Pierre.



"When am I to wear it?" and Natasha stuck it in her coil of hair.

"When I take little Masha into society? Perhaps they will be

fashionable again by then. Well, let's go now."



And collecting the presents they went first to the nursery and

then to the old countess' rooms.



The countess was sitting with her companion Belova, playing

grand-patience as usual, when Pierre and Natasha came into the drawing

room with parcels under their arms.



The countess was now over sixty, was quite gray, and wore a cap with

a frill that surrounded her face. Her face had shriveled, her upper

lip had sunk in, and her eyes were dim.



After the deaths of her son and husband in such rapid succession,

she felt herself a being accidentally forgotten in this world and left

without aim or object for her existence. She ate, drank, slept, or

kept awake, but did not live. Life gave her no new impressions. She

wanted nothing from life but tranquillity, and that tranquillity

only death could give her. But until death came she had to go on

living, that is, to use her vital forces. A peculiarity one sees in

very young children and very old people was particularly evident in

her. Her life had no external aims--only a need to exercise her

various functions and inclinations was apparent. She had to eat,

sleep, think, speak, weep, work, give vent to her anger, and so on,

merely because she had a stomach, a brain, muscles, nerves, and a

liver. She did these things not under any external impulse as people

in the full vigor of life do, when behind the purpose for which they

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strive that of exercising their functions remains unnoticed. She

talked only because she physically needed to exercise her tongue and

lungs. She cried as a child does, because her nose had to be

cleared, and so on. What for people in their full vigor is an aim

was for her evidently merely a pretext.



Thus in the morning--especially if she had eaten anything rich the

day before--she felt a need of being angry and would choose as the

handiest pretext Belova's deafness.



She would begin to say something to her in a low tone from the other

end of the room.



"It seems a little warmer today, my dear," she would murmur.



And when Belova replied: "Oh yes, they've come," she would mutter

angrily: "O Lord! How stupid and deaf she is!"



Another pretext would be her snuff, which would seem too dry or

too damp or not rubbed fine enough. After these fits of irritability

her face would grow yellow, and her maids knew by infallible

symptoms when Belova would again be deaf, the snuff damp, and the

countess' face yellow. Just as she needed to work off her spleen so

she had sometimes to exercise her still-existing faculty of

thinking--and the pretext for that was a game of patience. When she

needed to cry, the deceased count would be the pretext. When she

wanted to be agitated, Nicholas and his health would be the pretext,

and when she felt a need to speak spitefully, the pretext would be

Countess Mary. When her vocal organs needed exercise, which was

usually toward seven o'clock when she had had an after-dinner rest

in a darkened room, the pretext would be the retelling of the same

stories over and over again to the same audience.



The old lady's condition was understood by the whole household

though no one ever spoke of it, and they all made every possible

effort to satisfy her needs. Only by a rare glance exchanged with a

sad smile between Nicholas, Pierre, Natasha, and Countess Mary was the

common understanding of her condition expressed.



But those glances expressed something more: they said that she had

played her part in life, that what they now saw was not her whole

self, that we must all become like her, and that they were glad to

yield to her, to restrain themselves for this once precious being

formerly as full of life as themselves, but now so much to be

pitied. "Memento mori," said these glances.



Only the really heartless, the stupid ones of that household, and

the little children failed to understand this and avoided her.









CHAPTER XIII

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When Pierre and his wife entered the drawing room the countess was

in one of her customary states in which she needed the mental exertion

of playing patience, and so--though by force of habit she greeted

him with the words she always used when Pierre or her son returned

after an absence: "High time, my dear, high time! We were all weary of

waiting for you. Well, thank God!" and received her presents with

another customary remark: "It's not the gift that's precious, my dear,

but that you give it to me, an old woman..."--yet it was evident

that she was not pleased by Pierre's arrival at that moment when it

diverted her attention from the unfinished game.



She finished her game of patience and only then examined the

presents. They consisted of a box for cards, of splendid

workmanship, a bright-blue Sevres tea cup with shepherdesses

depicted on it and with a lid, and a gold snuffbox with the count's

portrait on the lid which Pierre had had done by a miniaturist in

Petersburg. The countess had long wished for such a box, but as she

did not want to cry just then she glanced indifferently at the

portrait and gave her attention chiefly to the box for cards.



"Thank you, my dear, you have cheered me up," said she as she always

did. "But best of all you have brought yourself back--for I never

saw anything like it, you ought to give your wife a scolding! What are

we to do with her? She is like a mad woman when you are away.

Doesn't see anything, doesn't remember anything," she went on,

repeating her usual phrases. "Look, Anna Timofeevna," she added to her

companion, "see what a box for cards my son has brought us!"



Belova admired the presents and was delighted with her dress

material.



Though Pierre, Natasha, Nicholas, Countess Mary, and Denisov had

much to talk about that they could not discuss before the old

countess--not that anything was hidden from her, but because she had

dropped so far behindhand in many things that had they begun to

converse in her presence they would have had to answer inopportune

questions and to repeat what they had already told her many times:

that so-and-so was dead and so-and-so was married, which she would

again be unable to remember--yet they sat at tea round the samovar

in the drawing room from habit, and Pierre answered the countess'

questions as to whether Prince Vasili had aged and whether Countess

Mary Alexeevna had sent greetings and still thought of them, and other

matters that interested no one and to which she herself was

indifferent.



Conversation of this kind, interesting to no one yet unavoidable,

continued all through teatime. All the grown-up members of the

family were assembled near the round tea table at which Sonya presided

beside the samovar. The children with their tutors and governesses had

had tea and their voices were audible from the next room. At tea all

sat in their accustomed places: Nicholas beside the stove at a small

table where his tea was handed to him; Milka, the old gray borzoi

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bitch (daughter of the first Milka), with a quite gray face and

large black eyes that seemed more prominent than ever, lay on the

armchair beside him; Denisov, whose curly hair, mustache, and whiskers

had turned half gray, sat beside countess Mary with his general's

tunic unbuttoned; Pierre sat between his wife and the old countess. He

spoke of what he knew might interest the old lady and that she could

understand. He told her of external social events and of the people

who had formed the circle of her contemporaries and had once been a

real, living, and distinct group, but who were now for the most part

scattered about the world and like herself were garnering the last

ears of the harvests they had sown in earlier years. But to the old

countess those contemporaries of hers seemed to be the only serious

and real society. Natasha saw by Pierre's animation that his visit had

been interesting and that he had much to tell them but dare not say it

before the old countess. Denisov, not being a member of the family,

did not understand Pierre's caution and being, as a malcontent, much

interested in what was occurring in Petersburg, kept urging Pierre

to tell them about what had happened in the Semenovsk regiment, then

about Arakcheev, and then about the Bible Society. Once or twice

Pierre was carried away and began to speak of these things, but

Nicholas and Natasha always brought him back to the health of Prince

Ivan and Countess Mary Alexeevna.



"Well, and all this idiocy--Gossner and Tatawinova?" Denisov

asked. "Is that weally still going on?"



"Going on?" Pierre exclaimed. "Why more than ever! The Bible Society

is the whole government now!"



"What is that, mon cher ami?" asked the countess, who had

finished her tea and evidently needed a pretext for being angry

after her meal. "What are you saying about the government? I don't

understand."



"Well, you know, Maman," Nicholas interposed, knowing how to

translate things into his mother's language, "Prince Alexander

Golitsyn has founded a society and in consequence has great influence,

they say."



"Arakcheev and Golitsyn," incautiously remarked Pierre, "are now the

whole government! And what a government! They see treason everywhere

and are afraid of everything."



"Well, and how is Prince Alexander to blame? He is a most

estimable man. I used to meet him at Mary Antonovna's," said the

countess in an offended tone; and still more offended that they all

remained silent, she went on: "Nowadays everyone finds fault. A Gospel

Society! Well, and what harm is there in that?" and she rose

(everybody else got up too) and with a severe expression sailed back

to her table in the sitting room.



The melancholy silence that followed was broken by the sounds of the

children's voices and laughter from the next room. Evidently some

jolly excitement was going on there.

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"Finished, finished!" little Natasha's gleeful yell rose above

them all.



Pierre exchanged glances with Countess Mary and Nicholas (Natasha he

never lost sight of) and smiled happily.



"That's delightful music!" said he.



"It means that Anna Makarovna has finished her stocking," said

Countess Mary.



"Oh, I'll go and see," said Pierre, jumping up. "You know," he

added, stopping at the door, "why I'm especially fond of that music?

It is always the first thing that tells me all is well. When I was

driving here today, the nearer I got to the house the more anxious I

grew. As I entered the anteroom I heard Andrusha's peals of laughter

and that meant that all was well."



"I know! I know that feeling," said Nicholas. "But I mustn't go

there--those stockings are to be a surprise for me."



Pierre went to the children, and the shouting and laughter grew

still louder.



"Come, Anna Makarovna," Pierre's voice was heard saying, "come

here into the middle of the room and at the word of command, 'One,

two,' and when I say 'three'... You stand here, and you in my arms-

well now! One, two!..." said Pierre, and a silence followed:

"three!" and a rapturously breathless cry of children's voices

filled the room. "Two, two!" they shouted.



This meant two stockings, which by a secret process known only to

herself Anna Makarovna used to knit at the same time on the same

needles, and which, when they were ready, she always triumphantly

drew, one out of the other, in the children's presence.









CHAPTER XIV





Soon after this the children came in to say good night. They

kissed everyone, the tutors and governesses made their bows, and

they went out. Only young Nicholas and his tutor remained. Dessalles

whispered to the boy to come downstairs.



"No, Monsieur Dessalles, I will ask my aunt to let me stay," replied

Nicholas Bolkonski also in a whisper.



"Ma tante, please let me stay," said he, going up to his aunt.



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His face expressed entreaty, agitation, and ecstasy. Countess Mary

glanced at him and turned to Pierre.



"When you are here he can't tear himself away," she said.



"I will bring him to you directly, Monsieur Dessalles. Good

night!" said Pierre, giving his hand to the Swiss tutor, and he turned

to young Nicholas with a smile. "You and I haven't seen anything of

one another yet... How like he is growing, Mary!" he added, addressing

Countess Mary.



"Like my father?" asked the boy, flushing crimson and looking up

at Pierre with bright, ecstatic eyes.



Pierre nodded, and went on with what he had been saying when the

children had interrupted. Countess Mary sat down doing woolwork;

Natasha did not take her eyes off her husband. Nicholas and Denisov

rose, asked for their pipes, smoked, went to fetch more tea from

Sonya--who sat weary but resolute at the samovar--and questioned

Pierre. The curly-headed, delicate boy sat with shining eyes unnoticed

in a corner, starting every now and then and muttering something to

himself, and evidently experiencing a new and powerful emotion as he

turned his curly head, with his thin neck exposed by his turn-down

collar, toward the place where Pierre sat.



The conversation turned on the contemporary gossip about those in

power, in which most people see the chief interest of home politics.

Denisov, dissatisfied with the government on account of his own

disappointments in the service, heard with pleasure of the things done

in Petersburg which seemed to him stupid, and made forcible and

sharp comments on what Pierre told them.



"One used to have to be a German--now one must dance with Tatawinova

and Madame Kwudener, and wead Ecka'tshausen and the bwethwen. Oh, they

should let that fine fellow Bonaparte lose--he'd knock all this

nonsense out of them! Fancy giving the command of the Semenov wegiment

to a fellow like that Schwa'tz!" he cried.



Nicholas, though free from Denisov's readiness to find fault with

everything, also thought that discussion of the government was a

very serious and weighty matter, and the fact that A had been

appointed Minister of This and B Governor General of That, and that

the Emperor had said so-and-so and this minister so-and-so, seemed

to him very important. And so he thought it necessary to take an

interest in these things and to question Pierre. The questions put

by these two kept the conversation from changing its ordinary

character of gossip about the higher government circles.



But Natasha, knowing all her husband's ways and ideas, saw that he

had long been wishing but had been unable to divert the conversation

to another channel and express his own deeply felt idea for the sake

of which he had gone to Petersburg to consult with his new friend

Prince Theodore, and she helped him by asking how his affairs with

Prince Theodore had gone.

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"What was it about?" asked Nicholas.



"Always the same thing," said Pierre, looking round at his

listeners. "Everybody sees that things are going so badly that they

cannot be allowed to go on so and that it is the duty of all decent

men to counteract it as far as they can."



"What can decent men do?" Nicholas inquired, frowning slightly.

"What can be done?"



"Why, this..."



"Come into my study," said Nicholas.



Natasha, who had long expected to be fetched to nurse her baby,

now heard the nurse calling her and went to the nursery. Countess Mary

followed her. The men went into the study and little Nicholas

Bolkonski followed them unnoticed by his uncle and sat down at the

writing table in a shady corner by the window.



"Well, what would you do?" asked Denisov.



"Always some fantastic schemes," said Nicholas.



"Why this," began Pierre, not sitting down but pacing the room,

sometimes stopping short, gesticulating, and lisping: "the position in

Petersburg is this: the Emperor does not look into anything. He has

abandoned himself altogether to this mysticism" (Pierre could not

tolerate mysticism in anyone now). "He seeks only for peace, and

only these people sans foi ni loi* can give it him--people who

recklessly hack at and strangle everything--Magnitski, Arakcheev,

and tutti quanti.... You will agree that if you did not look after

your estates yourself but only wanted a quiet life, the harsher your

steward was the more readily your object might be attained," he said

to Nicholas.





*Without faith or law.





"Well, what does that lead up to?" said Nicholas.



"Well, everything is going to ruin! Robbery in the law courts, in

the army nothing but flogging, drilling, and Military Settlements; the

people are tortured, enlightenment is suppressed. All that is young

and honest is crushed! Everyone sees that this cannot go on.

Everything is strained to such a degree that it will certainly break,"

said Pierre (as those who examine the actions of any government have

always said since governments began). "I told them just one thing in

Petersburg."



"Told whom?"



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"Well, you know whom," said Pierre, with a meaning glance from under

his brows. "Prince Theodore and all those. To encourage culture and

philanthropy is all very well of course. The aim is excellent but in

the present circumstances something else is needed."



At that moment Nicholas noticed the presence of his nephew. His face

darkened and he went up to the boy.



"Why are you here?"



"Why? Let him be," said Pierre, taking Nicholas by the arm and

continuing. "That is not enough, I told them. Something else is

needed. When you stand expecting the overstrained string to snap at

any moment, when everyone is expecting the inevitable catastrophe,

as many as possible must join hands as closely as they can to

withstand the general calamity. Everything that is young and strong is

being enticed away and depraved. One is lured by women, another by

honors, a third by ambition or money, and they go over to that camp.

No independent men, such as you or I, are left. What I say is widen

the scope of our society, let the mot d'ordre be not virtue alone

but independence and action as well!"



Nicholas, who had left his nephew, irritably pushed up an

armchair, sat down in it, and listened to Pierre, coughing

discontentedly and frowning more and more.



"But action with what aim?" he cried. "And what position will you

adopt toward the government?"



"Why, the position of assistants. The society need not be secret

if the government allows it. Not merely is it not hostile to

government, but it is a society of true conservatives--a society of

gentlemen in the full meaning of that word. It is only to prevent some

Pugachev or other from killing my children and yours, and Arakcheev

from sending me off to some Military Settlement. We join hands only

for the public welfare and the general safety."



"Yes, but it's a secret society and therefore a hostile and

harmful one which can only cause harm."



"Why? Did the Tugendbund which saved Europe" (they did not then

venture to suggest that Russia had saved Europe) "do any harm? The

Tugendbund is an alliance of virtue: it is love, mutual help... it

is what Christ preached on the Cross."



Natasha, who had come in during the conversation, looked joyfully at

her husband. It was not what he was saying that pleased her--that

did not even interest her, for it seemed to her that was all extremely

simple and that she had known it a long time (it seemed so to her

because she knew that it sprang from Pierre's whole soul), but it

was his animated and enthusiastic appearance that made her glad.



The boy with the thin neck stretching out from the turn-down collar-

whom everyone had forgotten--gazed at Pierre with even greater and

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more rapturous joy. Every word of Pierre's burned into his heart,

and with a nervous movement of his fingers he unconsciously broke

the sealing wax and quill pens his hands came upon on his uncle's

table.



"It is not at all what you suppose; but that is what the German

Tugendbund was, and what I am proposing."



"No, my fwiend! The Tugendbund is all vewy well for the sausage

eaters, but I don't understand it and can't even pwonounce it,"

interposed Denisov in a loud and resolute voice. "I agwee that

evewything here is wotten and howwible, but the Tugendbund I don't

understand. If we're not satisfied, let us have a bunt of our own.

That's all wight. Je suis vot'e homme!"*





*"I'm your man."





Pierre smiled, Natasha began to laugh, but Nicholas knitted his

brows still more and began proving to Pierre that there was no

prospect of any great change and that all the danger he spoke of

existed only in his imagination. Pierre maintained the contrary, and

as his mental faculties were greater and more resourceful, Nicholas

felt himself cornered. This made him still angrier, for he was fully

convinced, not by reasoning but by something within him stronger

than reason, of the justice of his opinion.



"I will tell you this," he said, rising and trying with nervously

twitching fingers to prop up his pipe in a corner, but finally

abandoning the attempt. "I can't prove it to you. You say that

everything here is rotten and that an overthrow is coming: I don't see

it. But you also say that our oath of allegiance is a conditional

matter, and to that I reply: 'You are my best friend, as you know, but

if you formed a secret society and began working against the

government--be it what it may--I know it is my duty to obey the

government. And if Arakcheev ordered me to lead a squadron against you

and cut you down, I should not hesitate an instant, but should do it.'

And you may argue about that as you like!"



An awkward silence followed these words. Natasha was the first to

speak, defending her husband and attacking her brother. Her defense

was weak and inapt but she attained her object. The conversation was

resumed, and no longer in the unpleasantly hostile tone of Nicholas'

last remark.



When they all got up to go in to supper, little Nicholas Bolkonski

went up to Pierre, pale and with shining, radiant eyes.



"Uncle Pierre, you... no... If Papa were alive... would he agree

with you?" he asked.



And Pierre suddenly realized what a special, independent, complex,

and powerful process of thought and feeling must have been going on in

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this boy during that conversation, and remembering all he had said

he regretted that the lad should have heard him. He had, however, to

give him an answer.



"Yes, I think so," he said reluctantly, and left the study.



The lad looked down and seemed now for the first time to notice what

he had done to the things on the table. He flushed and went up to

Nicholas.



"Uncle, forgive me, I did that... unintentionally," he said,

pointing to the broken sealing wax and pens.



Nicholas started angrily.



"All right, all right," he said, throwing the bits under the table.



And evidently suppressing his vexation with difficulty, he turned

away from the boy.



"You ought not to have been here at all," he said.









CHAPTER XV





The conversation at supper was not about politics or societies,

but turned on the subject Nicholas liked best--recollections of

1812. Denisov started these and Pierre was particularly agreeable

and amusing about them. The family separated on the most friendly

terms.



After supper Nicholas, having undressed in his study and given

instructions to the steward who had been waiting for him, went to

the bedroom in his dressing gown, where he found his wife still at her

table, writing.



"What are you writing, Mary?" Nicholas asked.



Countess Mary blushed. She was afraid that what she was writing

would not be understood or approved by her husband.



She had wanted to conceal what she was writing from him, but at

the same time was glad he had surprised her at it and that she would

now have to tell him.



"A diary, Nicholas," she replied, handing him a blue exercise book

filled with her firm, bold writing.



"A diary?" Nicholas repeated with a shade of irony, and he took up

the book.

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It was in French.





December 4. Today when Andrusha (her eldest boy) woke up he did

not wish to dress and Mademoiselle Louise sent for me. He was

naughty and obstinate. I tried threats, but he only grew angrier. Then

I took the matter in hand: I left him alone and began with nurse's

help to get the other children up, telling him that I did not love

him. For a long time he was silent, as if astonished, then he jumped

out of bed, ran to me in his shirt, and sobbed so that I could not

calm him for a long time. It was plain that what troubled him most was

that he had grieved me. Afterwards in the evening when I gave him

his ticket, he again began crying piteously and kissing me. One can do

anything with him by tenderness.





"What is a 'ticket'?" Nicholas inquired.



"I have begun giving the elder ones marks every evening, showing how

they have behaved."



Nicholas looked into the radiant eyes that were gazing at him, and

continued to turn over the pages and read. In the diary was set down

everything in the children's lives that seemed noteworthy to their

mother as showing their characters or suggesting general reflections

on educational methods. They were for the most part quite

insignificant trifles, but did not seem so to the mother or to the

father either, now that he read this diary about his children for

the first time.



Under the date "5" was entered:





Mitya was naughty at table. Papa said he was to have no pudding.

He had none, but looked so unhappily and greedily at the others

while they were eating! I think that punishment by depriving

children of sweets only develops their greediness. Must tell

Nicholas this.





Nicholas put down the book and looked at his wife. The radiant

eyes gazed at him questioningly: would he approve or disapprove of her

diary? There could be no doubt not only of his approval but also of

his admiration for his wife.



Perhaps it need not be done so pedantically, thought Nicholas, or

even done at all, but this untiring, continual spiritual effort of

which the sole aim was the children's moral welfare delighted him. Had

Nicholas been able to analyze his feelings he would have found that

his steady, tender, and proud love of his wife rested on his feeling

of wonder at her spirituality and at the lofty moral world, almost

beyond his reach, in which she had her being.



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He was proud of her intelligence and goodness, recognized his own

insignificance beside her in the spiritual world, and rejoiced all the

more that she with such a soul not only belonged to him but was part

of himself.



"I quite, quite approve, my dearest!" said he with a significant

look, and after a short pause he added: "And I behaved badly today.

You weren't in the study. We began disputing--Pierre and I--and I lost

my temper. But he is impossible: such a child! I don't know what would

become of him if Natasha didn't keep him in hand.... Have you any idea

why he went to Petersburg? They have formed..."



"Yes, I know," said Countess Mary. "Natasha told me."



"Well, then, you know," Nicholas went on, growing hot at the mere

recollection of their discussion, "he wanted to convince me that it is

every honest man's duty to go against the government, and that the

oath of allegiance and duty... I am sorry you weren't there. They

all fell on me--Denisov and Natasha... Natasha is absurd. How she

rules over him! And yet there need only be a discussion and she has no

words of her own but only repeats his sayings..." added Nicholas,

yielding to that irresistible inclination which tempts us to judge

those nearest and dearest to us. He forgot that what he was saying

about Natasha could have been applied word for word to himself in

relation to his wife.



"Yes, I have noticed that," said Countess Mary.



"When I told him that duty and the oath were above everything, he

started proving goodness knows what! A pity you were not there--what

would you have said?"



"As I see it you were quite right, and I told Natasha so. Pierre

says everybody is suffering, tortured, and being corrupted, and that

it is our duty to help our neighbor. Of course he is right there,"

said Countess Mary, "but he forgets that we have other duties nearer

to us, duties indicated to us by God Himself, and that though we might

expose ourselves to risks we must not risk our children."



"Yes, that's it! That's just what I said to him," put in Nicholas,

who fancied he really had said it. "But they insisted on their own

view: love of one's neighbor and Christianity--and all this in the

presence of young Nicholas, who had gone into my study and broke all

my things."



"Ah, Nicholas, do you know I am often troubled about little

Nicholas," said Countess Mary. "He is such an exceptional boy. I am

afraid I neglect him in favor of my own: we all have children and

relations while he has no one. He is constantly alone with his

thoughts."



"Well, I don't think you need reproach yourself on his account.

All that the fondest mother could do for her son you have done and are

doing for him, and of course I am glad of it. He is a fine lad, a fine

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lad! This evening he listened to Pierre in a sort of trance, and

fancy--as we were going in to supper I looked and he had broken

everything on my table to bits, and he told me of it himself at

once! I never knew him to tell an untruth. A fine lad, a fine lad!"

repeated Nicholas, who at heart was not fond of Nicholas Bolkonski but

was always anxious to recognize that he was a fine lad.



"Still, I am not the same as his own mother," said Countess Mary. "I

feel I am not the same and it troubles me. A wonderful boy, but I am

dreadfully afraid for him. It would be good for him to have

companions."



"Well it won't be for long. Next summer I'll take him to

Petersburg," said Nicholas. "Yes, Pierre always was a dreamer and

always will be," he continued, returning to the talk in the study

which had evidently disturbed him. "Well, what business is it of

mine what goes on there--whether Arakcheev is bad, and all that?

What business was it of mine when I married and was so deep in debt

that I was threatened with prison, and had a mother who could not

see or understand it? And then there are you and the children and

our affairs. Is it for my own pleasure that I am at the farm or in the

office from morning to night? No, but I know I must work to comfort my

mother, to repay you, and not to leave the children such beggars as

I was."



Countess Mary wanted to tell him that man does not live by bread

alone and that he attached too much importance to these matters. But

she knew she must not say this and that it would be useless to do

so. She only took his hand and kissed it. He took this as a sign of

approval and a confirmation of his thoughts, and after a few

minutes' reflection continued to think aloud.



"You know, Mary, today Elias Mitrofanych" (this was his overseer)

"came back from the Tambov estate and told me they are already

offering eighty thousand rubles for the forest."



And with an eager face Nicholas began to speak of the possibility of

repurchasing Otradnoe before long, and added: "Another ten years of

life and I shall leave the children... in an excellent position."



Countess Mary listened to her husband and understood all that he

told her. She knew that when he thought aloud in this way he would

sometimes ask her what he had been saying, and be vexed if he

noticed that she had been thinking about something else. But she had

to force herself to attend, for what he was saying did not interest

her at all. She looked at him and did not think, but felt, about

something different. She felt a submissive tender love for this man

who would never understand all that she understood, and this seemed to

make her love for him still stronger and added a touch of passionate

tenderness. Besides this feeling which absorbed her altogether and

hindered her from following the details of her husband's plans,

thoughts that had no connection with what he was saying flitted

through her mind. She thought of her nephew. Her husband's account

of the boy's agitation while Pierre was speaking struck her

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forcibly, and various traits of his gentle, sensitive character

recurred to her mind; and while thinking of her nephew she thought

also of her own children. She did not compare them with him, but

compared her feeling for them with her feeling for him, and felt

with regret that there was something lacking in her feeling for

young Nicholas.



Sometimes it seemed to her that this difference arose from the

difference in their ages, but she felt herself to blame toward him and

promised in her heart to do better and to accomplish the impossible-

in this life to love her husband, her children, little Nicholas, and

all her neighbors, as Christ loved mankind. Countess Mary's soul

always strove toward the infinite, the eternal, and the absolute,

and could therefore never be at peace. A stern expression of the

lofty, secret suffering of a soul burdened by the body appeared on her

face. Nicholas gazed at her. "O God! What will become of us if she

dies, as I always fear when her face is like that?" thought he, and

placing himself before the icon he began to say his evening prayers.









CHAPTER XVI





Natasha and Pierre, left alone, also began to talk as only a husband

and wife can talk, that is, with extraordinary clearness and rapidity,

understanding and expressing each other's thoughts in ways contrary to

all rules of logic, without premises, deductions, or conclusions,

and in a quite peculiar way. Natasha was so used to this kind of

talk with her husband that for her it was the surest sign of something

being wrong between them if Pierre followed a line of logical

reasoning. When he began proving anything, or talking

argumentatively and calmly and she, led on by his example, began to do

the same, she knew that they were on the verge of a quarrel.



From the moment they were alone and Natasha came up to him with

wide-open happy eyes, and quickly seizing his head pressed it to her

bosom, saying: "Now you are all mine, mine! You won't escape!"--from

that moment this conversation began, contrary to all the laws of logic

and contrary to them because quite different subjects were talked

about at one and the same time. This simultaneous discussion of many

topics did not prevent a clear understanding but on the contrary was

the surest sign that they fully understood one another.



Just as in a dream when all is uncertain, unreasoning, and

contradictory, except the feeling that guides the dream, so in this

intercourse contrary to all laws of reason, the words themselves

were not consecutive and clear but only the feeling that prompted

them.



Natasha spoke to Pierre about her brother's life and doings, of

how she had suffered and lacked life during his own absence, and of

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how she was fonder than ever of Mary, and how Mary was in every way

better than herself. In saying this Natasha was sincere in

acknowledging Mary's superiority, but at the same time by saying it

she made a demand on Pierre that he should, all the same, prefer her

to Mary and to all other women, and that now, especially after

having seen many women in Petersburg, he should tell her so afresh.



Pierre, answering Natasha's words, told her how intolerable it had

been for him to meet ladies at dinners and balls in Petersburg.



"I have quite lost the knack of talking to ladies," he said. "It was

simply dull. Besides, I was very busy."



Natasha looked intently at him and went on:



"Mary is so splendid," she said. "How she understands children! It

is as if she saw straight into their souls. Yesterday, for instance,

Mitya was naughty..."



"How like his father he is," Pierre interjected.



Natasha knew why he mentioned Mitya's likeness to Nicholas: the

recollection of his dispute with his brother-in-law was unpleasant and

he wanted to know what Natasha thought of it.



"Nicholas has the weakness of never agreeing with anything not

generally accepted. But I understand that you value what opens up a

fresh line," said she, repeating words Pierre had once uttered.



"No, the chief point is that to Nicholas ideas and discussions are

an amusement--almost a pastime," said Pierre. "For instance, he is

collecting a library and has made it a rule not to buy a new book till

he has read what he had already bought--Sismondi and Rousseau and

Montesquieu," he added with a smile. "You know how much I..." he began

to soften down what he had said; but Natasha interrupted him to show

that this was unnecessary.



"So you say ideas are an amusement to him...."



"Yes, and for me nothing else is serious. All the time in Petersburg

I saw everyone as in a dream. When I am taken up by a thought, all

else is mere amusement."



"Ah, I'm so sorry I wasn't there when you met the children," said

Natasha. "Which was most delighted? Lisa, I'm sure."



"Yes," Pierre replied, and went on with what was in his mind.

"Nicholas says we ought not to think. But I can't help it. Besides,

when I was in Petersburg I felt (I can this to you) that the whole

affair would go to pieces without me--everyone was pulling his own

way. But I succeeded in uniting them all; and then my idea is so clear

and simple. You see, I don't say that we ought to oppose this and

that. We may be mistaken. What I say is: 'Join hands, you who love the

right, and let there be but one banner--that of active virtue.' Prince

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Sergey is a fine fellow and clever."



Natasha would have had no doubt as to the greatness of Pierre's

idea, but one thing disconcerted her. "Can a man so important and

necessary to society be also my husband? How did this happen?" She

wished to express this doubt to him. "Now who could decide whether

he is really cleverer than all the others?" she asked herself, and

passed in review all those whom Pierre most respected. Judging by what

he had said there was no one he had respected so highly as Platon

Karataev.



"Do you know what I am thinking about?" she asked. "About Platon

Karataev. Would he have approved of you now, do you think?"



Pierre was not at all surprised at this question. He understood

his wife's line of thought.



"Platon Karataev?" he repeated, and pondered, evidently sincerely

trying to imagine Karataev's opinion on the subject. "He would not

have understood... yet perhaps he would."



"I love you awfully!" Natasha suddenly said. "Awfully, awfully!"



"No, he would not have approved," said Pierre, after reflection.

"What he would have approved of is our family life. He was always so

anxious to find seemliness, happiness, and peace in everything, and

I should have been proud to let him see us. There now--you talk of

my absence, but you wouldn't believe what a special feeling I have for

you after a separation...."



"Yes, I should think..." Natasha began.



"No, it's not that. I never leave off loving you. And one couldn't

love more, but this is something special.... Yes, of course-" he did

not finish because their eyes meeting said the rest.



"What nonsense it is," Natasha suddenly exclaimed, "about

honeymoons, and that the greatest happiness is at first! On the

contrary, now is the best of all. If only you did not go away! Do

you remember how we quarreled? And it was always my fault. Always

mine. And what we quarreled about--I don't even remember!"



"Always about the same thing," said Pierre with a smile. "Jealo..."



"Don't say it! I can't bear it!" Natasha cried, and her eyes

glittered coldly and vindictively. "Did you see her?" she added, after

a pause.



"No, and if I had I shouldn't have recognized her."



They were silent for a while.



"Oh, do you know? While you were talking in the study I was

looking at you," Natasha began, evidently anxious to disperse the

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cloud that had come over them. "You are as like him as two peas-

like the boy." (She meant her little son.) "Oh, it's time to go to

him.... The milk's come.... But I'm sorry to leave you."



They were silent for a few seconds. Then suddenly turning to one

another at the same time they both began to speak. Pierre began with

self-satisfaction and enthusiasm, Natasha with a quiet, happy smile.

Having interrupted one another they both stopped to let the other

continue.



"No. What did you say? Go on, go on."



"No, you go on, I was talking nonsense," said Natasha.



Pierre finished what he had begun. It was the sequel to his

complacent reflections on his success in Petersburg. At that moment it

seemed to him that he was chosen to give a new direction to the

whole of Russian society and to the whole world.



"I only wished to say that ideas that have great results are

always simple ones. My whole idea is that if vicious people are united

and constitute a power, then honest folk must do the same. Now

that's simple enough."



"Yes."



"And what were you going to say?"



"I? Only nonsense."



"But all the same?"



"Oh nothing, only a trifle," said Natasha, smilingly still more

brightly. "I only wanted to tell you about Petya: today nurse was

coming to take him from me, and he laughed, shut his eyes, and clung

to me. I'm sure he thought he was hiding. Awfully sweet! There, now

he's crying. Well, good-by!" and she left the room.





Meanwhile downstairs in young Nicholas Bolkonski's bedroom a

little lamp was burning as usual. (The boy was afraid of the dark

and they could not cure him of it.) Dessalles slept propped up on four

pillows and his Roman nose emitted sounds of rhythmic snoring.

Little Nicholas, who had just waked up in a cold perspiration, sat

up in bed and gazed before him with wide-open eyes. He had awaked from

a terrible dream. He had dreamed that he and Uncle Pierre, wearing

helmets such as were depicted in his Plutarch, were leading a huge

army. The army was made up of white slanting lines that filled the air

like the cobwebs that float about in autumn and which Dessalles called

les fils de la Vierge. In front was Glory, which was similar to

those threads but rather thicker. He and Pierre were borne along

lightly and joyously, nearer and nearer to their goal. Suddenly the

threads that moved them began to slacken and become entangled and it

grew difficult to move. And Uncle Nicholas stood before them in a

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stern and threatening attitude.



"Have you done this?" he said, pointing to some broken sealing wax

and pens. "I loved you, but I have orders from Arakcheev and will kill

the first of you who moves forward." Little Nicholas turned to look at

Pierre but Pierre was no longer there. In his place was his father-

Prince Andrew--and his father had neither shape nor form, but he

existed, and when little Nicholas perceived him he grew faint with

love: he felt himself powerless, limp, and formless. His father

caressed and pitied him. But Uncle Nicholas came nearer and nearer

to them. Terror seized young Nicholas and he awoke.



"My father!" he thought. (Though there were two good portraits of

Prince Andrew in the house, Nicholas never imagined him in human

form.) "My father has been with me and caressed me. He approved of

me and of Uncle Pierre. Whatever he may tell me, I will do it.

Mucius Scaevola burned his hand. Why should not the same sort of thing

happen to me? I know they want me to learn. And I will learn. But

someday I shall have finished learning, and then I will do

something. I only pray God that something may happen to me such as

happened to Plutarch's men, and I will act as they did. I will do

better. Everyone shall know me, love me, and be delighted with me!"

And suddenly his bosom heaved with sobs and he began to cry.



"Are you ill?" he heard Dessalles' voice asking.



"No," answered Nicholas, and lay back on his pillow.



"He is good and kind and I am fond of him!" he thought of Dessalles.

"But Uncle Pierre! Oh, what a wonderful man he is! And my father?

Oh, Father, Father! Yes, I will do something with which even he

would be satisfied...."









SECOND EPILOGUE









CHAPTER I





History is the life of nations and of humanity. To seize and put

into words, to describe directly the life of humanity or even of a

single nation, appears impossible.



The ancient historians all employed one and the same method to

describe and seize the apparently elusive--the life of a people.

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They described the activity of individuals who ruled the people, and

regarded the activity of those men as representing the activity of the

whole nation.



The question: how did individuals make nations act as they wished

and by what was the will of these individuals themselves guided? the

ancients met by recognizing a divinity which subjected the nations

to the will of a chosen man, and guided the will of that chosen man so

as to accomplish ends that were predestined.



For the ancients these questions were solved by a belief in the

direct participation of the Deity in human affairs.



Modern history, in theory, rejects both these principles.



It would seem that having rejected the belief of the ancients in

man's subjection to the Deity and in a predetermined aim toward

which nations are led, modern history should study not the

manifestations of power but the causes that produce it. But modern

history has not done this. Having in theory rejected the view held

by the ancients, it still follows them in practice.



Instead of men endowed with divine authority and directly guided

by the will of God, modern history has given us either heroes

endowed with extraordinary, superhuman capacities, or simply men of

very various kinds, from monarchs to journalists, who lead the masses.

Instead of the former divinely appointed aims of the Jewish, Greek, or

Roman nations, which ancient historians regarded as representing the

progress of humanity, modern history has postulated its own aims-

the welfare of the French, German, or English people, or, in its

highest abstraction, the welfare and civilization of humanity in

general, by which is usually meant that of the peoples occupying a

small northwesterly portion of a large continent.



Modern history has rejected the beliefs of the ancients without

replacing them by a new conception, and the logic of the situation has

obliged the historians, after they had apparently rejected the

divine authority of the kings and the "fate" of the ancients, to reach

the same conclusion by another road, that is, to recognize (1) nations

guided by individual men, and (2) the existence of a known aim to

which these nations and humanity at large are tending.



At the basis of the works of all the modern historians from Gibbon

to Buckle, despite their seeming disagreements and the apparent

novelty of their outlooks, lie those two old, unavoidable assumptions.



In the first place the historian describes the activity of

individuals who in his opinion have directed humanity (one historian

considers only monarchs, generals, and ministers as being such men,

while another includes also orators, learned men, reformers,

philosophers, and poets). Secondly, it is assumed that the goal toward

which humanity is being led is known to the historians: to one of them

this goal is the greatness of the Roman, Spanish, or French realm;

to another it is liberty, equality, and a certain kind of civilization

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of a small corner of the world called Europe.



In 1789 a ferment arises in Paris; it grows, spreads, and is

expressed by a movement of peoples from west to east. Several times it

moves eastward and collides with a countermovement from the east

westward. In 1812 it reaches its extreme limit, Moscow, and then, with

remarkable symmetry, a countermovement occurs from east to west,

attracting to it, as the first movement had done, the nations of

middle Europe. The counter movement reaches the starting point of

the first movement in the west--Paris--and subsides.



During that twenty-year period an immense number of fields were left

untilled, houses were burned, trade changed its direction, millions of

men migrated, were impoverished, or were enriched, and millions of

Christian men professing the law of love of their fellows slew one

another.



What does all this mean? Why did it happen? What made those people

burn houses and slay their fellow men? What were the causes of these

events? What force made men act so? These are the instinctive,

plain, and most legitimate questions humanity asks itself when it

encounters the monuments and tradition of that period.



For a reply to these questions the common sense of mankind turns

to the science of history, whose aim is to enable nations and humanity

to know themselves.



If history had retained the conception of the ancients it would have

said that God, to reward or punish his people, gave Napoleon power and

directed his will to the fulfillment of the divine ends, and that

reply, would have been clear and complete. One might believe or

disbelieve in the divine significance of Napoleon, but for anyone

believing in it there would have been nothing unintelligible in the

history of that period, nor would there have been any contradictions.



But modern history cannot give that reply. Science does not admit

the conception of the ancients as to the direct participation of the

Deity in human affairs, and therefore history ought to give other

answers.



Modern history replying to these questions says: you want to know

what this movement means, what caused it, and what force produced

these events? Then listen:



"Louis XIV was a very proud and self-confident man; he had such

and such mistresses and such and such ministers and he ruled France

badly. His descendants were weak men and they too ruled France

badly. And they had such and such favorites and such and such

mistresses. Moreover, certain men wrote some books at that time. At

the end of the eighteenth century there were a couple of dozen men

in Paris who began to talk about all men being free and equal. This

caused people all over France to begin to slash at and drown one

another. They killed the king and many other people. At that time

there was in France a man of genius--Napoleon. He conquered

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everybody everywhere--that is, he killed many people because he was

a great genius. And for some reason he went to kill Africans, and

killed them so well and was so cunning and wise that when he

returned to France he ordered everybody to obey him, and they all

obeyed him. Having become an Emperor he again went out to kill

people in Italy, Austria, and Prussia. And there too he killed a great

many. In Russia there was an Emperor, Alexander, who decided to

restore order in Europe and therefore fought against Napoleon. In 1807

he suddenly made friends with him, but in 1811 they again quarreled

and again began killing many people. Napoleon led six hundred thousand

men into Russia and captured Moscow; then he suddenly ran away from

Moscow, and the Emperor Alexander, helped by the advice of Stein and

others, united Europe to arm against the disturber of its peace. All

Napoleon's allies suddenly became his enemies and their forces

advanced against the fresh forces he raised. The Allies defeated

Napoleon, entered Paris, forced Napoleon to abdicate, and sent him

to the island of Elba, not depriving him of the title of Emperor and

showing him every respect, though five years before and one year later

they all regarded him as an outlaw and a brigand. Then Louis XVIII,

who till then had been the laughingstock both of the French and the

Allies, began to reign. And Napoleon, shedding tears before his Old

Guards, renounced the throne and went into exile. Then the skillful

statesmen and diplomatists (especially Talleyrand, who managed to

sit down in a particular chair before anyone else and thereby extended

the frontiers of France) talked in Vienna and by these conversations

made the nations happy or unhappy. Suddenly the diplomatists and

monarchs nearly quarreled and were on the point of again ordering

their armies to kill one another, but just then Napoleon arrived in

France with a battalion, and the French, who had been hating him,

immediately all submitted to him. But the Allied monarchs were angry

at this and went to fight the French once more. And they defeated

the genius Napoleon and, suddenly recognizing him as a brigand, sent

him to the island of St. Helena. And the exile, separated from the

beloved France so dear to his heart, died a lingering death on that

rock and bequeathed his great deeds to posterity. But in Europe a

reaction occurred and the sovereigns once again all began to oppress

their subjects."



It would be a mistake to think that this is ironic--a caricature

of the historical accounts. On the contrary it is a very mild

expression of the contradictory replies, not meeting the questions,

which all the historians give, from the compilers of memoirs and the

histories of separate states to the writers of general histories and

the new histories of the culture of that period.



The strangeness and absurdity of these replies arise from the fact

that modern history, like a deaf man, answers questions no one has

asked.



If the purpose of history be to give a description of the movement

of humanity and of the peoples, the first question--in the absence

of a reply to which all the rest will be incomprehensible--is: what is

the power that moves peoples? To this, modern history laboriously

replies either that Napoleon was a great genius, or that Louis XIV was

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very proud, or that certain writers wrote certain books.



All that may be so and mankind is ready to agree with it, but it

is not what was asked. All that would be interesting if we

recognized a divine power based on itself and always consistently

directing its nations through Napoleons, Louis-es, and writers; but we

do not acknowledge such a power, and therefore before speaking about

Napoleons, Louis-es, and authors, we ought to be shown the

connection existing between these men and the movement of the nations.



If instead of a divine power some other force has appeared, it

should be explained in what this new force consists, for the whole

interest of history lies precisely in that force.



History seems to assume that this force is self-evident and known to

everyone. But in spite of every desire to regard it as known, anyone

reading many historical works cannot help doubting whether this new

force, so variously understood by the historians themselves, is really

quite well known to everybody.









CHAPTER II





What force moves the nations?



Biographical historians and historians of separate nations

understand this force as a power inherent in heroes and rulers. In

their narration events occur solely by the will of a Napoleon, and

Alexander, or in general of the persons they describe. The answers

given by this kind of historian to the question of what force causes

events to happen are satisfactory only as long as there is but one

historian to each event. As soon as historians of different

nationalities and tendencies begin to describe the same event, the

replies they give immediately lose all meaning, for this force is

understood by them all not only differently but often in quite

contradictory ways. One historian says that an event was produced by

Napoleon's power, another that it was produced by Alexander's, a third

that it was due to the power of some other person. Besides this,

historians of that kind contradict each other even in their

statement as to the force on which the authority of some particular

person was based. Thiers, a Bonapartist, says that Napoleon's power

was based on his virtue and genius. Lanfrey, a Republican, says it was

based on his trickery and deception of the people. So the historians

of this class, by mutually destroying one another's positions, destroy

the understanding of the force which produces events, and furnish no

reply to history's essential question.



Writers of universal history who deal with all the nations seem to

recognize how erroneous is the specialist historians' view of the

force which produces events. They do not recognize it as a power

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inherent in heroes and rulers, but as the resultant of a

multiplicity of variously directed forces. In describing a war or

the subjugation of a people, a general historian looks for the cause

of the event not in the power of one man, but in the interaction of

many persons connected with the event.



According to this view the power of historical personages,

represented as the product of many forces, can no longer, it would

seem, be regarded as a force that itself produces events. Yet in

most cases universal historians still employ the conception of power

as a force that itself produces events, and treat it as their cause.

In their exposition, an historic character is first the product of his

time, and his power only the resultant of various forces, and then his

power is itself a force producing events. Gervinus, Schlosser, and

others, for instance, at one time prove Napoleon to be a product of

the Revolution, of the ideas of 1789 and so forth, and at another

plainly say that the campaign of 1812 and other things they do not

like were simply the product of Napoleon's misdirected will, and

that the very ideas of 1789 were arrested in their development by

Napoleon's caprice. The ideas of the Revolution and the general temper

of the age produced Napoleon's power. But Napoleon's power

suppressed the ideas of the Revolution and the general temper of the

age.



This curious contradiction is not accidental. Not only does it occur

at every step, but the universal historians' accounts are all made

up of a chain of such contradictions. This contradiction occurs

because after entering the field of analysis the universal

historians stop halfway.



To find component forces equal to the composite or resultant

force, the sum of the components must equal the resultant. This

condition is never observed by the universal historians, and so to

explain the resultant forces they are obliged to admit, in addition to

the insufficient components, another unexplained force affecting the

resultant action.



Specialist historians describing the campaign of 1813 or the

restoration of the Bourbons plainly assert that these events were

produced by the will of Alexander. But the universal historian

Gervinus, refuting this opinion of the specialist historian, tries

to prove that the campaign of 1813 and the restoration of the Bourbons

were due to other things beside Alexander's will--such as the activity

of Stein, Metternich, Madame de Stael, Talleyrand, Fichte

Chateaubriand, and others. The historian evidently decomposes

Alexander's power into the components: Talleyrand, Chateaubriand,

and the rest--but the sum of the components, that is, the interactions

of Chateaubriand, Talleyrand, Madame de Stael, and the others,

evidently does not equal the resultant, namely the phenomenon of

millions of Frenchmen submitting to the Bourbons. That

Chateaubriand, Madame de Stael, and others spoke certain words to

one another only affected their mutual relations but does not

account for the submission of millions. And therefore to explain how

from these relations of theirs the submission of millions of people

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resulted--that is, how component forces equal to one A gave a

resultant equal to a thousand times A--the historian is again

obliged to fall back on power--the force he had denied--and to

recognize it as the resultant of the forces, that is, he has to

admit an unexplained force acting on the resultant. And that is just

what the universal historians do, and consequently they not only

contradict the specialist historians but contradict themselves.



Peasants having no clear idea of the cause of rain, say, according

to whether they want rain or fine weather: "The wind has blown the

clouds away," or, "The wind has brought up the clouds." And in the

same way the universal historians sometimes, when it pleases them

and fits in with their theory, say that power is the result of events,

and sometimes, when they want to prove something else, say that

power produces events.



A third class of historians--the so-called historians of culture-

following the path laid down by the universal historians who sometimes

accept writers and ladies as forces producing events--again take

that force to be something quite different. They see it in what is

called culture--in mental activity.



The historians of culture are quite consistent in regard to their

progenitors, the writers of universal histories, for if historical

events may be explained by the fact that certain persons treated one

another in such and such ways, why not explain them by the fact that

such and such people wrote such and such books? Of the immense

number of indications accompanying every vital phenomenon, these

historians select the indication of intellectual activity and say that

this indication is the cause. But despite their endeavors to prove

that the cause of events lies in intellectual activity, only by a

great stretch can one admit that there is any connection between

intellectual activity and the movement of peoples, and in no case

can one admit that intellectual activity controls people's actions,

for that view is not confirmed by such facts as the very cruel murders

of the French Revolution resulting from the doctrine of the equality

of man, or the very cruel wars and executions resulting from the

preaching of love.



But even admitting as correct all the cunningly devised arguments

with which these histories are filled--admitting that nations are

governed by some undefined force called an idea--history's essential

question still remains unanswered, and to the former power of monarchs

and to the influence of advisers and other people introduced by the

universal historians, another, newer force--the idea--is added, the

connection of which with the masses needs explanation. It is

possible to understand that Napoleon had power and so events occurred;

with some effort one may even conceive that Napoleon together with

other influences was the cause of an event; but how a book, Le Contrat

social, had the effect of making Frenchmen begin to drown one

another cannot be understood without an explanation of the causal

nexus of this new force with the event.



Undoubtedly some relation exists between all who live

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contemporaneously, and so it is possible to find some connection

between the intellectual activity of men and their historical

movements, just as such a connection may be found between the

movements of humanity and commerce, handicraft, gardening, or anything

else you please. But why intellectual activity is considered by the

historians of culture to be the cause or expression of the whole

historical movement is hard to understand. Only the following

considerations can have led the historians to such a conclusion: (1)

that history is written by learned men, and so it is natural and

agreeable for them to think that the activity of their class

supplies the basis of the movement of all humanity, just as a

similar belief is natural and agreeable to traders, agriculturists,

and soldiers (if they do not express it, that is merely because

traders and soldiers do not write history), and (2) that spiritual

activity, enlightenment, civilization, culture, ideas, are all

indistinct, indefinite conceptions under whose banner it is very

easy to use words having a still less definite meaning, and which

can therefore be readily introduced into any theory.



But not to speak of the intrinsic quality of histories of this

kind (which may possibly even be of use to someone for something)

the histories of culture, to which all general histories tend more and

more to approximate, are significant from the fact that after

seriously and minutely examining various religious, philosophic, and

political doctrines as causes of events, as soon as they have to

describe an actual historic event such as the campaign of 1812 for

instance, they involuntarily describe it as resulting from an exercise

of power--and say plainly that that was the result of Napoleon's will.

Speaking so, the historians of culture involuntarily contradict

themselves, and show that the new force they have devised does not

account for what happens in history, and that history can only be

explained by introducing a power which they apparently do not

recognize.









CHAPTER III





A locomotive is moving. Someone asks: "What moves it?" A peasant

says the devil moves it. Another man says the locomotive moves because

its wheels go round. A third asserts that the cause of its movement

lies in the smoke which the wind carries away.



The peasant is irrefutable. He has devised a complete explanation.

To refute him someone would have to prove to him that there is no

devil, or another peasant would have to explain to him that it is

not the devil but a German, who moves the locomotive. Only then, as

a result of the contradiction, will they see that they are both wrong.

But the man who says that the movement of the wheels is the cause

refutes himself, for having once begun to analyze he ought to go on

and explain further why the wheels go round; and till he has reached

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the ultimate cause of the movement of the locomotive in the pressure

of steam in the boiler, he has no right to stop in his search for

the cause. The man who explains the movement of the locomotive by

the smoke that is carried back has noticed that the wheels do not

supply an explanation and has taken the first sign that occurs to

him and in his turn has offered that as an explanation.



The only conception that can explain the movement of the

locomotive is that of a force commensurate with the movement observed.



The only conception that can explain the movement of the peoples

is that of some force commensurate with the whole movement of the

peoples.



Yet to supply this conception various historians take forces of

different kinds, all of which are incommensurate with the movement

observed. Some see it as a force directly inherent in heroes, as the

peasant sees the devil in the locomotive; others as a force

resulting from several other forces, like the movement of the

wheels; others again as an intellectual influence, like the smoke that

is blown away.



So long as histories are written of separate individuals, whether

Caesars, Alexanders, Luthers, or Voltaires, and not the histories of

all, absolutely all those who take part in an event, it is quite

impossible to describe the movement of humanity without the conception

of a force compelling men to direct their activity toward a certain

end. And the only such conception known to historians is that of

power.



This conception is the one handle by means of which the material

of history, as at present expounded, can be dealt with, and anyone who

breaks that handle off, as Buckle did, without finding some other

method of treating historical material, merely deprives himself of the

one possible way of dealing with it. The necessity of the conception

of power as an explanation of historical events is best demonstrated

by the universal historians and historians of culture themselves,

for they professedly reject that conception but inevitably have

recourse to it at every step.



In dealing with humanity's inquiry, the science of history up to now

is like money in circulation--paper money and coin. The biographies

and special national histories are like paper money. They can be

used and can circulate and fulfill their purpose without harm to

anyone and even advantageously, as long as no one asks what is the

security behind them. You need only forget to ask how the will of

heroes produces events, and such histories as Thiers' will be

interesting and instructive and may perhaps even possess a tinge of

poetry. But just as doubts of the real value of paper money arise

either because, being easy to make, too much of it gets made or

because people try to exchange it for gold, so also doubts

concerning the real value of such histories arise either because too

many of them are written or because in his simplicity of heart someone

inquires: by what force did Napoleon do this?--that is, wants to

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exchange the current paper money for the real gold of actual

comprehension.



The writers of universal histories and of the history of culture are

like people who, recognizing the defects of paper money, decide to

substitute for it money made of metal that has not the specific

gravity of gold. It may indeed make jingling coin, but will do no more

than that. Paper money may deceive the ignorant, but nobody is

deceived by tokens of base metal that have no value but merely jingle.

As gold is gold only if it is serviceable not merely for exchange

but also for use, so universal historians will be valuable only when

they can reply to history's essential question: what is power? The

universal historians give contradictory replies to that question,

while the historians of culture evade it and answer something quite

different. And as counters of imitation gold can be used only among

a group of people who agree to accept them as gold, or among those who

do not know the nature of gold, so universal historians and historians

of culture, not answering humanity's essential question, serve as

currency for some purposes of their own, only in universities and

among the mass of readers who have a taste for what they call "serious

reading."









CHAPTER IV





Having abandoned the conception of the ancients as to the divine

subjection of the will of a nation to some chosen man and the

subjection of that man's will to the Deity, history cannot without

contradictions take a single step till it has chosen one of two

things: either a return to the former belief in the direct

intervention of the Deity in human affairs or a definite explanation

of the meaning of the force producing historical events and termed

"power."



A return to the first is impossible, the belief has been

destroyed; and so it is essential to explain what is meant by power.



Napoleon ordered an army to be raised and go to war. We are so

accustomed to that idea and have become so used to it that the

question: why did six hundred thousand men go to fight when Napoleon

uttered certain words, seems to us senseless. He had the power and

so what he ordered was done.



This reply is quite satisfactory if we believe that the power was

given him by God. But as soon as we do not admit that, it becomes

essential to determine what is this power of one man over others.



It cannot be the direct physical power of a strong man over a weak

one--a domination based on the application or threat of physical

force, like the power of Hercules; nor can it be based on the effect

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of moral force, as in their simplicity some historians think who say

that the leading figures in history are heroes, that is, men gifted

with a special strength of soul and mind called genius. This power

cannot be based on the predominance of moral strength, for, not to

mention heroes such as Napoleon about whose moral qualities opinions

differ widely, history shows us that neither a Louis XI nor a

Metternich, who ruled over millions of people, had any particular

moral qualities, but on the contrary were generally morally weaker

than any of the millions they ruled over.



If the source of power lies neither in the physical nor in the moral

qualities of him who possesses it, it must evidently be looked for

elsewhere--in the relation to the people of the man who wields the

power.



And that is how power is understood by the science of jurisprudence,

that exchange bank of history which offers to exchange history's

understanding of power for true gold.



Power is the collective will of the people transferred, by expressed

or tacit consent, to their chosen rulers.



In the domain of jurisprudence, which consists of discussions of how

a state and power might be arranged were it possible for all that to

be arranged, it is all very clear; but when applied to history that

definition of power needs explanation.



The science of jurisprudence regards the state and power as the

ancients regarded fire--namely, as something existing absolutely.

But for history, the state and power are merely phenomena, just as for

modern physics fire is not an element but a phenomenon.



From this fundamental difference between the view held by history

and that held by jurisprudence, it follows that jurisprudence can tell

minutely how in its opinion power should be constituted and what

power--existing immutably outside time--is, but to history's questions

about the meaning of the mutations of power in time it can answer

nothing.



If power be the collective will of the people transferred to their

ruler, was Pugachev a representative of the will of the people? If

not, then why was Napoleon I? Why was Napoleon III a criminal when

he was taken prisoner at Boulogne, and why, later on, were those

criminals whom he arrested?



Do palace revolutions--in which sometimes only two or three people

take part--transfer the will of the people to a new ruler? In

international relations, is the will of the people also transferred to

their conqueror? Was the will of the Confederation of the Rhine

transferred to Napoleon in 1806? Was the will of the Russian people

transferred to Napoleon in 1809, when our army in alliance with the

French went to fight the Austrians?



To these questions three answers are possible:

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Either to assume (1) that the will of the people is always

unconditionally transferred to the ruler or rulers they have chosen,

and that therefore every emergence of a new power, every struggle

against the power once appointed, should be absolutely regarded as

an infringement of the real power; or (2) that the will of the

people is transferred to the rulers conditionally, under definite

and known conditions, and to show that all limitations, conflicts, and

even destructions of power result from a nonobservance by the rulers

of the conditions under which their power was entrusted to them; or

(3) that the will of the people is delegated to the rulers

conditionally, but that the conditions are unknown and indefinite, and

that the appearance of several authorities, their struggles and

their falls, result solely from the greater or lesser fulfillment by

the rulers of these unknown conditions on which the will of the people

is transferred from some people to others.



And these are the three ways in which the historians do explain

the relation of the people to their rulers.



Some historians--those biographical and specialist historians

already referred to--in their simplicity failing to understand the

question of the meaning of power, seem to consider that the collective

will of the people is unconditionally transferred to historical

persons, and therefore when describing some single state they assume

that particular power to be the one absolute and real power, and

that any other force opposing this is not a power but a violation of

power--mere violence.



Their theory, suitable for primitive and peaceful periods of

history, has the inconvenience--in application to complex and stormy

periods in the life of nations during which various powers arise

simultaneously and struggle with one another--that a Legitimist

historian will prove that the National Convention, the Directory,

and Bonaparte were mere infringers of the true power, while a

Republican and a Bonapartist will prove: the one that the Convention

and the other that the Empire was the real power, and that all the

others were violations of power. Evidently the explanations

furnished by these historians being mutually contradictory can only

satisfy young children.



Recognizing the falsity of this view of history, another set of

historians say that power rests on a conditional delegation of the

will of the people to their rulers, and that historical leaders have

power only conditionally on carrying out the program that the will

of the people has by tacit agreement prescribed to them. But what this

program consists in these historians do not say, or if they do they

continually contradict one another.



Each historian, according to his view of what constitutes a nation's

progress, looks for these conditions in the greatness, wealth,

freedom, or enlightenment of citizens of France or some other country.

But not to mention the historians' contradictions as to the nature

of this program--or even admitting that some one general program of

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these conditions exists--the facts of history almost always contradict

that theory. If the conditions under which power is entrusted

consist in the wealth, freedom, and enlightenment of the people, how

is it that Louis XIV and Ivan the Terrible end their reigns

tranquilly, while Louis XVI and Charles I are executed by their

people? To this question historians reply that Louis XIV's activity,

contrary to the program, reacted on Louis XVI. But why did it not

react on Louis XIV or on Louis XV--why should it react just on Louis

XVI? And what is the time limit for such reactions? To these questions

there are and can be no answers. Equally little does this view explain

why for several centuries the collective will is not withdrawn from

certain rulers and their heirs, and then suddenly during a period of

fifty years is transferred to the Convention, to the Directory, to

Napoleon, to Alexander, to Louis XVIII, to Napoleon again, to

Charles X, to Louis Philippe, to a Republican government, and to

Napoleon III. When explaining these rapid transfers of the people's

will from one individual to another, especially in view of

international relations, conquests, and alliances, the historians

are obliged to admit that some of these transfers are not normal

delegations of the people's will but are accidents dependent on

cunning, on mistakes, on craft, or on the weakness of a diplomatist, a

ruler, or a party leader. So that the greater part of the events of

history--civil wars, revolutions, and conquests--are presented by

these historians not as the results of free transferences of the

people's will, but as results of the ill-directed will of one or

more individuals, that is, once again, as usurpations of power. And so

these historians also see and admit historical events which are

exceptions to the theory.



These historians resemble a botanist who, having noticed that some

plants grow from seeds producing two cotyledons, should insist that

all that grows does so by sprouting into two leaves, and that the

palm, the mushroom, and even the oak, which blossom into full growth

and no longer resemble two leaves, are deviations from the theory.



Historians of the third class assume that the will of the people

is transferred to historic personages conditionally, but that the

conditions are unknown to us. They say that historical personages have

power only because they fulfill the will of the people which has

been delegated to them.



But in that case, if the force that moves nations lies not in the

historic leaders but in the nations themselves, what significance have

those leaders?



The leaders, these historians tell us, express the will of the

people: the activity of the leaders represents the activity of the

people.



But in that case the question arises whether all the activity of the

leaders serves as an expression of the people's will or only some part

of it. If the whole activity of the leaders serves as the expression

of the people's will, as some historians suppose, then all the details

of the court scandals contained in the biographies of a Napoleon or

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a Catherine serve to express the life of the nation, which is

evident nonsense; but if it is only some particular side of the

activity of an historical leader which serves to express the

people's life, as other so-called "philosophical" historians

believe, then to determine which side of the activity of a leader

expresses the nation's life, we have first of all to know in what

the nation's life consists.



Met by this difficulty historians of that class devise some most

obscure, impalpable, and general abstraction which can cover all

conceivable occurrences, and declare this abstraction to be the aim of

humanity's movement. The most usual generalizations adopted by

almost all the historians are: freedom, equality, enlightenment,

progress, civilization, and culture. Postulating some generalization

as the goal of the movement of humanity, the historians study the

men of whom the greatest number of monuments have remained: kings,

ministers, generals, authors, reformers, popes, and journalists, to

the extent to which in their opinion these persons have promoted or

hindered that abstraction. But as it is in no way proved that the

aim of humanity does consist in freedom, equality, enlightenment, or

civilization, and as the connection of the people with the rulers

and enlighteners of humanity is only based on the arbitrary assumption

that the collective will of the people is always transferred to the

men whom we have noticed, it happens that the activity of the millions

who migrate, burn houses, abandon agriculture, and destroy one another

never is expressed in the account of the activity of some dozen people

who did not burn houses, practice agriculture, or slay their fellow

creatures.



History proves this at every turn. Is the ferment of the peoples

of the west at the end of the eighteenth century and their drive

eastward explained by the activity of Louis XIV, XV, and XVI, their

mistresses and ministers, and by the lives of Napoleon, Rousseau,

Diderot, Beaumarchais, and others?



Is the movement of the Russian people eastward to Kazan and

Siberia expressed by details of the morbid character of Ivan the

Terrible and by his correspondence with Kurbski?



Is the movement of the peoples at the time of the Crusades explained

by the life and activity of the Godfreys and the Louis-es and their

ladies? For us that movement of the peoples from west to east, without

leaders, with a crowd of vagrants, and with Peter the Hermit,

remains incomprehensible. And yet more incomprehensible is the

cessation of that movement when a rational and sacred aim for the

Crusade--the deliverance of Jerusalem--had been clearly defined by

historic leaders. Popes, kings, and knights incited the peoples to

free the Holy Land; but the people did not go, for the unknown cause

which had previously impelled them to go no longer existed. The

history of the Godfreys and the Minnesingers can evidently not cover

the life of the peoples. And the history of the Godfreys and the

Minnesingers has remained the history of Godfreys and Minnesingers,

but the history of the life of the peoples and their impulses has

remained unknown.

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Still less does the history of authors and reformers explain to us

the life of the peoples.



The history of culture explains to us the impulses and conditions of

life and thought of a writer or a reformer. We learn that Luther had a

hot temper and said such and such things; we learn that Rousseau was

suspicious and wrote such and such books; but we do not learn why

after the Reformation the peoples massacred one another, nor why

during the French Revolution they guillotined one another.



If we unite both these kinds of history, as is done by the newest

historians, we shall have the history of monarchs and writers, but not

the history of the life of the peoples.









CHAPTER V





The life of the nations is not contained in the lives of a few

men, for the connection between those men and the nations has not been

found. The theory that this connection is based on the transference of

the collective will of a people to certain historical personages is an

hypothesis unconfirmed by the experience of history.



The theory of the transference of the collective will of the

people to historic persons may perhaps explain much in the domain of

jurisprudence and be essential for its purposes, but in its

application to history, as soon as revolutions, conquests, or civil

wars occur--that is, as soon as history begins--that theory explains

nothing.



The theory seems irrefutable just because the act of transference of

the people's will cannot be verified, for it never occurred.



Whatever happens and whoever may stand at the head of affairs, the

theory can always say that such and such a person took the lead

because the collective will was transferred to him.



The replies this theory gives to historical questions are like the

replies of a man who, watching the movements of a herd of cattle and

paying no attention to the varying quality of the pasturage in

different parts of the field, or to the driving of the herdsman,

should attribute the direction the herd takes to what animal happens

to be at its head.



"The herd goes in that direction because the animal in front leads

it and the collective will of all the other animals is vested in

that leader." This is what historians of the first class say--those

who assume the unconditional transference of the people's will.



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"If the animals leading the herd change, this happens because the

collective will of all the animals is transferred from one leader to

another, according to whether the animal is or is not leading them

in the direction selected by the whole herd." Such is the reply

historians who assume that the collective will of the people is

delegated to rulers under conditions which they regard as known. (With

this method of observation it often happens that the observer,

influenced by the direction he himself prefers, regards those as

leaders who, owing to the people's change of direction, are no

longer in front, but on one side, or even in the rear.)



"If the animals in front are continually changing and the

direction of the whole herd is constantly altered, this is because

in order to follow a given direction the animals transfer their will

to the animals that have attracted our attention, and to study the

movements of the herd we must watch the movements of all the prominent

animals moving on all sides of the herd." So say the third class of

historians who regard all historical persons, from monarchs to

journalists, as the expression of their age.



The theory of the transference of the will of the people to historic

persons is merely a paraphrase--a restatement of the question in other

words.



What causes historical events? Power. What is power? Power is the

collective will of the people transferred to one person. Under what

condition is the will of the people delegated to one person? On

condition that that person expresses the will of the whole people.

That is, power is power: in other words, power is a word the meaning

of which we do not understand.





If the realm of human knowledge were confined to abstract reasoning,

then having subjected to criticism the explanation of "power" that

juridical science gives us, humanity would conclude that power is

merely a word and has no real existence. But to understand phenomena

man has, besides abstract reasoning, experience by which he verifies

his reflections. And experience tells us that power is not merely a

word but an actually existing phenomenon.



Not to speak of the fact that no description of the collective

activity of men can do without the conception of power, the

existence of power is proved both by history and by observing

contemporary events.



Whenever an event occurs a man appears or men appear, by whose

will the event seems to have taken place. Napoleon III issues a decree

and the French go to Mexico. The King of Prussia and Bismarck issue

decrees and an army enters Bohemia. Napoleon I issues a decree and

an army enters Russia. Alexander I gives a command and the French

submit to the Bourbons. Experience shows us that whatever event occurs

it is always related to the will of one or of several men who have

decreed it.



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The historians, in accord with the old habit of acknowledging divine

intervention in human affairs, want to see the cause of events in

the expression of the will of someone endowed with power, but that

supposition is not confirmed either by reason or by experience.



On the one side reflection shows that the expression of a man's

will--his words--are only part of the general activity expressed in an

event, as for instance in a war or a revolution, and so without

assuming an incomprehensible, supernatural force--a miracle--one

cannot admit that words can be the immediate cause of the movements of

millions of men. On the other hand, even if we admitted that words

could be the cause of events, history shows that the expression of the

will of historical personages does not in most cases produce any

effect, that is to say, their commands are often not executed, and

sometimes the very opposite of what they order occurs.



Without admitting divine intervention in the affairs of humanity

we cannot regard "power" as the cause of events.



Power, from the standpoint of experience, is merely the relation

that exists between the expression of someone's will and the execution

of that will by others.



To explain the conditions of that relationship we must first

establish a conception of the expression of will, referring it to

man and not to the Deity.



If the Deity issues a command, expresses His will, as ancient

history tells us, the expression of that will is independent of time

and is not caused by anything, for the Divinity is not controlled by

an event. But speaking of commands that are the expression of the will

of men acting in time and in relation to one another, to explain the

connection of commands with events we must restore: (1) the

condition of all that takes place: the continuity of movement in

time both of the events and of the person who commands, and (2) the

inevitability of the connection between the person commanding and

those who execute his command.









CHAPTER VI





Only the expression of the will of the Deity, not dependent on time,

can relate to a whole series of events occurring over a period of

years or centuries, and only the Deity, independent of everything, can

by His sole will determine the direction of humanity's movement; but

man acts in time and himself takes part in what occurs.



Reinstating the first condition omitted, that of time, we see that

no command can be executed without some preceding order having been

given rendering the execution of the last command possible.

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No command ever appears spontaneously, or itself covers a whole

series of occurrences; but each command follows from another, and

never refers to a whole series of events but always to one moment only

of an event.



When, for instance, we say that Napoleon ordered armies to go to

war, we combine in one simultaneous expression a whole series of

consecutive commands dependent one on another. Napoleon could not have

commanded an invasion of Russia and never did so. Today he ordered

such and such papers to be written to Vienna, to Berlin, and to

Petersburg; tomorrow such and such decrees and orders to the army, the

fleet, the commissariat, and so on and so on--millions of commands,

which formed a whole series corresponding to a series of events

which brought the French armies into Russia.



If throughout his reign Napoleon gave commands concerning an

invasion of England and expended on no other undertaking so much

time and effort, and yet during his whole reign never once attempted

to execute that design but undertook an expedition into Russia, with

which country he considered it desirable to be in alliance (a

conviction he repeatedly expressed)--this came about because his

commands did not correspond to the course of events in the first case,

but did so correspond in the latter.



For an order to be certainly executed, it is necessary that a man

should order what can be executed. But to know what can and what

cannot be executed is impossible, not only in the case of Napoleon's

invasion of Russia in which millions participated, but even in the

simplest event, for in either case millions of obstacles may arise

to prevent its execution. Every order executed is always one of an

immense number unexecuted. All the impossible orders inconsistent with

the course of events remain unexecuted. Only the possible ones get

linked up with a consecutive series of commands corresponding to a

series of events, and are executed.



Our false conception that an event is caused by a command which

precedes it is due to the fact that when the event has taken place and

out of thousands of others those few commands which were consistent

with that event have been executed, we forget about the others that

were not executed because they could not be. Apart from that, the

chief source of our error in this matter is due to the fact that in

the historical accounts a whole series of innumerable, diverse, and

petty events, such for instance as all those which led the French

armies to Russia, is generalized into one event in accord with the

result produced by that series of events, and corresponding with

this generalization the whole series of commands is also generalized

into a single expression of will.



We say that Napoleon wished to invade Russia and invaded it. In

reality in all Napoleon's activity we never find anything resembling

an expression of that wish, but find a series of orders, or

expressions of his will, very variously and indefinitely directed.

Amid a long series of unexecuted orders of Napoleon's one series,

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for the campaign of 1812, was carried out--not because those orders

differed in any way from the other, unexecuted orders but because they

coincided with the course of events that led the French army into

Russia; just as in stencil work this or that figure comes out not

because the color was laid on from this side or in that way, but

because it was laid on from all sides over the figure cut in the

stencil.



So that examining the relation in time of the commands to the

events, we find that a command can never be the cause of the event,

but that a certain definite dependence exists between the two.



To understand in what this dependence consists it is necessary to

reinstate another omitted condition of every command proceeding not

from the Deity but from a man, which is, that the man who gives the

command himself takes part in.



This relation of the commander to those he commands is just what

is called power. This relation consists in the following:



For common action people always unite in certain combinations, in

which regardless of the difference of the aims set for the common

action, the relation between those taking part in it is always the

same.



Men uniting in these combinations always assume such relations

toward one another that the larger number take a more direct share,

and the smaller number a less direct share, in the collective action

for which they have combined.



Of all the combinations in which men unite for collective action one

of the most striking and definite examples is an army.



Every army is composed of lower grades of the service--the rank

and file--of whom there are always the greatest number; of the next

higher military rank--corporals and noncommissioned officers of whom

there are fewer, and of still-higher officers of whom there are

still fewer, and so on to the highest military command which is

concentrated in one person.



A military organization may be quite correctly compared to a cone,

of which the base with the largest diameter consists of the rank and

file; the next higher and smaller section of the cone consists of

the next higher grades of the army, and so on to the apex, the point

of which will represent the commander in chief.



The soldiers, of whom there are the most, form the lower section

of the cone and its base. The soldier himself does the stabbing,

hacking, burning, and pillaging, and always receives orders for

these actions from men above him; he himself never gives an order. The

noncommissioned officers (of whom there are fewer) perform the

action itself less frequently than the soldiers, but they already give

commands. An officer still less often acts directly himself, but

commands still more frequently. A general does nothing but command the

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troops, indicates the objective, and hardly ever uses a weapon

himself. The commander in chief never takes direct part in the

action itself, but only gives general orders concerning the movement

of the mass of the troops. A similar relation of people to one another

is seen in every combination of men for common activity--in

agriculture, trade, and every administration.



And so without particularly analyzing all the contiguous sections of

a cone and of the ranks of an army, or the ranks and positions in

any administrative or public business whatever from the lowest to

the highest, we see a law by which men, to take associated action,

combine in such relations that the more directly they participate in

performing the action the less they can command and the more

numerous they are, while the less their direct participation in the

action itself, the more they command and the fewer of them there

are; rising in this way from the lowest ranks to the man at the top,

who takes the least direct share in the action and directs his

activity chiefly to commanding.



This relation of the men who command to those they command is what

constitutes the essence of the conception called power.



Having restored the condition of time under which all events

occur, find that a command is executed only when it is related to a

corresponding series of events. Restoring the essential condition of

relation between those who command and those who execute, we find that

by the very nature of the case those who command take the smallest

part in the action itself and that their activity is exclusively

directed to commanding.









CHAPTER VII





When an event is taking place people express their opinions and

wishes about it, and as the event results from the collective activity

of many people, some one of the opinions or wishes expressed is sure

to be fulfilled if but approximately. When one of the opinions

expressed is fulfilled, that opinion gets connected with the event

as a command preceding it.



Men are hauling a log. Each of them expresses his opinion as to

how and where to haul it. They haul the log away, and it happens

that this is done as one of them said. He ordered it. There we have

command and power in their primary form. The man who worked most

with his hands could not think so much about what he was doing, or

reflect on or command what would result from the common activity;

while the man who commanded more would evidently work less with his

hands on account of his greater verbal activity.



When some larger concourse of men direct their activity to a

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common aim there is a yet sharper division of those who, because their

activity is given to directing and commanding, take less less part

in the direct work.



When a man works alone he always has a certain set of reflections

which as it seems to him directed his past activity, justify his

present activity, and guide him in planning his future actions. Just

the same is done by a concourse of people, allowing those who do not

take a direct part in the activity to devise considerations,

justifications, and surmises concerning their collective activity.



For reasons known or unknown to us the French began to drown and

kill one another. And corresponding to the event its justification

appears in people's belief that this was necessary for the welfare

of France, for liberty, and for equality. People ceased to kill one

another, and this event was accompanied by its justification in the

necessity for a centralization of power, resistance to Europe, and

so on. Men went from the west to the east killing their fellow men,

and the event was accompanied by phrases about the glory of France,

the baseness of England, and so on. History shows us that these

justifications of the events have no common sense and are all

contradictory, as in the case of killing a man as the result of

recognizing his rights, and the killing of millions in Russia for

the humiliation of England. But these justifications have a very

necessary significance in their own day.



These justifications release those who produce the events from moral

responsibility. These temporary aims are like the broom fixed in front

of a locomotive to clear the snow from the rails in front: they

clear men's moral responsibilities from their path.



Without such justification there would be no reply to the simplest

question that presents itself when examining each historical event.

How is it that millions of men commit collective crimes--make war,

commit murder, and so on?



With the present complex forms of political and social life in

Europe can any event that is not prescribed, decreed, or ordered by

monarchs, ministers, parliaments, or newspapers be imagined? Is

there any collective action which cannot find its justification in

political unity, in patriotism, in the balance of power, or in

civilization? So that every event that occurs inevitably coincides

with some expressed wish and, receiving a justification, presents

itself as the result of the will of one man or of several men.



In whatever direction a ship moves, the flow of the waves it cuts

will always be noticeable ahead of it. To those on board the ship

the movement of those waves will be the only perceptible motion.



Only by watching closely moment by moment the movement of that

flow and comparing it with the movement of the ship do we convince

ourselves that every bit of it is occasioned by the forward movement

of the ship, and that we were led into error by the fact that we

ourselves were imperceptibly moving.

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We see the same if we watch moment by moment the movement of

historical characters (that is, re-establish the inevitable

condition of all that occurs--the continuity of movement in time)

and do not lose sight of the essential connection of historical

persons with the masses.



When the ship moves in one direction there is one and the same

wave ahead of it, when it turns frequently the wave ahead of it also

turns frequently. But wherever it may turn there always will be the

wave anticipating its movement.



Whatever happens it always appears that just that event was foreseen

and decreed. Wherever the ship may go, the rush of water which neither

directs nor increases its movement foams ahead of it, and at a

distance seems to us not merely to move of itself but to govern the

ship's movement also.





Examining only those expressions of the will of historical persons

which, as commands, were related to events, historians have assumed

that the events depended on those commands. But examining the events

themselves and the connection in which the historical persons stood to

the people, we have found that they and their orders were dependent on

events. The incontestable proof of this deduction is that, however

many commands were issued, the event does not take place unless

there are other causes for it, but as soon as an event occurs--be it

what it may--then out of all the continually expressed wishes of

different people some will always be found which by their meaning

and their time of utterance are related as commands to the events.



Arriving at this conclusion we can reply directly and positively

to these two essential questions of history:



(1) What is power?



(2) What force produces the movement of the nations?



(1) Power is the relation of a given person to other individuals, in

which the more this person expresses opinions, predictions, and

justifications of the collective action that is performed, the less is

his participation in that action.



(2) The movement of nations is caused not by power, nor by

intellectual activity, nor even by a combination of the two as

historians have supposed, but by the activity of all the people who

participate in the events, and who always combine in such a way that

those taking the largest direct share in the event take on

themselves the least responsibility and vice versa.



Morally the wielder of power appears to cause the event;

physically it is those who submit to the power. But as the moral

activity is inconceivable without the physical, the cause of the event

is neither in the one nor in the other but in the union of the two.

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Or in other words, the conception of a cause is inapplicable to

the phenomena we are examining.



In the last analysis we reach the circle of infinity--that final

limit to which in every domain of thought man's reason arrives if it

is not playing with the subject. Electricity produces heat, heat

produces electricity. Atoms attract each other and atoms repel one

another.



Speaking of the interaction of heat and electricity and of atoms, we

cannot say why this occurs, and we say that it is so because it is

inconceivable otherwise, because it must be so and that it is a law.

The same applies to historical events. Why war and revolution occur we

do not know. We only know that to produce the one or the other action,

people combine in a certain formation in which they all take part, and

we say that this is so because it is unthinkable otherwise, or in

other words that it is a law.









CHAPTER VIII





If history dealt only with external phenomena, the establishment

of this simple and obvious law would suffice and we should have

finished our argument. But the law of history relates to man. A

particle of matter cannot tell us that it does not feel the law of

attraction or repulsion and that that law is untrue, but man, who is

the subject of history, says plainly: I am free and am therefore not

subject to the law.



The presence of the problem of man's free will, though

unexpressed, is felt at every step of history.



All seriously thinking historians have involuntarily encountered

this question. All the contradictions and obscurities of history and

the false path historical science has followed are due solely to the

lack of a solution of that question.



If the will of every man were free, that is, if each man could act

as he pleased, all history would be a series of disconnected

incidents.



If in a thousand years even one man in a million could act freely,

that is, as he chose, it is evident that one single free act of that

man's in violation of the laws governing human action would destroy

the possibility of the existence of any laws for the whole of

humanity.



If there be a single law governing the actions of men, free will

cannot exist, for then man's will is subject to that law.

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In this contradiction lies the problem of free will, which from most

ancient times has occupied the best human minds and from most

ancient times has been presented in its whole tremendous significance.



The problem is that regarding man as a subject of observation from

whatever point of view--theological, historical, ethical, or

philosophic--we find a general law of necessity to which he (like

all that exists) is subject. But regarding him from within ourselves

as what we are conscious of, we feel ourselves to be free.



This consciousness is a source of self-cognition quite apart from

and independent of reason. Through his reason man observes himself,

but only through consciousness does he know himself.



Apart from consciousness of self no observation or application of

reason is conceivable.



To understand, observe, and draw conclusions, man must first of

all be conscious of himself as living. A man is only conscious of

himself as a living being by the fact that he wills, that is, is

conscious of his volition. But his will--which forms the essence of

his life--man recognizes (and can but recognize) as free.



If, observing himself, man sees that his will is always directed

by one and the same law (whether he observes the necessity of taking

food, using his brain, or anything else) he cannot recognize this

never-varying direction of his will otherwise than as a limitation

of it. Were it not free it could not be limited. A man's will seems to

him to be limited just because he is not conscious of it except as

free.



You say: I am not and am not free. But I have lifted my hand and let

it fall. Everyone understands that this illogical reply is an

irrefutable demonstration of freedom.



That reply is the expression of a consciousness that is not

subject to reason.



If the consciousness of freedom were not a separate and

independent source of self-consciousness it would be subject to

reasoning and to experience, but in fact such subjection does not

exist and is inconceivable.



A series of experiments and arguments proves to every man that he,

as an object of observation, is subject to certain laws, and man

submits to them and never resists the laws of gravity or

impermeability once he has become acquainted with them. But the same

series of experiments and arguments proves to him that the complete

freedom of which he is conscious in himself is impossible, and that

his every action depends on his organization, his character, and the

motives acting upon him; yet man never submits to the deductions of

these experiments and arguments. Having learned from experiment and

argument that a stone falls downwards, a man indubitably believes this

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and always expects the law that he has learned to be fulfilled.



But learning just as certainly that his will is subject to laws,

he does not and cannot believe this.



However often experiment and reasoning may show a man that under the

same conditions and with the same character he will do the same

thing as before, yet when under the same conditions and with the

same character he approaches for the thousandth time the action that

always ends in the same way, he feels as certainly convinced as before

the experiment that he can act as he pleases. Every man, savage or

sage, however incontestably reason and experiment may prove to him

that it is impossible to imagine two different courses of action in

precisely the same conditions, feels that without this irrational

conception (which constitutes the essence of freedom) he cannot

imagine life. He feels that however impossible it may be, it is so,

for without this conception of freedom not only would he be unable

to understand life, but he would be unable to live for a single

moment.



He could not live, because all man's efforts, all his impulses to

life, are only efforts to increase freedom. Wealth and poverty, fame

and obscurity, power and subordination, strength and weakness,

health and disease, culture and ignorance, work and leisure, repletion

and hunger, virtue and vice, are only greater or lesser degrees of

freedom.



A man having no freedom cannot be conceived of except as deprived of

life.



If the conception of freedom appears to reason to be a senseless

contradiction like the possibility of performing two actions at one

and the same instant of time, or of an effect without a cause, that

only proves that consciousness is not subject to reason.



This unshakable, irrefutable consciousness of freedom,

uncontrolled by experiment or argument, recognized by all thinkers and

felt by everyone without exception, this consciousness without which

no conception of man is possible constitutes the other side of the

question.



Man is the creation of an all-powerful, all-good, and all-seeing

God. What is sin, the conception of which arises from the

consciousness of man's freedom? That is a question for theology.



The actions of men are subject to general immutable laws expressed

in statistics. What is man's responsibility to society, the conception

of which results from the conception of freedom? That is a question

for jurisprudence.



Man's actions proceed from his innate character and the motives

acting upon him. What is conscience and the perception of right and

wrong in actions that follows from the consciousness of freedom?

That is a question for ethics.

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Man in connection with the general life of humanity appears

subject to laws which determine that life. But the same man apart from

that connection appears to free. How should the past life of nations

and of humanity be regarded--as the result of the free, or as the

result of the constrained, activity of man? That is a question for

history.



Only in our self-confident day of the popularization of knowledge-

thanks to that most powerful engine of ignorance, the diffusion of

printed matter--has the question of the freedom of will been put on

a level on which the question itself cannot exist. In our time the

majority of so-called advanced people--that is, the crowd of

ignoramuses--have taken the work of the naturalists who deal with

one side of the question for a solution of the whole problem.



They say and write and print that the soul and freedom do not exist,

for the life of man is expressed by muscular movements and muscular

movements are conditioned by the activity of the nerves; the soul

and free will do not exist because at an unknown period of time we

sprang from the apes. They say this, not at all suspecting that

thousands of years ago that same law of necessity which with such

ardor they are now trying to prove by physiology and comparative

zoology was not merely acknowledged by all the religions and all the

thinkers, but has never been denied. They do not see that the role

of the natural sciences in this matter is merely to serve as an

instrument for the illumination of one side of it. For the fact

that, from the point of view of observation, reason and the will are

merely secretions of the brain, and that man following the general law

may have developed from lower animals at some unknown period of

time, only explains from a fresh side the truth admitted thousands

of years ago by all the religious and philosophic theories--that

from the point of view of reason man is subject to the law of

necessity; but it does not advance by a hair's breadth the solution of

the question, which has another, opposite, side, based on the

consciousness of freedom.



If men descended from the apes at an unknown period of time, that is

as comprehensible as that they were made from a handful of earth at

a certain period of time (in the first case the unknown quantity is

the time, in the second case it is the origin); and the question of

how man's consciousness of freedom is to be reconciled with the law of

necessity to which he is subject cannot be solved by comparative

physiology and zoology, for in a frog, a rabbit, or an ape, we can

observe only the muscular nervous activity, but in man we observe

consciousness as well as the muscular and nervous activity.



The naturalists and their followers, thinking they can solve this

question, are like plasterers set to plaster one side of the walls

of a church who, availing themselves of the absence of the chief

superintendent of the work, should in an access of zeal plaster over

the windows, icons, woodwork, and still unbuttressed walls, and should

be delighted that from their point of view as plasterers, everything

is now so smooth and regular.

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CHAPTER IX





For the solution of the question of free will or inevitability,

history has this advantage over other branches of knowledge in which

the question is dealt with, that for history this question does not

refer to the essence of man's free will but its manifestation in the

past and under certain conditions.



In regard to this question, history stands to the other sciences

as experimental science stands to abstract science.



The subject for history is not man's will itself but our

presentation of it.



And so for history, the insoluble mystery presented by the

incompatibility of free will and inevitability does not exist as it

does for theology, ethics, and philosophy. History surveys a

presentation of man's life in which the union of these two

contradictions has already taken place.



In actual life each historic event, each human action, is very

clearly and definitely understood without any sense of

contradiction, although each event presents itself as partly free

and partly compulsory.



To solve the question of how freedom and necessity are combined

and what constitutes the essence of these two conceptions, the

philosophy of history can and should follow a path contrary to that

taken by other sciences. Instead of first defining the conceptions

of freedom and inevitability in themselves, and then ranging the

phenomena of life under those definitions, history should deduce a

definition of the conception of freedom and inevitability themselves

from the immense quantity of phenomena of which it is cognizant and

that always appear dependent on these two elements.



Whatever presentation of the activity of many men or of an

individual we may consider, we always regard it as the result partly

of man's free will and partly of the law of inevitability.



Whether we speak of the migration of the peoples and the

incursions of the barbarians, or of the decrees of Napoleon III, or of

someone's action an hour ago in choosing one direction out of

several for his walk, we are unconscious of any contradiction. The

degree of freedom and inevitability governing the actions of these

people is clearly defined for us.



Our conception of the degree of freedom often varies according to

differences in the point of view from which we regard the event, but

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every human action appears to us as a certain combination of freedom

and inevitability. In every action we examine we see a certain measure

of freedom and a certain measure of inevitability. And always the more

freedom we see in any action the less inevitability do we perceive,

and the more inevitability the less freedom.



The proportion of freedom to inevitability decreases and increases

according to the point of view from which the action is regarded,

but their relation is always one of inverse proportion.



A sinking man who clutches at another and drowns him; or a hungry

mother exhausted by feeding her baby, who steals some food; or a man

trained to discipline who on duty at the word of command kills a

defenseless man--seem less guilty, that is, less free and more subject

to the law of necessity, to one who knows the circumstances in which

these people were placed, and more free to one who does not know

that the man was himself drowning, that the mother was hungry, that

the soldier was in the ranks, and so on. Similarly a man who committed

a murder twenty years ago and has since lived peaceably and harmlessly

in society seems less guilty and his action more due to the law of

inevitability, to someone who considers his action after twenty

years have elapsed than to one who examined it the day after it was

committed. And in the same way every action of an insane, intoxicated,

or highly excited man appears less free and more inevitable to one who

knows the mental condition of him who committed the action, and

seems more free and less inevitable to one who does not know it. In

all these cases the conception of freedom is increased or diminished

and the conception of compulsion is correspondingly decreased or

increased, according to the point of view from which the action is

regarded. So that the greater the conception of necessity the

smaller the conception of freedom and vice versa.



Religion, the common sense of mankind, the science of jurisprudence,

and history itself understand alike this relation between necessity

and freedom.



All cases without exception in which our conception of freedom and

necessity is increased and diminished depend on three considerations:



(1) The relation to the external world of the man who commits the

deeds.



(2) His relation to time.



(3) His relation to the causes leading to the action.



The first consideration is the clearness of our perception of the

man's relation to the external world and the greater or lesser

clearness of our understanding of the definite position occupied by

the man in relation to everything coexisting with him. This is what

makes it evident that a drowning man is less free and more subject

to necessity than one standing on dry ground, and that makes the

actions of a man closely connected with others in a thickly

populated district, or of one bound by family, official, or business

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duties, seem certainly less free and more subject to necessity than

those of a man living in solitude and seclusion.



If we consider a man alone, apart from his relation to everything

around him, each action of his seems to us free. But if we see his

relation to anything around him, if we see his connection with

anything whatever--with a man who speaks to him, a book he reads,

the work on which he is engaged, even with the air he breathes or

the light that falls on the things about him--we see that each of

these circumstances has an influence on him and controls at least some

side of his activity. And the more we perceive of these influences the

more our conception of his freedom diminishes and the more our

conception of the necessity that weighs on him increases.



The second consideration is the more or less evident time relation

of the man to the world and the clearness of our perception of the

place the man's action occupies in time. That is the ground which

makes the fall of the first man, resulting in the production of the

human race, appear evidently less free than a man's entry into

marriage today. It is the reason why the life and activity of people

who lived centuries ago and are connected with me in time cannot

seem to me as free as the life of a contemporary, the consequences

of which are still unknown to me.



The degree of our conception of freedom or inevitability depends

in this respect on the greater or lesser lapse of time between the

performance of the action and our judgment of it.



If I examine an act I performed a moment ago in approximately the

same circumstances as those I am in now, my action appears to me

undoubtedly free. But if I examine an act performed a month ago,

then being in different circumstances, I cannot help recognizing

that if that act had not been committed much that resulted from it-

good, agreeable, and even essential--would not have taken place. If

I reflect on an action still more remote, ten years ago or more,

then the consequences of my action are still plainer to me and I

find it hard to imagine what would have happened had that action not

been performed. The farther I go back in memory, or what is the same

thing the farther I go forward in my judgment, the more doubtful

becomes my belief in the freedom of my action.



In history we find a very similar progress of conviction

concerning the part played by free will in the general affairs of

humanity. A contemporary event seems to us to be indubitably the doing

of all the known participants, but with a more remote event we already

see its inevitable results which prevent our considering anything else

possible. And the farther we go back in examining events the less

arbitrary do they appear.



The Austro-Prussian war appears to us undoubtedly the result of

the crafty conduct of Bismarck, and so on. The Napoleonic wars still

seem to us, though already questionably, to be the outcome of their

heroes' will. But in the Crusades we already see an event occupying

its definite place in history and without which we cannot imagine

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the modern history of Europe, though to the chroniclers of the

Crusades that event appeared as merely due to the will of certain

people. In regard to the migration of the peoples it does not enter

anyone's head today to suppose that the renovation of the European

world depended on Attila's caprice. The farther back in history the

object of our observation lies, the more doubtful does the free will

of those concerned in the event become and the more manifest the law

of inevitability.



The third consideration is the degree to which we apprehend that

endless chain of causation inevitably demanded by reason, in which

each phenomenon comprehended, and therefore man's every action, must

have its definite place as a result of what has gone before and as a

cause of what will follow.



The better we are acquainted with the physiological,

psychological, and historical laws deduced by observation and by which

man is controlled, and the more correctly we perceive the

physiological, psychological, and historical causes of the action, and

the simpler the action we are observing and the less complex the

character and mind of the man in question, the more subject to

inevitability and the less free do our actions and those of others

appear.



When we do not at all understand the cause of an action, whether a

crime, a good action, or even one that is simply nonmoral, we

ascribe a greater amount of freedom to it. In the case of a crime we

most urgently demand the punishment for such an act; in the case of

a virtuous act we rate its merit most highly. In an indifferent case

we recognize in it more individuality, originality, and

independence. But if even one of the innumerable causes of the act

is known to us we recognize a certain element of necessity and are

less insistent on punishment for the crime, or the acknowledgment of

the merit of the virtuous act, or the freedom of the apparently

original action. That a criminal was reared among male factors

mitigates his fault in our eyes. The self-sacrifice of a father or

mother, or self-sacrifice with the possibility of a reward, is more

comprehensible than gratuitous self-sacrifice, and therefore seems

less deserving of sympathy and less the result of free will. The

founder of a sect or party, or an inventor, impresses us less when

we know how or by what the way was prepared for his activity. If we

have a large range of examples, if our observation is constantly

directed to seeking the correlation of cause and effect in people's

actions, their actions appear to us more under compulsion and less

free the more correctly we connect the effects with the causes. If

we examined simple actions and had a vast number of such actions under

observation, our conception of their inevitability would be still

greater. The dishonest conduct of the son of a dishonest father, the

misconduct of a woman who had fallen into bad company, a drunkard's

relapse into drunkenness, and so on are actions that seem to us less

free the better we understand their cause. If the man whose actions we

are considering is on a very low stage of mental development, like a

child, a madman, or a simpleton--then, knowing the causes of the act

and the simplicity of the character and intelligence in question, we

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see so large an element of necessity and so little free will that as

soon as we know the cause prompting the action we can foretell the

result.



On these three considerations alone is based the conception of

irresponsibility for crimes and the extenuating circumstances admitted

by all legislative codes. The responsibility appears greater or less

according to our greater or lesser knowledge of the circumstances in

which the man was placed whose action is being judged, and according

to the greater or lesser interval of time between the commission of

the action and its investigation, and according to the greater or

lesser understanding of the causes that led to the action.









CHAPTER X





Thus our conception of free will and inevitability gradually

diminishes or increases according to the greater or lesser

connection with the external world, the greater or lesser remoteness

of time, and the greater or lesser dependence on the causes in

relation to which we contemplate a man's life.



So that if we examine the case of a man whose connection with the

external world is well known, where the time between the action and

its examination is great, and where the causes of the action are

most accessible, we get the conception of a maximum of inevitability

and a minimum of free will. If we examine a man little dependent on

external conditions, whose action was performed very recently, and the

causes of whose action are beyond our ken, we get the conception of

a minimum of inevitability and a maximum of freedom.



In neither case--however we may change our point of view, however

plain we may make to ourselves the connection between the man and

the external world, however inaccessible it may be to us, however long

or short the period of time, however intelligible or

incomprehensible the causes of the action may be--can we ever conceive

either complete freedom or complete necessity.



(1) To whatever degree we may imagine a man to be exempt from the

influence of the external world, we never get a conception of

freedom in space. Every human action is inevitably conditioned by what

surrounds him and by his own body. I lift my arm and let it fall. My

action seems to me free; but asking myself whether I could raise my

arm in every direction, I see that I raised it in the direction in

which there was least obstruction to that action either from things

around me or from the construction of my own body. I chose one out

of all the possible directions because in it there were fewest

obstacles. For my action to be free it was necessary that it should

encounter no obstacles. To conceive of a man being free we must

imagine him outside space, which is evidently impossible.

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(2) However much we approximate the time of judgment to the time

of the deed, we never get a conception of freedom in time. For if I

examine an action committed a second ago I must still recognize it

as not being free, for it is irrevocably linked to the moment at which

it was committed. Can I lift my arm? I lift it, but ask myself:

could I have abstained from lifting my arm at the moment that has

already passed? To convince myself of this I do not lift it the next

moment. But I am not now abstaining from doing so at the first

moment when I asked the question. Time has gone by which I could not

detain, the arm I then lifted is no longer the same as the arm I now

refrain from lifting, nor is the air in which I lifted it the same

that now surrounds me. The moment in which the first movement was made

is irrevocable, and at that moment I could make only one movement, and

whatever movement I made would be the only one. That I did not lift my

arm a moment later does not prove that I could have abstained from

lifting it then. And since I could make only one movement at that

single moment of time, it could not have been any other. To imagine it

as free, it is necessary to imagine it in the present, on the boundary

between the past and the future--that is, outside time, which is

impossible.



(3) However much the difficulty of understanding the causes may be

increased, we never reach a conception of complete freedom, that is,

an absence of cause. However inaccessible to us may be the cause of

the expression of will in any action, our own or another's, the

first demand of reason is the assumption of and search for a cause,

for without a cause no phenomenon is conceivable. I raise my arm to

perform an action independently of any cause, but my wish to perform

an action without a cause is the cause of my action.



But even if--imagining a man quite exempt from all influences,

examining only his momentary action in the present, unevoked by any

cause--we were to admit so infinitely small a remainder of

inevitability as equaled zero, we should even then not have arrived at

the conception of complete freedom in man, for a being uninfluenced by

the external world, standing outside of time and independent of cause,

is no longer a man.



In the same way we can never imagine the action of a man quite

devoid of freedom and entirely subject to the law of inevitability.



(1) However we may increase our knowledge of the conditions of space

in which man is situated, that knowledge can never be complete, for

the number of those conditions is as infinite as the infinity of

space. And therefore so long as not all the conditions influencing men

are defined, there is no complete inevitability but a certain

measure of freedom remains.



(2) However we may prolong the period of time between the action

we are examining and the judgment upon it, that period will be finite,

while time is infinite, and so in this respect too there can never

be absolute inevitability.



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(3) However accessible may be the chain of causation of any

action, we shall never know the whole chain since it is endless, and

so again we never reach absolute inevitability.



But besides this, even if, admitting the remaining minimum of

freedom to equal zero, we assumed in some given case--as for

instance in that of a dying man, an unborn babe, or an idiot--complete

absence of freedom, by so doing we should destroy the very

conception of man in the case we are examining, for as soon as there

is no freedom there is also no man. And so the conception of the

action of a man subject solely to the law of inevitability without any

element of freedom is just as impossible as the conception of a

man's completely free action.



And so to imagine the action of a man entirely subject to the law of

inevitability without any freedom, we must assume the knowledge of

an infinite number of space relations, an infinitely long period of

time, and an infinite series of causes.



To imagine a man perfectly free and not subject to the law of

inevitability, we must imagine him all alone, beyond space, beyond

time, and free from dependence on cause.



In the first case, if inevitability were possible without freedom we

should have reached a definition of inevitability by the laws of

inevitability itself, that is, a mere form without content.



In the second case, if freedom were possible without inevitability

we should have arrived at unconditioned freedom beyond space, time,

and cause, which by the fact of its being unconditioned and

unlimited would be nothing, or mere content without form.



We should in fact have reached those two fundamentals of which man's

whole outlook on the universe is constructed--the incomprehensible

essence of life, and the laws defining that essence.



Reason says: (1) space with all the forms of matter that give it

visibility is infinite, and cannot be imagined otherwise. (2) Time

is infinite motion without a moment of rest and is unthinkable

otherwise. (3) The connection between cause and effect has no

beginning and can have no end.



Consciousness says: (1) I alone am, and all that exists is but me,

consequently I include space. (2) I measure flowing time by the

fixed moment of the present in which alone I am conscious of myself as

living, consequently I am outside time. (3) I am beyond cause, for I

feel myself to be the cause of every manifestation of my life.



Reason gives expression to the laws of inevitability.

Consciousness gives expression to the essence of freedom.



Freedom not limited by anything is the essence of life, in man's

consciousness. Inevitability without content is man's reason in its

three forms.

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Freedom is the thing examined. Inevitability is what examines.

Freedom is the content. Inevitability is the form.



Only by separating the two sources of cognition, related to one

another as form to content, do we get the mutually exclusive and

separately incomprehensible conceptions of freedom and inevitability.



Only by uniting them do we get a clear conception of man's life.



Apart from these two concepts which in their union mutually define

one another as form and content, no conception of life is possible.



All that we know of the life of man is merely a certain relation

of free will to inevitability, that is, of consciousness to the laws

of reason.



All that we know of the external world of nature is only a certain

relation of the forces of nature to inevitability, or of the essence

of life to the laws of reason.



The great natural forces lie outside us and we are not conscious

of them; we call those forces gravitation, inertia, electricity,

animal force, and so on, but we are conscious of the force of life

in man and we call that freedom.



But just as the force of gravitation, incomprehensible in itself but

felt by every man, is understood by us only to the extent to which

we know the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the

first knowledge that all bodies have weight, up to Newton's law), so

too the force of free will, incomprehensible in itself but of which

everyone is conscious, is intelligible to us only in as far as we know

the laws of inevitability to which it is subject (from the fact that

every man dies, up to the knowledge of the most complex economic and

historic laws).



All knowledge is merely a bringing of this essence of life under the

laws of reason.



Man's free will differs from every other force in that man is

directly conscious of it, but in the eyes of reason it in no way

differs from any other force. The forces of gravitation,

electricity, or chemical affinity are only distinguished from one

another in that they are differently defined by reason. Just so the

force of man's free will is distinguished by reason from the other

forces of nature only by the definition reason gives it. Freedom,

apart from necessity, that is, apart from the laws of reason that

define it, differs in no way from gravitation, or heat, or the force

that makes things grow; for reason, it is only a momentary undefinable

sensation of life.



And as the undefinable essence of the force moving the heavenly

bodies, the undefinable essence of the forces of heat and electricity,

or of chemical affinity, or of the vital force, forms the content of

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astronomy, physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, and so on, just in the

same way does the force of free will form the content of history.

But just as the subject of every science is the manifestation of

this unknown essence of life while that essence itself can only be the

subject of metaphysics, even the manifestation of the force of free

will in human beings in space, in time, and in dependence on cause

forms the subject of history, while free will itself is the subject of

metaphysics.



In the experimental sciences what we know we call the laws of

inevitability, what is unknown to us we call vital force. Vital

force is only an expression for the unknown remainder over and above

what we know of the essence of life.



So also in history what is known to us we call laws of

inevitability, what is unknown we call free will. Free will is for

history only an expression for the unknown remainder of what we know

about the laws of human life.









CHAPTER XI





History examines the manifestations of man's free will in connection

with the external world in time and in dependence on cause, that is,

it defines this freedom by the laws of reason, and so history is a

science only in so far as this free will is defined by those laws.



The recognition of man's free will as something capable of

influencing historical events, that is, as not subject to laws, is the

same for history as the recognition of a free force moving the

heavenly bodies would be for astronomy.



That assumption would destroy the possibility of the existence of

laws, that is, of any science whatever. If there is even a single body

moving freely, then the laws of Kepler and Newton are negatived and no

conception of the movement of the heavenly bodies any longer exists.

If any single action is due to free will, then not a single historical

law can exist, nor any conception of historical events.



For history, lines exist of the movement of human wills, one end

of which is hidden in the unknown but at the other end of which a

consciousness of man's will in the present moves in space, time, and

dependence on cause.



The more this field of motion spreads out before our eyes, the

more evident are the laws of that movement. To discover and define

those laws is the problem of history.



From the standpoint from which the science of history now regards

its subject on the path it now follows, seeking the causes of events

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in man's freewill, a scientific enunciation of those laws is

impossible, for however man's free will may be restricted, as soon

as we recognize it as a force not subject to law, the existence of law

becomes impossible.



Only by reducing this element of free will to the infinitesimal,

that is, by regarding it as an infinitely small quantity, can we

convince ourselves of the absolute inaccessibility of the causes,

and then instead of seeking causes, history will take the discovery of

laws as its problem.



The search for these laws has long been begun and the new methods of

thought which history must adopt are being worked out simultaneously

with the self-destruction toward which--ever dissecting and dissecting

the causes of phenomena--the old method of history is moving.



All human sciences have traveled along that path. Arriving at

infinitesimals, mathematics, the most exact of sciences, abandons

the process of analysis and enters on the new process of the

integration of unknown, infinitely small, quantities. Abandoning the

conception of cause, mathematics seeks law, that is, the property

common to all unknown, infinitely small, elements.



In another form but along the same path of reflection the other

sciences have proceeded. When Newton enunciated the law of gravity

he did not say that the sun or the earth had a property of attraction;

he said that all bodies from the largest to the smallest have the

property of attracting one another, that is, leaving aside the

question of the cause of the movement of the bodies, he expressed

the property common to all bodies from the infinitely large to the

infinitely small. The same is done by the natural sciences: leaving

aside the question of cause, they seek for laws. History stands on the

same path. And if history has for its object the study of the movement

of the nations and of humanity and not the narration of episodes in

the lives of individuals, it too, setting aside the conception of

cause, should seek the laws common to all the inseparably

interconnected infinitesimal elements of free will.









CHAPTER XII





From the time the law of Copernicus was discovered and proved, the

mere recognition of the fact that it was not the sun but the earth

that moves sufficed to destroy the whole cosmography of the

ancients. By disproving that law it might have been possible to retain

the old conception of the movements of the bodies, but without

disproving it, it would seem impossible to continue studying the

Ptolemaic worlds. But even after the discovery of the law of

Copernicus the Ptolemaic worlds were still studied for a long time.



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From the time the first person said and proved that the number of

births or of crimes is subject to mathematical laws, and that this

or that mode of government is determined by certain geographical and

economic conditions, and that certain relations of population to

soil produce migrations of peoples, the foundations on which history

had been built were destroyed in their essence.



By refuting these new laws the former view of history might have

been retained; but without refuting them it would seem impossible to

continue studying historic events as the results of man's free will.

For if a certain mode of government was established or certain

migrations of peoples took place in consequence of such and such

geographic, ethnographic, or economic conditions, then the free will

of those individuals who appear to us to have established that mode of

government or occasioned the migrations can no longer be regarded as

the cause.



And yet the former history continues to be studied side by side with

the laws of statistics, geography, political economy, comparative

philology, and geology, which directly contradict its assumptions.



The struggle between the old views and the new was long and

stubbornly fought out in physical philosophy. Theology stood on

guard for the old views and accused the new of violating revelation.

But when truth conquered, theology established itself just as firmly

on the new foundation.



Just as prolonged and stubborn is the struggle now proceeding

between the old and the new conception of history, and theology in the

same way stands on guard for the old view, and accuses the new view of

subverting revelation.



In the one case as in the other, on both sides the struggle provokes

passion and stifles truth. On the one hand there is fear and regret

for the loss of the whole edifice constructed through the ages, on the

other is the passion for destruction.



To the men who fought against the rising truths of physical

philosophy, it seemed that if they admitted that truth it would

destroy faith in God, in the creation of the firmament, and in the

miracle of Joshua the son of Nun. To the defenders of the laws of

Copernicus and Newton, to Voltaire for example, it seemed that the

laws of astronomy destroyed religion, and he utilized the law of

gravitation as a weapon against religion.



Just so it now seems as if we have only to admit the law of

inevitability, to destroy the conception of the soul, of good and

evil, and all the institutions of state and church that have been

built up on those conceptions.



So too, like Voltaire in his time, uninvited defenders of the law of

inevitability today use that law as a weapon against religion,

though the law of inevitability in history, like the law of Copernicus

in astronomy, far from destroying, even strengthens the foundation

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on which the institutions of state and church are erected.



As in the question of astronomy then, so in the question of

history now, the whole difference of opinion is based on the

recognition or nonrecognition of something absolute, serving as the

measure of visible phenomena. In astronomy it was the immovability

of the earth, in history it is the independence of personality--free

will.



As with astronomy the difficulty of recognizing the motion of the

earth lay in abandoning the immediate sensation of the earth's

fixity and of the motion of the planets, so in history the

difficulty of recognizing the subjection of personality to the laws of

space, time, and cause lies in renouncing the direct feeling of the

independence of one's own personality. But as in astronomy the new

view said: "It is true that we do not feel the movement of the

earth, but by admitting its immobility we arrive at absurdity, while

by admitting its motion (which we do not feel) we arrive at laws,"

so also in history the new view says: "It is true that we are not

conscious of our dependence, but by admitting our free will we

arrive at absurdity, while by admitting our dependence on the external

world, on time, and on cause, we arrive at laws."



In the first case it was necessary to renounce the consciousness

of an unreal immobility in space and to recognize a motion we did

not feel; in the present case it is similarly necessary to renounce

a freedom that does not exist, and to recognize a dependence of

which we are not conscious.









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